Boston University

04/30/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 04/30/2024 13:53

Student Entrepreneurs Competed for a Chance at $72,000 at Innovate@BU’s New Venture Night

Student Entrepreneurs Competed for a Chance at $72,000 at Innovate@BU's New Venture Night

The finalists of BU's largest pitch competition celebrated at last week's Innovator's event

Nana Younge, Innovate@BU program director (from left), Alireza Eghdamian (SDM'26), Siobhan Dullea (CAS'91), Innovate@BU executive director, Milan Tahliani (CAS'24), and Parth Mutha (MET'24). Photo courtesy of Innovate@BU

Innovation

Student Entrepreneurs Competed for a Chance at $72,000 at Innovate@BU's New Venture Night

The finalists of BU's largest pitch competition celebrated at last week's Innovator's event

April 30, 2024
0
TwitterFacebook

Last Thursday night, almost 400 students, local entrepreneurs, and the Boston University community attended Innovator's Night, Innovate@BU's marquee event, at the George Sherman Union Metcalf Ballroom. The 10 finalists in the New Venture Competition delivered live pitches on stage for a chance to win part of the $72,000 in prizes for their budding business.

Almost 140 teams applied for this year's New Venture Competition, surpassing the number of applications from previous years. Nana Younge, Innovate@BU program director, attributes this record engagement to enthusiastic students and a supportive mentoring team.

Students pitched their for-profit start-ups to the competition's General Track or to the Social Impact Track. The requirements for the start-ups: having "large-scale, positive economic, social, cultural, or environmental change" or a mission that "focuses on a significant segment of traditionally underserved, neglected, or disadvantaged populations."

Starting in February, teams completed three rounds of competition, including a written application and two in-person pitches. The top 10 teams advanced to the finals. There, three teams from each track received cash prizes to develop and implement their ventures: $20,000 for first place, $10,000 for second place, and $6,000 for third place. Each track also included a $500 Audience Choice Award.

OpenLake, a data services company for small to medium businesses, won the General Track first-place prize of $20,000. By improving data fetching and cleaning, OpenLake aims to create a "one-stop shop" and data infrastructure, which means its clients need zero coding skills. Team members are Milan Tahliani (CAS'24), Cygnus Wang (CAS'23), and Pardesh Dhaka (CAS'26).

Visilant (a play on words with "vigilant") won the $20,000 first-place prize for the Social Impact Track. Visilant's mission is to eliminate vision loss globally by developing mobile health and artificial intelligence technology that will allow equitable access to high-quality eye care. Director Jordan Shuff (MET'25), a master's student in computer science, with a concentration in health informatics, accepted the prize. She leaves for India next week to implement Visilant in two hospitals.

"This is going to be huge," Shuff said. "I think we'll be able to impact about 10,000 patients with this and give them access to eye care."

PerioSense won second place in the General Track, receiving the $10,000 prize. Alireza Eghdamian (SDM'26), a doctoral student at the Goldman School of Dental Medicine, pitched the electronic Dental Periodontal Probe, which will help dentists evaluate patients' gum health.

Nana Younge, Innovate@BU program director (from left), Meiting Wang (Questrom'24), Shengyi Li (Questrom '24), Jordan Shuff (MET'25), Siobhan Dullea (CAS'91), Innovate@BU executive director, and Cliff Freeman (Wheelock'25). Photo courtesy of Innovate@BU

Second place in the Social Impact Track went to TLW Ozone Solution, which provides green, sustainable water treatment alternatives to existing chemical-based water treatment. The team hopes this can reduce the carbon footprint of global wastewater treatment.

"We want to replace carbon [emissions] just like how Tesla's EV [helps to] replace the gasoline car," said team member Meiting Wang (Questrom'24).

PROHUSTLERS took home the $6,000 third-place General Track prize. This soy-snack brand is a nutrition-dense snack, born out of a former Innovate@BU program (the BUild Lab Innovation Pathway). The team said that PROHUSTLERS is determined to transform protein snacks for vegans, celiac-sensitive people, or just curious foodies.

