Montana Startups to Watch 2022
By Courtney Brockman and Christina Henderson
Graphic by Jacob Treece
March 10, 2022
Since 2017, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance has published five years of annual Montana Tech Companies to Watch lists covering 100 businesses. While interviewing the six Montana Startups to Watch for our 6th installment in 2022, we were reminded why this series has been our highest-traffic content year after year. The annual list recognizes early stage high-tech and manufacturing companies with high potential to grow, create jobs in Montana, and impact the state’s economy. Montana startups are tackling some of the most pressing challenges of our time:
reducing greenhouse gases
building affordable housing
expanding access to mental healthcare
testing cannabis impairment
killing infectious diseases, and
helping small businesses leverage technology.
As the adoption of remote and distributed work has accelerated, geographic diversity has increased. The 2022 Montana Startups to Watch are based in Billings, Bozeman, Butte, Kalispell, and Missoula and many have ties to multiple cities.
Montana-based resources have been central to the companies’ success – from technological expertise at Montana State University and the University of Montana, to the local talent pool, to capital raised from Montana investors. Since the publication of our 2017 research study “A New Frontier: Entrepreneurship Ecosystems in Bozeman and Missoula, Montana,” the natural advantages of launching a company in Montana have only gotten stronger.
Special thanks to our talented marketing intern, Jacob Treece, for designing the Glacier and Yellowstone-themed graphics. (Keep an eye out for our Montana High-growth Companies to Watch 2022 list coming soon.) It’s always breathtaking to watch the sun rise over Montana’s incredible landscapes. And it’s always inspiring to hear the stories of Montana’s most innovative startups.
2022 Montana Startups to Watch in alphabetical order:
BioSqueeze, Butte - Seal greenhouse gas leaks from oil and gas wells through natural biomineralization.
Endpoint Utility Corp, Kalispell - Provide 24/7 on-demand technical support for small to mid-sized businesses.
Foothold, Bozeman and Butte - Build sustainable and affordable prefabricated housing.
Frontier Psychiatry, Billings - Make psychiatric care accessible to rural areas through telehealth.
Gaize, Missoula - Build a real-time impairment testing and evidence capture device for cannabis.
Kart Kleen, Missoula - Manufacture portable units that use UV light to decontaminate equipment for first responders.
Why We’re Watching Them: One third of global methane emissions each year come from leaking oil and gas wells (29 million worldwide). The problem has become so extensive that the U.S. federal infrastructure plan has earmarked $4.7 billion to seal methane leaks in wells across the country.
Butte startup BioSqueeze Inc. uses a fluid-based biotechnology to seal tiny cracks in oil and gas wells, creating a barrier that permanently sequesters greenhouse gases deep underground. Biomineralization solves an environmental, social, and governance (ESG) challenge pervasive in the industry, creating a cost-effective solution to reduce fugitive emissions.
BioSqueeze Inc. posted just under $1.7 million in revenue in 2021 and has already sealed more than 40 wells in six states for some of the largest oil companies in the world.
The company’s proprietary technology was developed in partnership with the Center for Biofilm Engineering at Montana State University (MSU). Over a 10-year period, approximately $8 million in Department of Energy funding supported the research at MSU and work of BioSqueeze Inc. co-founders Randy Hiebert, Robert Hyatt, and Jay McCloskey to apply biomineralization to carbon sequestration in the oil and gas industry.
Why We’re Watching Them: One of the biggest struggles small and mid-sized businesses face is whom to call when technical issues arise. Until now, there has been no affordable answers to this problem for businesses of this size. Endpoint Utility Corp is poised for rocket growth, bringing with it many quality jobs to the Flathead Valley.
Endpoint Utility is expanding as an IT services leader for growing businesses with its cloud computing solutions, as well as a pipeline to tech jobs for locals in Northwestern Montana. The company has scaled end-user computing architecture for small and mid-sized businesses, providing the software support necessary for these businesses to save time and resources.
CEO David Mayer and co-founders Nick and Neil Photikarm and Evan Tomlin came up with the idea for Endpoint around a virtual fireside chat in 2020. With decades of experience in end-user computing technologies, IT operations and sourcing IT leadership for both large companies and small companies, they officially launched the company in April 2021.
Endpoint has acquired several customers through direct and third-party marketing. They will launch nationwide with a focus on Northern Virginia and Chicago, areas where the company’s technical leaders are based. Mayer send Endpoint will focus primarily on demand generation efforts this year, and sales and hiring.
Image: Foothold prefabricated home installed on location. Courtesy Foothold.
Why We’re Watching Them: A severe shortage of affordable housing has become a central issue for Montana.
Foothold CEO Hannah Van Wetter, an experienced project manager in construction, and co-founder Sam Atkins, whose background is in business management, said that as the pandemic started in early 2020, they started thinking of possible solutions for the housing crisis in their hometown of Bozeman and beyond.
Bozeman is the epicenter of Montana’s booming tech sector. According to Van Wetter, for every tech job created, there are seven service jobs created. But service employees lack access to affordable housing. A 2020 needs assessment showed a need for 6,000 housing units in Bozeman over five years, but fewer than 900 were added in 2020. The median home price in Bozeman climbed to around $700,000.
