The Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp Winners Announced Fall 2017

August 21, 2017

Written by Catherine Li and Meghana Krishnakumar

During the week of August 14th, 2017, SCET had its bi-annual Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship (BMoE) Bootcamp showcasing students from over 15 countries. This semester’s bootcamp consisted of lecture talks by experienced technology and startup leaders, SCET faculty, and entrepreneurs.

Throughout the week, teams participated in challenges and ideation sessions to help develop their collaborative skills. This rigorous 4 ½ day boot camp helped students work with industry mentors and UC Berkeley faculty in order to execute a successful pitch to investors by the end of the week. Each mentor helped guide their own teams using their expertise and experience to help their team overcome any challenges or roadblocks they encountered. From team development on the first day of bootcamp, to the final pitches on the last, all attendees left with a greater understanding on how to start a company and what it takes to work and cooperate with a team in a fast paced environment.

Overall, bootcamp started off with 21 competing teams with three in the finals on Friday. The winning team was Armoglass, which provides a scratch proof surface for hand held devices.

1st Place - ArmoGlass

By Cathay Photonics

Team: Nicholas Chan, Kevin Wijaya, Alfred Tan, Gino Hwang, Sparsh Jain, Dipika Khullar

Problem: Glass and screens are fragile and have the tendency to crack or scratch easily.

Solution: They create screen surfaces harder and more flexible for manufacturers through our patented sapphire-coating process.

Business model: Can be used in phones, solar panels, and camera lenses.

Market size: 12.5 million action cameras market

Team ArmoGlass: Nicholas Chan, Kevin Wijaya, Alfred Tan, Gino Hwang, Sparsh Jain, Dipika Khullar

2nd Place (tie) - Mutte

Revolutionizing Cancer Treatments

Team: Namita Verma, Riikka Reitzer, Prathyusha Charagondla

Problem: Extremely high sensitivity is needed for the detection of cancer DNA during the follow-up of biological medications.

Solution: They have identified a new technology that enables ultrasensitive detection of single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP), providing a sensitive and fast protocol for non-invasive point-of-care screening. Their diagnostics platform consists of new chemistry and device, and allows centralized data analyzing and report creating service by a professional clinician.

Business model: To commercialize the technology we are going to start diagnostics service business with the existing technology to create customer networks and to verify our new chemistry and device design.

Market size: Total cancer costs in 2020 estimated to be approximately $150 million

Team Mutte: Namita Verma, Riikka Reitzer, Prathyusha Charagondla

2nd Place (tie) - BrainYT:

Transforming Industry Data into Actionable Information

Team: Amanda Loureiro Costa, Nathália Rodrigues Machado, Zane Aitken, André Almeida Reggiani, Max Han

Problem: There exists an information gap within factories before products leave the door, forcing factory supervisors to operate blind.

Solution: Eliminate that information gap by monitoring factory floors using a variety of low-cost devices that create a digital snapshot of a factory floor operations in real time. The data is then uploaded to a cloud and can be easily reviewed with our user-friendly BrainYT software.

Business model: Help drive business decisions using empirical data rather than intuition.

Market size: 161k small-to-medium sized Brazilian factories