Jason Luna envisions a day when mom-and-pop convenience stores across the land will ditch their cash registers and replace them with Apple iPads that run cloud-based software from Rapid RMS, the Chattanooga startup business where Luna works.
“We’ll take out that big, clunky, Commodore 64-looking system that they’ve got inside the convenience store and put in a sleek iPad,” Luna said. “You go in and say, ‘I need $20 on pump number three’ – they’ll be able to authorize that on the iPad.”
Luna expects to have 120 seconds to pitch that vision in early June to a crowd of 1,000 people in Nashville – including venture capitalists and institutional investors – on stage alongside Rapid RMS’ founder, Nirav Patel, whose family owns and operates several Chattanooga-area liquor and convenience stores.
Rapid RMS has been invited to 36|86, a June 6-7 conference produced by Launch Tennessee (LaunchTN), a public-private partnership that aims to spur development of high-growth startup companies in Tennessee.
Also going from Chattanooga are two other startup companies: Torch, a wireless router that helps parents control kids’ Internet use, and Branch Technology, a startup that says it has the world’s largest free-form 3-D printer, which it wants to use to manufacture structural components for high-end architecture.