News

The Hult Prize @ Waterloo competition energizes and activates socially-conscious entrepreneurs at Waterloo and beyond, and this year will no doubt be one of the most exciting yet! Food is a universal need and source of comfort. The theme for this year’s Hult Prize challenge, dubbed “The Nobel Prize for Students”, is Food for Good. The mission? To create jobs, stimulate economies, reimagining supply chains, and improving outcomes of 10 million people by 2030.

Hot on the heels on of their initial $29 million (USD) Series C funding announcement for Otto Motors, a division of Clearpath Robotics, this stellar example of Waterloo-entrepreneurship has announced an additional $6.6 million (USD) extension to their historic funding round. 

Shane Kilpatrick (MSc ’17, MBET ’18) is the CEO of Membio, a Canadian startup creating technology to manufacture red blood cells. In the Waterloo Magazine, he touches on the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 presents for Canadian innovation.

Ten student venture teams will have the opportunity to win one of four $5,000 grants at the Concept $5K finals today. Six out of ten ventures have founders that are current or former students of the Conrad School of Entrepreneurship and Business.

Rachel Bartholomew (MBET '14) took home $25,000 for her startup, HyIvy Health, at Communitech's Fierce Founders Finale, last week. HyIvy is making a difference in sexual rehabilitation for women with pelvic diseases and cancers. The suite of sexual rehabilitation products that HyIvy Health helps women's sexual recovery after diagnosis, treatment and/or surgery.

NERv Technology emerged victorious through three days of pitching against a group of 100 finalists at the Entrepreneurship World Cup Global Finals.

NERv Technology is an innovative monitoring system for post-operative patients that strives to ensure that no patient loses their life because of an undetected post-operative complication, received a US$500,000 cash prize and a “Shenzen Prize” package to help the company expand into China and in-kind support and services from a collection of EWC partners.

CataLight, a University of Waterloo social impact startup shone brightly at the 2019 Rice Business Plan Competition (RBPC) competing head-to-head with students from the world’s top schools like MIT, Notre Dame, Penn State and Northwestern. After three days of competition, Co-founders Ashley Keefner, Ph.D., MBET and Kevin Dang, MBET advanced to the Final Round as one of only two Canadian teams competing, defeating 35 teams in the process.

Entrepreneurship and business competitions have and will continue to be, valuable learning experiences for student entrepreneurs.

The Hult Prize is the largest student social entrepreneurship competition in the world. Every year, the Hult organization challenges students to come up with entrepreneurial solutions for some of the most pressing social problems our world faces. Students from over 1000 universities globally are taking on this year’s challenge: to provide meaningful employment for 10,000 youth.
 

2018 was a monumental year for the Conrad School, our students and alumni.

Here are some highlights of the past year.