The Conrad School is excited to share our students' successes in the fall 2022 term.
Velocity $5K Pitch Competition
All four winning teams in the Velocity $5K pitch competition this term included student co-founders from the Conrad School. We are proud to celebrate with our undergraduate students who have either completed an Enterprise Co-op (E Co-op) term or the Bridging Entrepreneurs to Students (BETS) co-op program.
- AFAIK, co-founded by Orianna Min (E Co-op), maps academic knowledge for self-learners.
- Dhvani Patel, a current E Co-op student, co-founded RelayMD, an online platform that lets family doctors find information on medical specialists and make/manage outbound referrals more efficiently.
- Landscape Direct is a fully online garden centre that connects our customers directly to top Canadian growers, co-founded by Blake Patterson, a former E Co-op student.
- The final winner, TrainPro, provides real-time guidance on technique, exercise routine and optimal muscle loading in the gym through the use of smart wearable clothing. Co-founder Shreshth Mehra is a former BETS student.
Among the finalists was also Penspyre, co-founded by former BETS student Roman Semin. Penspyre provides contextualized writing prompts that enable a book author to finish the first draft faster without writer’s block.
Several of our students were among the semifinalists, including those in the Master of Business, Entrepreneurship and Technology (MBET) program – catch up with all of them in our Fall 2022 Velocity $5K recap!
The Velocity $5K is offered every term, attracting student teams with innovative solutions and high-potential business ideas. Participants receive valuable feedback, pitching experience, and idea validation from a network of experienced entrepreneurs and Velocity Coaches.
Velocity Climate Change Hackathon
Kade Truman (MBET ’23) came second place, winning $3,000, in the Climate Change Hackathon with PowerCell, an idea to transform wastewater into energy.
Coming in third place and winning $2,000 were Andrew Cordssen-David and Shubham Kumar (both MBET ’23) with WallCast, a retrofitting solution to conserve energy.
Velocity, in partnership with Waterloo Climate Institute, has offered the Climate Change Hackathon since 2020, where student teams participate in the three-week-long hackathon which culminated in a final pitch event. Teams were supported by Velocity coaches, and climate change mentors throughout the program to help explore problem spaces and solutions.
GreenHouse Social Impact Showcase
Med Melanin, awarded $2,500, is a platform that outlines physicians' degrees of implicit bias and provides them with tangible techniques and actions to consider when diagnosing a patient, and is led by Yvonne Osagie (MBET ’23).
Yi Lin Li, a BET 300 student, also won $1,000 for her venture The Chess Club, which is building a more inclusive and diverse chess community.
Every term, student-led ventures pitch their ideas of social and environmental change for a chance to win funding from the Social Impact Fund, organized by GreenHouse.
Problem Pitch Competition
Both Med Melanin and The Chess Club won funding from the Problem Pitch, being awarded $7,000 and $1,500, respectively.
Anthea Tawiah, a BET 300 student, won $2,000 for her venture Nomo, which is focused on researching, developing and testing practical low-cost methods of recycling and reusing electronic waste.
The Quantum Valley Investments® Problem Pitch Competition competition invites teams to choose an important problem and research its history, scope and impact. Students pitch their findings to a panel of judges to compete for funding to support their venture research & development.
Medical Innovation XChange's Knowledge XChange Program
Seun Adetunji (MBET ’23) and her venture MedInclude, which transcribes complicated medical information to lay terminology and makes it available to patients/caregivers in multiple languages, will receive up to $15,000 through the Knowledge Xchange program.
This program is offered by Medical Innovation Xchange (MIX) in partnership with the Ministry of Labour, and the money is intended to be used to increase the capabilities of the venture’s staff and candidates through learning, development and knowledge exchange opportunities.
MIX is a network of Canadian medical and health technology companies who grow their business in their own backyard, support patients and clinicians with truly innovative solutions and pay-it-forward by helping other medtech companies grow and succeed.
Their resident and affiliate companies include many MBET alumni ventures, including HyIvy Health (Rachel Bartholomew, MBET ’14), FluidAI (Amr Abdelgawad, MBET ’17), and Vena Medical (entrepreneurship option alumni and former BETS program employers).
Ovin 5G Transportation Challenge
LoopX Innovation Inc., founded by Chao Yu (MBET ’25, Ph.D. Fellowship recipient), is a startup developing autonomous driving software and mobile robots with a mission to better the world through autonomy. LoopX has developed Canada’s first all-weather autonomous delivery robot named GoosEx™.
Winner of the OVIN 5G Transportation Challenge, the LoopX food delivery robot can reliably and securely navigate itself on the University of Waterloo’s 5G smart campus.
Rogers and OVIN invited small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in Ontario to envision how they might use the Rogers 5G network for an innovative and ultra-low latency application, using the benefits of 5G networks, high precision positioning technologies and multi-access edge computing.
RBC Business Model Canvas Competition (BMCC)
CloudSafari, founded by Markus Hamann and Josh D’Souza (BET 300), came second place and won $2,500 in the RBC BMCC. CloudSafari allows you to discover, plan, and book your trip to Africa with their trusted operators, powered by smart contracts.
Among the finalists, each winning $300 in gift cards, were Patently LSAT (founded by Christopher Bearne) and Matin Nuit (founded by Matthew Chun, E Co-op), who were both BET 300 students. Patently LSAT is a low-cost LSAT prep company, likely a website with various materials. Matin Nuit bridges South Korean cosmetic manufacturers with influencers around the globe, offering guidance from ideation to product launch.
The BMCC invites student entrepreneurs to learn about business models, business model validation and the business model canvas and then demonstrate their understanding through a video submission of their own entrepreneurial experiences that exhibit these concepts.
Cornell Life Changing Labs Accelerator Program
Justin Cheng, a former BET 300 student, won $1,500 in the pitch competition at Life Changing Labs’ Accelerator Program this year. Justin’s venture Herma Print is democratizing plastics manufacturing through their community-driven distributed manufacturing marketplace platform.
Life Changing Labs selects top founders every year for an 8-week boot camp, where they are provided with the skills, resources and community they will need to accelerate their startups to match their vision. On Demo Day, startups present their companies to a panel of judges – venture capitalists, angel investors and prominent entrepreneurs.
Congratulations to all our winners and finalists!
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