
ACC InVenture Prize 2022
4/2/2022 | 57m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
15 ACC universities send students to this Shark Tank-style entrepreneurship competition.
They've battled it out on the field, but now the ACC's best minds come together for a competition like no other. Florida State University will serve as the host of The 2022 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) InVenture Prize competition! Fifteen ACC universities are invited to send their best undergraduate entrepreneurs to compete at the nations' largest undergraduate student innovation competition.
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ACC InVenture Prize 2022
4/2/2022 | 57m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
They've battled it out on the field, but now the ACC's best minds come together for a competition like no other. Florida State University will serve as the host of The 2022 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) InVenture Prize competition! Fifteen ACC universities are invited to send their best undergraduate entrepreneurs to compete at the nations' largest undergraduate student innovation competition.
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It's amazing to be doing the ACC InVenture Prize live again, but do you know what makes me most excited about being here at Florida State?
Is it because the Jim Moran college is the only college of entrepreneurship in the country?
That's good.
Is it because two FSU students appeared on Shark Tank?
Sure.
Yeah.
Is it because the Jim Moran College is ranked number one in the state of Florida?
By Princeton Review.
Okay.
Well, those are all amazing.
But there is one reason I have always wanted to come to FSU.
Why?
Because I want to swim in the Westcott Fountain!
What!
Ride like the wind Bartholomew.
Wait for me!
Live from the campus of Florida State University.
It's the 2022 ACC InVenture prize Join us as the Atlantic Coast Conference's leading innovators compete for $30,000 in prizes and patents.
And now please welcome your host from CBS Sunday Morning and NPR.
Emmy winner Faith Salie Hi there.
Thank you.
Thank you.
And welcome to the sixth annual ACC InVenture Prize.
I am so thrilled to be back live for this year's event.
And last month was all about March Madness and ACC put together a dominant run.
But tonight, is all about April innovation.
And the ACC is going to prove that its tech stars are just as impressive as it stars on the court.
We have teams representing each of the 15 ACC universities, all contending for the top spot in the nation's largest undergraduate student.
Innovation competition.
A few weeks ago, our 15 schools submitted their pitches to our judges, whom you'll meet shortly and then face them in virtual Q&A sessions.
Tonight, each team will present again and get one last question from our judges.
After that, our judges will award a second place prize of $10,000 and a FIRST-PLACE prize of $15,000.
But all of our competitors are also vying for the People's Choice Award and that's where you come in through text voting.
You can send your favorite team home with a $5,000 prize.
Voting has been open since Monday, so if you haven't voted yet, text the code below for your favorite team to 4159657445.
Well, I know about you, but ready to tip things off.
So let's get to it.
The team from Clemson is helping patients with hydrocephalus.
While you may be super impressed that I correctly pronounce that word, wait until you learn about Cath.
Hi, I'm Allie Riker from Clemson University, and I'm representing one of five founders of the CatheSure.
Hydrocephalus affects one in 500 children worldwide.
This doesn't even include adult onset hydrocephalus.
The most common course of treatment is a ventricular peritoneal shunt.
While these shunts are the most common course of treatment, they sadly have an extremely high failure rate.
70% fail and 40% fail within the first year alone.
While this statistic is alarming, the symptoms of a short malfunction are extremely vague, often presenting as the flu and leaving doctors puzzled in order to reach a diagnosis.
A doctor typically performs an exploratory brain surgery, which can cost up to $60,000.
It might not even be necessary.
There are currently no devices on the market that non-invasively diagnose a short malfunction.
Our solution is not only noninvasive, but wirelessly powered and can confirm our functioning under 5 minutes.
It's a no brainer.
Doctors need to be sure and now they can with the CatheSure.
The CatheSure consists of a wireless pressure sensor, an electronic module that is integrated into the shunt system and an external device.
It detects the pressure within the catheter and transmits its data wirelessly, being an electronic module located just below the skin at the clavicle.
When the external device is held to the clavicle as if you were taking its temperature That data is wirelessly transmitted and displayed on a screen to be read by a physician if and when a patient returns.
Presenting with these vague symptoms potentially shunt malfunction, the physician can use a CatheSure to reach a definitive diagnosis in under 5 minutes.
The current shot market is valued at $291 million, and that's expected to grow to $356 million by 20, 28.
That means there is a massive profit margin for our device with the CatheSure patient avoid up to $100,000 in prolonged hospital stays.
Avoid any risks associated with exploratory open brain surgery.
