Students pitch next generation venture projects at Collider Cup XI
The Sutardja Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology held its flagship event, Collider Cup, on Dec 9, 2022 at Sibley Auditorium in the Bechtel Engineering Center on the UC Berkeley campus. Ten teams presented their venture projects to an esteemed panel of judges to vie for the Collider Cup and prizes, including guaranteed entry to SkyDeck’s Pad-13 program, as well as $10,000 in Amazon AWS credits for the top three teams.
1st place – LineBy
From left to right: Michael Greenberg, Riddhi Khanna, Ewelina Burri, Ganesh Pimpale, Harsha Gundala and Jay Onda
Team: Ganesh Pimpale, Ewelina Burri & Harsha Gundala
Course: Challenge Lab | How to Think Like an Entrepreneur: The Unspoken Rules of Navigating the Future of Work
Team LineBy, founded in the future of work Challenge Lab course, was the first place winner for the Fall 2022 Collider Cup. The team wants to capture part of the $20B content creator market, by helping creatives more easily create videos by narrating their video story “line-by-line” to an AI. The AI will then find relevant video clips and automatically string together a video, which promises to save video editors a ton of time vs. traditional timeline-based video editing software such as Final Cut Pro or Adobe Premiere.
2nd place – Frida
Team: Jahnavi Jambholkar, Shikha Shah, Jashan Pabla, Lingke Song & Joergen Jore
Course: Technology Entrepreneurship
Team Frida, founded in the Technology Entrepreneurship course, is a platform that helps women build wealth through coaching and financial literacy. Never before in human history have women had access to so much wealth, but women do not invest as readily as men. Frida seeks to change that by offering a platform where financial influencers will help women become financially literate through workshops and bite-sized courses.
3rd place – Outwork
Team: Chandler Supple & Cameron Britt
Course: Marketing for Technology Startups
It’s easy to imagine the manufacturing industry being filled with large-scale high-tech factories that are leveraging automation to be extremely efficient. According to team Outwork, that is far from the truth, with 99% of manufacturing still being very small and reliant on pen and paper. To address the paper traveler problem, team Outwork, developed in the SCET Marketing for Technology Startups course, created a fully-automated system that uses AI to track part production more accurately than humans and save nearly 30 minutes of time per worker per day.
Most Innovative – Bosch
Team: Carlos Karve, Jovon Lim, Katell Guillou, Mahnum Khan & Daniela Gonzalez
Course: Deplastify the Planet: How to Master the Sustainable Transition
Around 18 billion electronic control units (ECU) for vehicles are produced annually creating nearly 1.8 million tons of non-recyclable plastic. Team Bosch re-designed the ECU to create a circular solution by using thread fasteners and snap-on design to make the plastic recyclable and by creating collection hubs near scrapyards to enable easier recycling.
People’s Choice Award – SOPet
Team: Chawin Viriyasopon
Course: Startup Acceleration
Everyone loves their pet and more and more are seeking personalized consultation with unbiased and specialized vets to make sure their furry friends can live the best lives possible. SOPet is leveraging artificial intelligence to provide algorithmic consultation and referral to real vets in order to access the huge and growing pets market, which in the US grew by more than 20% in 2021 to a market size of $123B.
More Collider Cup XI teams
While not every team can win the Collider Cup, these teams also presented innovative solutions that have the potential to solve big problems for consumers.
- Mint
- Course: Product Management
- Team: Zach Dive, Julia Pecego, Kelly Ye & Lucas Monjal
- What it is: Mint is seeking to change the way consumers connect with food by connecting them with local farms to acquire on-demand produce.
- Sharapp
- Course: Disaster Technology: Creating Innovative Solutions to Environmental Change Challenge Lab
- Team: Hélène Kondratieff & Paola Noun
- What it is: Sharapp enables the sharing of resources such as tents or kayaks, so those without a lot of space or money can more easily do recreational activities.
- WorkerBee
- Course: Connected Life: How Mobile/AI/Internet of Things Will Improve Our Lives
- Team: Sergio Mazariegos, Evelyn Tran, Wish Wang, Chanon Sirimontaporn & Sophie Lai
- What it is: There is still a severe shortage of workers in the hospitality industry, where currently there are 2 job openings for every one worker seeking employment. WorkerBee seeks to connect skilled hospital professionals with flexible on-demand work through its WorkerBee platform.
- Consolimate
- Course: Berkeley Method of Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
- Team: Rick Cruz, Vuk Perisec, Matt Aini, Rachel Lin & Bam Goshtasbi
- What it is: 37 million people lose their wallet annually. Consolimate keeps track of lost credit cards and re-connects you with your subscription services if your cards are lost or stolen.
Collider Cup features one venture project from each of its courses every semester. While teams chosen for the Collider Cup were chosen for a reason and certainly are some of the most innovative, it is still important to recognize that SCET is not able to showcase every team, but there are more than one hundred projects produced in SCET classes each semester.
SCET Teaching Awards
SCET’s courses feature hands-on, experiential learning guided by experienced instructors, who provide expert feedback to help students develop their ideas. In addition to 16 faculty, SCET hires graduate student instructors (GSIs) and course coordinators to run the classes and ensure student innovators have the best environment to learn. In addition to acknowledging our entire teaching staff, SCET gave special recognition to an instructor and course coordinator at Collider Cup XI.
Best Instructor Award
This semester’s SCET Best Instructor Award went to Mark Searle, instructor for ENGIN: 198-3: Startup Acceleration.
“Truly one of the best classes I have taken and very uniquely enables students to make quick and necessary changes to their pre-existing startups as he makes himself widely available and gives advice from his personal experience, people he is connected to, and shines light on valuable points from other students in the class. Additionally, the environment that he creates where students feel comfortable to discuss their challenges while still getting presentation experience is invaluable.” – Student in Startup Acceleration
Best Course Coordinator Award
This semester’s SCET Best Course Coordinator Award, went to Sejal Goel, for her work as a course coordinator, also in the ENGIN: 198-3: Startup Acceleration course.
Spring Course Preview
While judges were deliberating, SCET also presented a preview of its Spring 2023 courses, which are currently open for enrollment for Berkeley students.
Judges
Cheers to our judging team Jay Onda – Marubeni Ventures Inc., Michael Greenberg – AWS Startups, and Riddhi Khanna – Berkeley SkyDeck Fund for their fantastic feedback and for providing prizes to the winning teams, including the Amazon AWS Prize, $10,000 in AWS credits and access to the entrepreneurs on the AWS Startup BD team, and the Berkeley SkyDeck Prize, automatically acceptance into the SkyDeck Pad-13 Incubator program.