STC.UNM and the UNM Innovation Academy co-hosted their fifth Rainforest student pitch competition on Monday evening, April 24, at the Bow & Arrow Company brewery. The event drew a large crowd from the community who heard pitches for ideas, technologies, and companies from nine student finalists. The 90-second presentations were the culmination of a vetting process that included an initial submission of a video pitch to a panel of judges who selected finalists for the final round at Bow & Arrow.
Below are the nine finalists and five winners.
Finalists
- Joseph Graham – TABS, a mobile app for bar/brewery/restaurant expedited payment service*
- Torran Kahleck – Campus Assistant, a multi-platform chatbot that uses AI to quickly answer queries
- Munji Kahalah – Inde Beats, a platform to connect local artists and listeners*
- William Quinn Palmer – A bundled & downloadable/copyable collection of public domain information
- Clay Space – An entertainment experience fueled by blockchain technology
- Haydn P. Jones – Crafted bread that is sustainable, tasty, and cross promotes local breweries and bakeries*
- Keith Flynn – App called Weather and a Smile, provides the weather with a joke
- Kyle Guin – New software to make data entry into computers painless*
- Kimberly Oostman – Online Communication Academy using innovation and remediation to solve communication problems*
*winners of $1,000 prizes
In addition, Clay Space and Munji Kahalah also won trips to attend the European Innovation Academy to be held July 9-28, 2017, in Turin, Italy. The European Innovation Academy is billed as an extreme entrepreneurship educational program held over 15 days and offering 70 sessions to students (http://inacademy.eu/italy/).
STC and the Innovation Academy wish to thank the sponsors of this event: Bow & Arrow (donated space), Sherwin Williams, and the New Mexico Gas Company.
This community initiative helps to recognize our student entrepreneurs in the state. Business pitch competitions are opportunities for aspiring student entrepreneurs to present their innovative ideas for products, services or technologies to local entrepreneurs, investors, and business professionals. This competition is open to students from any university in the state of New Mexico.
The next Rainforest Pitch Competition will be held in Fall 2017.