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V O L . X X I X N O. V § 2 M A R C H 6 , 2 0 2 3 8 S TA R T U P S J ustin Hafner had just finished his junior year at the University of Maine when he founded a digital health startup called Kinotek Inc. with David Holomakoff, a recent alumnus. "I didn't think that starting a com- pany was even possible," recalls Haf- ner, a former student athlete who switched his major to kinesiology after hurting his shoulder swimming, to understand his injury and learn how the body works. He spent the next year working with UMaine's sports medicine team and kinesiol- ogy professors to build a rehabilita- tion program and returned to com- petition the following season, even breaking a school record. Minded to become a sports psy- chologist, Hafner was conducting human research at UMaine's VEMI Lab when he connected with David Holomakoff — a bioengineering and biomedical engineering grad then involved with a different startup. e two hit it off immediately when Hafner pitched Holomakoff on an idea for a new way to visualize body movement, and they decided to start Kinotek. "It was like a storybook, meeting a guy with similar views and who sees the same opportunity," says Hafner. He graduated early, in December 2018, and retired from swimming to pursue Kinotek full-time. "I wasn't really afraid, it was more just an opportunity for me," says Haf- ner, the son of two entrepreneurs who used to accompany his father on early-morning morning bread deliveries to grocery stores. "at gave me the foundational stuff on how to start a company." With Kinotek, Hafner and Holo- makoff started with sensors and com- puters as a new way to measure body movement before shifting to cameras and computer-vision technology. " When COVID hit in 2020," Hafner notes, "we realized that cam- eras and computer vision was the way to go." e pandemic also prompted them to change their target mar- ket from education to health care, sparked by strong demand for tele- health services. Something that matters Kinotek pioneers platform to track body-movement health B y R e n e e C o r d e s Do something that matters to you and that you think matters to the world. — Justin Hafner Kinotek P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY F O C U S Justin Hafner, right, is a former college athlete at the University of Maine who teamed up with David Holomakoff to launch Kinotek Inc. in 2018.