Find Out Why Entrepreneurs in Gainesville Thrive Here

MYOLYN

With a pro-business climate, continued economic growth and several business incubators, Greater Gainesville offers a thriving ecosystem for startups. In fact, Business Facilities, a media brand specializing in the site selection marketplace, ranked Gainesville on its 2023 Top 10 Best Business Climate (small cities) list. Learn more about why entrepreneurs in Gainesville thrive in the region.

Launch Pad

As a kid, Matthew Bellman watched the toll breast cancer took on his mother’s body.

“My father was always showing me how to fix and make things in our garage, and my mother would say to us, ‘I wish you could build me a new body,’” Bellman says.

“Ever since, I’ve been committed to making things that help people regain some of what they’ve lost to injury or disease.”

This led him to pursue mechanical engineering at the University of Florida (UF), where he contributed to several research projects as an undergraduate, including functional electrical stimulation (FES) for people living with paralysis or muscle weakness caused by neurological injury or disease.

The idea for MYOLYN came from Bellman’s doctoral research on cycling exercise assisted by FES, which ultimately led to the commercialization of the MyoCycle FES Cycling Therapy System.

MYOLYN works to make the most advanced neuro-rehabilitation technology accessible to people in both home and clinic environments.

Bellman, the company’s co-founder and CTO, and Alan Hamlet, co-founder and CEO, created a plan for the MYOLYN while in an engineering doctoral program at UF.

“We took an elective class together, Engineering Entrepreneurship, because we were interested in the idea of starting a company,” Bellman says. “It was in this class that we came up with the idea for MYOLYN and wrote our first business plan. We officially started the company in June 2013 after acing the class and receiving positive feedback from other successful entrepreneurs in the Greater Gainesville area.”

Since launching, MYOLYN has grown to 10 full-time employees and achieved over $10 million in revenue, all while helping thousands of people maintain and improve their health. The MyoCycle, a stationary bike that uses FES to assist those with muscle weakness or paralysis with exercise, is currently used in homes and leading neurological rehabilitation facilities across the U.S., Canada and Australia.

“Greater Gainesville is a great place to launch and grow a startup because of the University of Florida and the startup resources available through UF Innovate and startGNV,” Bellman says. “We relied heavily on these organizations to help establish and grow MYOLYN, which wouldn’t exist today without them. They provided a place for our ideas to grow and develop, expert feedback on our business plans, introductions to mentors and investors and some much-needed emotional support through the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.”

Slice Engineering

Innovation Hub

Chris Montgomery, CTO and co-founder of Slice Engineering, which specializes in designing and manufacturing high-quality industrial 3D printer components, came to Gainesville to start his career after graduating from Duke University in ­­­2001.

“I went to work for an automation company in Gainesville called Adaptive Equipment, and I learned much of the mechanical engineering skills that I still use today at that company. After that, I worked at RTI Surgical for about a decade, and that’s where I met Daniel Barousse, who’s our other co-founder.”

Montgomery started Slice Engineering in his garage with his invention called Mosquito Hotend, a high-performance 3D printer hotend with precise temperature control.

“I did the background of the invention machining in my garage in 2016 and some testing. In early 2017, I went to Dan and asked him if he wanted to help me bring this item to market as a product. We launched it in March 2018,” Montgomery says.

“That product has gone on to make a patent portfolio of a dozen patents, and it’s sort of the basis of our company – though our company has expanded into many other products that are associated with hotends for 3D printers.”

Slice Engineering sells its products to everyone from teenage 3D printing hobbyists to the U.S. military and national labs.

After moving out of the garage, Slice Engineering set up shop in the University of Florida’s UF Innovate| The Hub, an international-award-winning mixed-used incubator in Gainesville’s Innovation District.

“It’s been a real boost to our business to work here with The Hub staff and be in this environment,” Montgomery says. “It’s also great to be in Gainesville because we have access to a fountain of talent coming out of the University of Florida. A lot of our employees are either UF graduates or in some way associated with UF. Gainesville is a great place to be a tech startup.”