3D Printing Startup WayZada Lands Funding

Bloomington-based startup WayZada today announced a $20,000 investment from Elevate Ventures’ Community Ideation Fund.

WayZada allows athletes to showcase achievements through custom, interactive 3D representations of outdoor activities such as running, biking or hiking.

“We are very pleased to support WayZada and its mission of helping athletes share their achievements,” said Cy Megnin, Elevate Ventures’ entrepreneur-in-residence serving Velocities, a partnership supporting startups in south-central Indiana. “WayZada’s launching digital tools on top of its 3D print option has really accelerated growth. I am very excited to see where this one goes.”

Adam Ward and Robert Henschel launched WayZada in 2020. Ward was creating personal protective equipment for healthcare workers and had the idea to try to 3D print data from runs they completed. After a few days, the team built a method to illustrate athletes’ data and make it tangible with 3D prints.

“Support from Elevate transformed our process of turning data into 3D models and prints from a workflow that took heavy involvement from our team into a robust, self-serve process,” said Henschel. “Users can now connect to their favorite apps, like the popular STRAVA app, and build sharable models of any achievement without requiring our team to be part of the workflow.”

Elevate’s Community Ideation Fund is made possible through its partnership with Velocities. The Community Ideation Fund is available through the state’s 21st Century Research and Technology Fund, which is overseen by the Indiana Economic Development Corp. and promotes economic growth and innovation-driven public-private partnerships in Indiana.

In addition to this funding, WayZada also received a $20,000 pre-seed investment from Elevate Ventures through the Elevate Nexus Regional Pitch Competition in spring 2021.