Sixers Innovation Lab
Philadelphia 76ers Training Complex, Business Operations Facility, Camden, NJ, United States
Overview
The Sixers Innovation Lab Crafted by Kimball supports rapidly growing, early-stage companies in the consumer product space and provides speed and flexibility, individualized, industry-leading consulting and investment opportunities to startups with potential. Selected companies receive office space in the Innovation Lab furnished by Kimball Office; access to industry experts, executives, and financiers; third-party branding, marketing and legal services; free meals and housing in the Philadelphia-area; and the opportunity to pitch industry-leading investors and venture capital firms.
- Total investments
- 2
- Lead investments
- 1
- Investments · 12mo
- 0
- Active investors
- 2
Sector focus
- Consulting
- Coworking
- Venture Capital
Investment portfolio
- OYA Femtech Apparel
Led · Seed · Jan 2023
Oya Femtech Apparel produces athletic performance wear engineered to support feminine health, including physician‑tested, athlete‑approved, patent‑pending leggings. Its products use antimicrobial fabrics that are BPA-, PFA- and PFOA-free. Product development was supported by over 60 medical professionals and 200 product testers. The line is designed and primarily manufactured in Los Angeles, CA. Led by CEO Mitchella Gilbert, the company sells performance wear with a focus on clinical validation and athlete feedback. Oya raised funding to accelerate growth and expand operations.
- Highlight
Participated · Seed · Mar 2022
Highlight operates an in-home product testing platform that automates product research and consolidates multiple testing steps into a single interface. Founded in 2020 by Dana Kim and Ethan Kellough, the company manages a community of over 25,000 “Highlighters” who receive products and provide feedback, enabling hundreds of brands to run thousands of tests. Customers include Nestlé, Estée Lauder, P&G, Target, Sakara and Hanes, and the company says it has more than tripled its revenue, employees and customer base. Highlight uploads community feedback in real time into dashboards that let brands set up tests quickly and scale them, reducing a process that previously took hundreds of emails and months into minutes. The company is moving from a product testing platform toward a product intelligence platform, focusing on agile insights, real-time dashboards and an unfair data advantage. Planned roadmap features include more self-service experiences with templates and wizards, onboarding the waitlist of Highlighters, iterating on user experience, and hiring additional employees. Highlight operates an in-home user testing (IHUT) platform that delivers physical products to participants' homes so brands can gather targeted, real-world feedback quickly. The company combines proprietary technology and an engaged consumer panel to speed and improve the accuracy of product testing. Since launching in 2021, Highlight has powered agile testing for over 100 partners, tested hundreds of products, sent thousands of boxes, and completed tens of thousands of surveys. Customers range from early-stage brands such as Partake, Avec, Love Corn, and Sakara to enterprise CPG companies including Nestle, P&G, and Estée Lauder. Most Agile IHUTs deliver initial feedback within a few days and complete within roughly a month, enabling use cases from early development tests to blind competitive benchmarks. Highlight has raised $8.2M to date and plans to use new capital to hire and accelerate growth to further its mission of improving physical product development.