The Semifinal round of Pitch Dingman Competition saw its biggest turnout ever this year. Over 300 people packed into Frank Auditorium, popcorn in hand, to watch their friends and fellow students compete for the night’s award opportunities. With only 4 minutes to pitch and 2 minutes to answer questions from the judges, each semifinalist was tasked with communicating their story and value proposition in a short span of time. It was a tough competition, with each team giving an impressive showing. The five teams who made it to the Finals distinguished themselves through sound business models, impressive traction and a clear vision for building their startup. Read on below for a list of the finalists.
FINALISTS
Each finalist received a $500 Finalist Award, courtesy of SECU.
CourseHunter – Aaron Bloch, Benjamin Khakshoor
A platform that interfaces with school registration systems to help students get into the classes they need.
Curu – David Potter, Abb Kapoor – Audience Choice Prize Winner, $500
A mobile app that helps users improve their credit score without changing their spending habits.
Gravity LLC – Richard Kong
Gravity LLC produces Gravity Tales, an online publishing platform for Chinese and Korean fantasy stories translated into English.
Grumpy Joes – Michael McGraw, Seung Hwang
An online apparel shop that features a line of novelty t-shirts designed by and for veterans.
POSH – Nathalyn Nunoo, Elania Tait, William Kwao
A beauty consultation firm that provides reliable, affordable service to clients seeking freelance makeup artists.
—
Congratulations to the teams who didn’t make it to the Finals, but delivered excellent performances. We look forward to seeing your startups progress!
afterclass – Uday Misra, Ariel Kotch
A peer-to-peer education platform for students to crowdsource answers to class questions.
Carlouie & Company – Carlouie Nievera
A retro fashion-line inspired by the ’80s and ’90s era styles of Saved By the Bell and Fresh Prince of Bel Air.
FroDoh – Simon Amato, Holly Wilson
Frozen donut holes in a variety of delicious flavors to satisfy your sweet tooth.
OpenPT LLC – Ramsey Khadder, Tamika Hardy, Corey Abrams
A cloud-based platform to improve connections and client experiences between physical therapists and patients.
Tag Along – Karmah El Naggar, Omar Mihilmy
An app that interfaces with ticket-selling websites using Facebook API to suggest a list of friends who may want to attend a concert with you.
—
The panel of judges assessing the semifinalists brought a valuable range of skillsets and perspective. Thank you to our judges:
Harry Alford
Co-Founder and Managing Director, humble ventures
Bill Boyle
Dingman Center Angels Investor, Former President at Fibergate, Inc.
Zeki Mokhtarzada
Technical Advisor at Truebill
Juliana Neelbauer
Software COO, Business Law Lecturer, Hackathon Advisor
Ryan Pillai
Winner of 2016 Pitch Dingman Competition, Founder of WeCook
—
There is a long road ahead to the Finals on March 7, 2017, and in the months that follow we expect to see tremendous growth from each of the five Finalists. Who among them has what it takes to win the $15,000 Grand Prize? Stay tuned and fined out!
[…] one of our signature events, we thought that this year’s Pitch Dingman Competition Semifinals would yield a similar turnout to we had seen in the past. But we were in for a surprise. A […]