Pitches & Pitchers Competition
The Global Network for Advanced Management celebrated its Fifth Anniversary last week by hosting Deans, staff and faculty from programs across the globe at the Yale School of Management. As part of these festivities, the Program on Entrepreneurship hosted Pitches & Pitchers, a pitch competition judged by Honest Tea co-founders, Seth Goldman ’95 MPPM, and Barry Nalebuff, Milton Steinbach Professor of Management at Yale School of Management.
Pitches & Pitchers gave student founders the opportunity to do what they do best: pitch their ideas. Teams from Yale SOM, EGADE School of Business, and Berkeley-Haas presented in person and virtually for an opportunity to win a $1,000 cash prize.
The Program on Entrepreneurship launched in 2014 and has since evolved to include 12 courses and to attract over a thousand students from the School of Management and across Yale. Enrollment numbers for entrepreneurship-related courses have grown tenfold since the program’s inception. The pitch competition marked the end of the third year of the program and was a way for Yale to celebrate student entrepreneurs both at the School of Management and at partner schools, including EGADE and Haas.
After much deliberation, the judges awarded the prize to ARIX Technologies, who are developing a rust-detection robot operating in the oil industry. All of the student teams that participated did a fantastic job and showed that the sky's the limit when it comes to entrepreneurship.
ARIX Technologies – Winner!
Founded by Dianna Liu, MBA ’17
ARIX Technologies has technology that eliminates inspection guesswork in manufacturing plants. Currently, petrochemical refineries aim to prevent corrosion-caused catastrophes through inspection programs. However, due to overwhelming amounts of pipe, these programs rely on extrapolation from small, incomplete data sets which do not provide a comprehensive view. Thus, manufacturing companies spend billions of dollars reacting to the effects of corrosion rather than proactively mitigating it. This wastes valuable investment resources and puts employee lives and the environment at risk.
Prysmex
Founded by Patricio de Villa, EGADE Business School ‘14 and Susana Ruiz EGADE Business School ‘15
PRYSMEX offers wearable devices that monitor each worker’s safety conditions and are capable of alerting both the workers and the company of any potential hazards. It also consists of a real-tIme software analytics dashboard, which, accompanied by custom reports, helps companies to better understand their safety needs and rapidly mitigate incidents, saving money and reducing operational downtime.
LookFwd
Founded by Michael Ebel, Haas School of Business ’17
LookFwd believes time and people are the most important and valuable things in life. So they created an app that makes it easier to spend more time with the people that matter most. Despite a myriad of social platforms available, planning with your friends is harder than it should be. The average person can’t tell you what 25 of their closest friends are doing on any given weekend, and they feel that is unacceptable in our connected society. LookFwd is specifically designed to fix that problem. LookFwd also helps people save money by aggregating discounts already available. We save people time and money, bust most importantly help others spend more time with the people that matter most.
Kitchen Table
Founded by Zoe Lloyd, MBA/MEM’17 and Nilofer Ahmed, MBA’16
Kitchen Table is reinventing cooking for today’s busy lifestyles by making it easier for people to eat healthy meals at home. Their frozen plant-based meals are nutritious, filling dinners with a full serving of a plant-based starch, plant protein side and nut-based sauce, which have been prepared and immediately frozen. The meals are not microwaveable and go from freezer to plate in 15 minutes using one pan on the stove. They contain no artificial ingredients or preservatives, low amounts of sodium, and are certified vegan.
SimpliFi
Founded by Will Sealy, MBA ’17
SimpliFi seeks to be the go-to resource for millions of student loan borrowers, reducing the stress and hassle of repaying loans by giving them the confidence of knowing they are truly on the best path to becoming debt free. SimpliFi is a website that will save student loan borrowers thousands of dollars and hours of headache by providing a clear, customized repayment plan – identifying each borrower's best option with a sophisticated algorithm based on their unique financial picture. SimpliFi will also provide a variety of essential resources, including a personal loan payment dashboard, payment notifications, policy change updates, and videos to clarify confusing terms. SimpliFi is a SaaS platform that has established a unique revenue source by targeting three institutions – each invested in the success of student loan borrowers – to pay for an annual licensing fee, including universities, employers, and government agencies.
Spacebar
Founded by Jonathan Shaffer MBA ’17
Spacebar is a human-collaborative robotics startup seeking to automate the retail coffee and tea experience from customer order to customer delivery. The company is currently developing a proprietary automation system for use in a self-branded retail location in Brooklyn, with anticipated first store launch in 12-24 months.
Frontier Nutrition
Co-founded by Eddie Bearnot, MBA ’17
Frontier Nutrition, Inc. is committed to developing, producing, and delivering world-class nutritional products to low and middle income households in frontier markets. Their vision is to eradicate early life and maternal malnutrition by providing appealing, low-cost, and convenient options to families with limited income and a lack of access to healthcare, transportation, and clean water. “Hashi Khushi”--Frontier Nutrition’s first product--is designed based on the habits, aspirations, and budget of low and middle income Bangladeshis.
