This month, Enterprise Co-op students pitched for five prizes of $5,000 at the Ignition Week pitch competition. Each competing student had five minutes to pitch their venture to a panel of judges, followed by a three-minute question period. Meet the Spring 2018 pitch winners!
E Co-op Awards
The E Co-op Awards are available to students in Arts, Environment, Math, Science, and Applied Health Sciences. This term, there were two winners:
Shadwell Da Cunha, Supercut
Mathematics
Supercut is a web tool that lets agile and distributed teams run retrospectives (team feedback meetings) that improve participation, ensure accountability, and bolster productivity over time.
Today, 94% of organizations practice Agile (i.e. Scrum, Kanban, Xtreme) in some fashion to generate rapid feedback and learnings to improve productivity. Agile teams use end-of-sprint retrospective meetings to gather these learnings. Unfortunately, 90% of retrospectives run on whiteboards and hacked-together solutions that get erased, deleted, forgotten, and rarely get implemented. Supercut aims to solve this.
Isaac Ellmen, Gndrv
Mathematics
Gndrv is a platform for managing biological data so that it is standardized and easily accessible.
As biology is generating more and more data, the systems for accessing it have lagged behind. There are many algorithms for diagnosing diseases or identifying new therapies which rely on analysis of specialized-data. Unfortunately, this data is often unsearchable or unsharable. Gndrv hopes to bridge the gap between data and analysis and enable a new wave of biological research.
Ryan Sojnocki, Growth Gardens
Environment
Growth Gardens challenges homeowners to re-evaluate the use of their yard space by promoting organic gardens. We eliminate the barriers, making it easier for families to enjoy the produce!
Upon learning about the large amount of food wasted in Canada, Ryan knew he had to do his part to tackle this critical problem. Much of this food waste stems from damage during transportation. Since so many homeowners utilize their yard for nothing more than grass space, they are missing out on a massive opportunity to support themselves; This is where Growth Gardens comes in. The long-term goal is to form a partnership with each family to garden their space on their behalf, supply them with their fresh-produce needs, and take the excess to market. Ryan is an avid believer that sustainability stems from the home and Growth Gardens helps families to become self-sustaining. Growth Gardens brings the farm to the backyard.
Norman Esch Enterprise Co-op Awards
The Norman Esch Enterprise Co-op Awards are available to students in Engineering. There are three winners this term:
Lucas Godkin, The Axe and Adze
With a passion for woodwork and eye for detail, Lucas started The Axe and Adze to offer homeowners unique options for furnishing their homes. Appealing to customers who want something more than the 'off the shelf' look, the business offers 100% custom woodwork, and one-of-a-kind handcrafted furniture and home decor. All Axe and Adze products are made with sustainable and locally-sourced wood. Whether it be reclaimed-wood from a century-old barn or a tree rescued from being chipped, Lucas strives to have an ethical story behind all of his products.
Michael McKague, Everyone's Water
The Region of Waterloo has some of Canada’s hardest water making water softeners a staple in almost every Kitchener-Waterloo household. Unfortunately, water softeners waste water and contaminate our water supply with salt. Every year in Waterloo Region, household water softeners waste 1.9 million m3 of water and 25,000 tonnes of salt.
Mike started Everyone’s Water because he saw a need for a more sustainable hard water treatment. The venture will offer a water conditioner to homeowners that prevent hard water scale without the use of salt, water, and energy. And while each water conditioner works to conserve water locally, the sale of every water conditioner will help provide safe drinking water to people in need through a partnership with the Safe Water Project.
Kyle Faller, Intelline
Intelline designs and manufactures affordable and reliable cryocoolers. Many current and emerging technologies such as MRI machines, quantum computing and superconductors must be cooled to cryogenic temperatures (-150°C and below) to operate. These technologies are limited by the high cost and poor reliability of current cryocoolers — the machines that provide such extreme cooling.
Intelline’s patent-pending new geometry and manufacturing method of cryocoolers makes cooling affordable and convenient, enabling cryocooled tech to reach widespread implementation.
William Koester, SpecialVR
SpecialVR is creating multi-sensory rooms in Virtual Reality for special needs students. We are reducing the cost and physical space of multi-sensory rooms. Multi-sensory rooms are used to regulate the agitation of a student, to put them in the ideal mood for learning.
Multi-sensory rooms are critical for the growth and development of students with special needs, but the cost of a multi-sensory is too expensive for some schools and personal use. We are creating customizable, more interactive, and more immersive multi-sensory rooms. We are also creating cognitive games to help the growth of the students, as well as simulations to create realistic scenarios for the students.
Interested in Enterprise Co-op? Attend an upcoming info session.