Third place in the Social Impact Track was Math Sprouts, a childcare center for two- to four-year-olds that focuses on holistic child development, with an emphasis on mathematics. PhD candidate Cliff Freeman (Wheelock'25) said about 80 percent of children entering kindergarten are behind in math on the first day of school, especially those from marginalized communities.

The audience also got involved in the night, voting for an Audience Choice Award for each track. In the General Track, PROHUSTLERS took home another award. In the Social Impact Track, Connect+-a peer-consultation platform "by first-gen, for first-gen" students-got a taste of victory as well.

Individual recognitions

In addition to the General Track and Social Impact Track awards, individuals were also recognized with the Student Innovator of the Year Award and the Henry Morgan Community Member Award.

The BU Student Innovator of the Year award was given to Noah Sorin (Questrom'24), founder of Idori, which creates early childhood educational materials about sustainability and the Earth.

"When I started four years ago, I had no idea where this was all going to take me," said Sorin, whose start-up also placed second in the 2024 BU Climate Innovation Challenge as well as first in the School of Hospitality Administration Poyiadjis Hospitality Innovation Competition social impact track. "I just had a vision, and I wanted to create an impact. I was just a naive little freshman."

The Henry Morgan Award, which recognizes an outstanding BU community member and their contributions to innovation, was awarded to Misty Farrell-Pennington, the director of the BU Office of Technology Development.

The Mentor of the Year Award went to Janice Ozguc, an entrepreneurial fellow at Innovate@BU and a technology executive and entrepreneur for major corporations, including IBM, Toshiba, and Mitsubishi. The award recognized Ozguc's commitment to mentoring young entrepreneurs with engineering and business expertise.

The night wasn't just about the awards, however. Other students involved in Innovate@BU showed off their business ideas, reveling in the atmosphere of inspiration and networking.

For Kal Hawley (COM'27, CAS'27), the First-Year Innovation Fellowship (FYIP), which had a cohort of 35 first-year students, allowed them to turn a passion project about accessible menstrual products into a funded start-up.

"We shouldn't have shame about our periods, but we do, and we need to acknowledge that it is there," Hawley said. "People deserve to have free, nice-quality period products without any of that shame."

Their fellow cohort members Kavya Subramanian (CAS'27) and Gia Shin (COM'27) submitted their mental wellness app Walnut to the New Venture Competition, but didn't make it to the first round. However, they received judge feedback that eventually helped them place runner-up in the $100K Poyiadjis Hospitality Innovation Competition.

Siobhan Dullea, the executive director of Innovate@BU, stressed the importance of inclusivity for this year's Innovator's Night. In other words, the night wasn't just to celebrate the finalists in the New Venture Competition. "This year," Dullea said, "we wanted to make it even bigger and even more inclusive [by] celebrating all innovators, whether you're first-year to post-docs…to people who are multi-time entrepreneurs or exploring innovation for the first time."

FYIP student program lead and cohost of the night's event, Zoe Marsiglia (CAS'24), echoed this statement. "Innovation isn't just about business owners, or striking ideas from scratch," Marsiglia said. "It's really about how we present ourselves, the ideas you bring to the table and how we show up in our everyday spaces."

Explore Related Topics:

  • Share this story
  • 0CommentsAdd

Share

Student Entrepreneurs Competed for a Chance at $72,000 at Innovate@BU's New Venture Night

Copy URL:Copy

  • Melina Nguyen (COM'24)

    Melina Nguyen (COM'24) Profile

Comments & Discussion

Boston University moderates comments to facilitate an informed, substantive, civil conversation. Abusive, profane, self-promotional, misleading, incoherent or off-topic comments will be rejected. Moderators are staffed during regular business hours (EST) and can only accept comments written in English. Statistics or facts must include a citation or a link to the citation.

Post a comment. Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published.Required fields are marked *

Comment*view guidelines
Name *
Email *
Submit Comment

Latest from BU Today