Tony Verutti is the CEO of Betterguards Technology, a German sports-tech company whose adaptive ankle brace uses a micro-hydraulic piston that stays loose during play and locks in a split second when the ankle rolls, then releases. A lifelong athlete who tore his ACL four times and grew up in a physical therapist's household, he took the top job in April 2023 and pushed the product into the NBA, NFL, NCAA and Olympic teams, backed by the NBA's Launchpad program. His pitch: athletes shouldn't trade mobility for protection, and gear should be built on science, not tradition.
Josh Butler is the founder and CEO of CompScience, a San Francisco AI company that turns ordinary workplace cameras into a real-time safety system. He was building perception software for self-driving cars when a family member was badly hurt on a construction site, and he redirected that same computer-vision technology toward stopping workplace injuries. Today CompScience detects more than 50 behavioral and environmental hazards on camera, bundles the analytics into a workers' compensation insurance product, and counts hundreds of enterprise customers across construction, manufacturing, warehousing and food service.