“People who are in our generation, people who are in our community just are getting left behind by the housing market,” Atkins said. “Nurses, school teachers, firefighters, the person pouring your coffee, the person changing the oil in your car - it kind of doesn't matter all across the board. Wages are growing at a fairly modest 2-3% per year, while housing prices are double digits.”
Van Wetter and Atkins’ solution was to create high-quality, sustainable and affordable housing units through Foothold.
Why We’re Watching Them: Montana consistently ranks in the top three states for suicide rates in the nation, with the highest rates occurring in rural areas. Frontier Psychiatry was founded in 2019 to address this challenge. Its goal is to make quality psychiatric care accessible to all Montanans by 2025.
“We need to make mental health care that it is actually accessible,” said Chief Technology Officer Dr. Reza Ghomi. “We want to be pretty clear about what access means. There’s so many people in Montana who don’t seek care because they don’t even think that it’s a possibility.”
Frontier Psychiatry began when Ghomi and co-founders Dr. Eric Arzubi and Dr. Bob Sise met at the University of Washington and started leveraging telehealth at Billings Clinic to staff psychiatry units around the state, beginning with Montana Mental Health Nursing Care Center.
Telepsychiatry is especially important to reach those who live in rural areas and often lack access to health car. In Montana, it is not uncommon for residents to drive several hours to their nearest clinic to receive care. Frontier Psychiatry eliminates that barrier by bringing quality mental health care directly to patients, wherever they are located.
Image: Gaize headset. Courtesy Gaize.
Location: Missoula
What They do: Build a real-time impairment testing and evidence capture device for cannabis.
Why We’re Watching Them: As cannabis has just become legalized in the state of Montana, questions arise as to how to measure when a driver is impaired by its main psychoactive compound, THC.
Ken Fichtler, who has launched multiple technology startups and worked as the director of The Montana Governor’s Office of Economic Development from 2017-2021, founded Gaize to enable police to test for active cannabis impairment on the road.
Cannabis impairment testing is a challenge. The amount of THC present in the body, is not correlated to the impairment experienced by the user. The drug, unlike alcohol, is metabolized in a non-linear process. THC rapidly spikes and falls to nearly undetectable levels within 20 minutes after being smoked, but the high lingers for over two hours. THC is also fat soluble, and in heavy users, can be detected in the body for over a month.
Instead of a breathalyzer, saliva, or blood test, Gaize tests impairment through monitoring involuntary, micro-movements of the eye, and pupil behavior, using machine learning. As with many other drugs, eye movements provide insight into whether someone who has ingested THC is actively impaired.
Images Left to Right: 1) Kart Kleen Entrance Unit delivered to Gallatin County Sheriff’s Office 2021. 2) Incident Bag. 3) Disinfection Locker. 4) Seat Decon Unit. Photos courtesy Kart Kleen.
Location: Missoula
What They Do: Manufacture portable decontamination equipment that uses UV light to kill more than 99.9 percent of bacteria and viruses on inanimate objects.
Why We’re Watching Them: For many years, Kart Kleen Founder and CEO Jason Gardiner was troubled by dirty shopping carts. In his work as insurance broker, Gardiner saw that unsanitary equipment could be a source of illness and a liability for businesses. He developed an idea for a system to sanitize shopping carts and pitched the concept to a major manufacturer about 10 years ago. The big company didn’t see a problem worth solving.
“They literally thought I was crazy,” Gardiner said.
Undeterred, in 2018, Gardiner decided to build the machine himself and recruited partners to help make his vision a reality. The first successful prototype, built in a garage, treated shopping carts with ultraviolet light. The Kart Kleen unit was just the beginning, as Gardiner had a vision to employ this type of technology for many different applications.
Gardiner recruited Bill Holben, a Professor of Microbial Ecology at the University of Montana with more than 30 years of experience, to test the system’s effectiveness. Holben found the first-generation unit killed 97 percent of protozoa, fungi, bacteria, and viruses and he was so impressed he joined Kart Kleen as their Chief Scientist.
With the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, the team used their technology to serve urgent needs like disinfecting personal protective equipment (PPE) for healthcare workers and emergency medical equipment for first responders.
About the Publisher:
Launched in 2014, the Montana High Tech Business Alliance is a nonpartisan nonprofit association of more than 200 high-tech and manufacturing companies and affiliates creating high-paying jobs in Montana. For more information, visit MTHighTech.org or subscribe to our biweekly newsletter.
About the Authors:
Courtney Brockman is the Communications Director for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. She graduated from the University of Montana in 2017 with a degree in journalism.
Christina Quick Henderson has served as Executive Director of the Montana High Tech Business Alliance since its launch in April 2014. She teaches in the University of Montana College of Business and writes for Montana Business Quarterly and other publications. Christina holds an English/Education degree from the University of Iowa and an MBA from the University of Montana.
About the Graphic Designer:
Jacob Treece is the former Digital Marketing and Jobs Board Coordinator for the Montana High Tech Business Alliance. Jake is currently a student at the University of Montana and Davidson Honors College studying International Business, Marketing, and Spanish.