Case Western Reserve University students and recent alums will compete March 15 in the first Morgenthaler-Pavey Startup Competition.
Students in entrepreneurship classes at Case decided which pitches moved forward to the competition. Case entrepreneurship professor Scott Shane says that business accelerators, angel investors and venture capitalists are looking for ideas from students.
“All of that stuff is growing quite rapidly and, in particular, growing rapidly in Northeast Ohio. So it made it timely to do this now and support the greater local, geographic ecosystem and also the university ecosystem with its alumni startups.”
The startups are:
Commercialized rapid blood-testing. Typical blood-testing can take 30 minutes to an hour. Apollo Medical Devices is looking to change that.
2. Everhire
An employee-recruiting service that pairs artificial intelligence and professional employment screeners.
3. Hedgemon
Football helmets inspired by hedgehog quills to prevent concussions and other brain injuries to the players.
4. KitcheNet
A grocery box delivery service that packages ingredients and recipes to local communities.
5. Inspirit
A wrist device that can monitor dehydration levels of the wearer.
6. ImaginAg
Using aerial imaging and algorithms, Inspirit can count crops and trees. They are proposing a new way of agricultural counting.
The winner will receive $25,000 provided by local business development organization JumpStart. The competition is in part to honor the memory of David Morgenthaler, a noted Cleveland venture capitalist who died in 2016.
