On May 4th the NYU Stern School of Business hosted the finals of its annual $300K Entrepreneurs Challenge in which venture teams pitched to a panel of judges tasked with deciding the winner of each of the Challenge’s three venture competitions. In addition to the Challenge, the winner of Stern’s W. R. Berkley Innovation Labs Mobile App Contest was announced, who will have their app fully developed—awarding them a prize valued at $75,000.
The finals were the culmination of the eight-month competition that began the prior fall with the registration of over 600 students, faculty and alumni drawn from 17 schools across NYU’s global network. Over two hundred teams were then formed, receiving tutoring and mentoring over the following months.
The teams were winnowed down to arrive at a small group of finalists vying to receive a sizeable cash award in each venture competition. The panel of judges was drawn from the venture capital, technology and design, and social enterprise sectors.
The competition tracks and their winner are:
New Venture Competition: The $100K Rennert Prize was split between Grocer8 ($25,000) and Food Period ($75,000).
Grocer8: Pitched as a “Yelp for packaged food”, the venture offers customers a discovery platform dedicated to the taste of packaged foods, while also serving as a data-driven flavor research tool for food companies.
Food Period: Helps women with their menstrual cycle by offering functional food products, grounded in nutrition protocols and ancient practices that is delivered via a subscription-based service.
Social Venture Competition: $75,0000awarded to FairFrame.
FairFrame: Serves as an AI-enabled language processing platform helping managers to make informed decisions about people in the workplace and organizations achieve their diversity, equity and inclusion goals.
Technology Venture Competition: $100,000 awarded to Sunthetics.
Sunthetics: Drives sustainable change in the fashion industry via a solar-powered pathway to manufacture environmentally-friendly nylon, while improving manufacturing cost and efficiency.
HealthHuddle, the winner of Stern’s Mobile App Contest, “Mission: Appossible,” was one of more than 200 entries for the third annual contest, from which five finalists vied for a chance to have their app fully developed by Messapps, a New York-based design and development studio. HealthHuddle aims to improve clinical communications to prevent medical errors.