Avoid any additional implantation surgeries and avoid repeated radiation exposure due to multiple CT scans.
With the decrease from 5 hours to 5 minutes.
Patients get a diagnosis 98% times faster.
Be sure with the CatheSure.
All right.
Our judges formally introduced shortly.
For now, they've brainstormed a question for CatheSure Marcus.
Sure.
So one question we have for you is do you think that the shunt manufacturers will see you all as competitors or partners?
Thank you for that question, Marcus.
So we believe that they will see us as partners because of the stage where we are at with our company.
We believe it would be most beneficial to bring our device to market through partnering with the company and selling it as one seamless unit.
So a doctor or a hospital system would receive their shunt system and the CatheSure all in one for one implantation surgery with no added risk for anybody.
And that's it.
Thank you.
Let's keep the spirit of innovation rolling along.
Next up, the team from North Carolina might be Sporting Carolina Blue, but they're all about keeping it clean with QUVI everyone.
Incredibly excited to be presenting QUVI to you all today and explain the future sensation.
We started QB almost a couple of years ago when we realized our reasonable water balls were incredibly disgusting.
How discussing you mean us then?
Almost 50 times as much bacteria as the average toilet seat, and that can only lead to common colds but also other infections like pneumonia.
Therefore, we created the QUVI, which is the world's first and only waterborne civilization device that can sanitize any reasonable water bottle in under a minute using uv-c light Our product is unparalleled performance because it can sanitize faster than any product on the market.
It's super intuitive to use for users and it's also safety for it, which means that users are never exposed to use feeling.
And there's a couple of alternatives to our device that include LARQ, which is an expensive self-cleaning water bottle that is not accessible for most average consumers.
And also sanitation boxes which are not super intuitive to use.
Our product is not only versatile, it works on the exterior and the interior of reusable water bottles.
But it's also cost effective and incredibly effective.
And our users love our device as well.
Almost all the users that we surveyed use a reasonable water bottle on a daily or frequent basis, and almost 90% of them said that they would use QUVI on a daily or frequent basis to clean their water bottle.
And we intend to use these numbers and effectiveness of our product to reduce the amount of times that people spend sick every year.
We've had a lot of success along the way since we started August 2019.
We first participated in the UNC Thought Competition here at UNC, winning a prize there.
And from then on, we went and built our final product and most recently paid our product in more than five gyms.
And we're incredibly excited to be launching our product at universities, gyms and other institutions and making sure that everybody is reusable water bottle is safe to use.
Thank you so much.
It's a brief overview of how QUVI works.
Users will select how long they want to sanitize their bottle, and it takes a couple of seconds to sense the height of the bottle and lower the focus to be light.
Once a light turns on the cube, light turns blue and it begins a 32nd sanitization cycle.
Once it has completed, all surface bacteria and pathogens have been deactivated and you are safe to continue drinking out of your water bottle.
All right.
All I ask now of our judges is to is to keep team QUVI's question clean okay?
Nice job, team.
What additional markets do you plan to target beyond gyms, airports and universities?
Thank you for that question.
We definitely see our initial market being these high traffic, high foot traffic areas because that's going to create awareness about our product and people will build habits that really encapsulate what we're trying to change.
But after that, we could definitely see a version of our product that people have in their homes, similar to a coffee machine, similar size, but something that every day before you go out the door, you can put your phones, your keys, your water bottles in their stores.
I'm so sorry.
I am thirsty to meet more of our competitors.
So let's bring out the team from the university of Miami to tell us about GUIA.
My name is Gabriela, and I want to show you how we can improve your walking experience.
A large percentage of people have been street harassed or assaulted when walking.
And we found that.
61% of women take steps to avoid walking alone in public, well now they won't be alone because GUIA will be there to guide them.
GUIA will be the first navigation platform that uses official and crowdsourced crime data to provide accurate and safe guidance to its users by using our safety routing algorithm, a platform designed specifically to provide safety to all communities Users are welcome to the geolocated crime bubble map, which informs the user of recent crime occurrences.
So from official police data and user reports, users who are journeying through their city are then provided with the safest path to get to their destination based on historical crime occurrences during their journey.
Users can report incidences that they see to warn other members and keep the community safe in real time.
Additionally, users can access emergency mode, send a live location and audio tracking to their identified close contacts if they feel they are in danger.
Women in the city of Miami have said that they don't feel safe walking alone in unfamiliar areas, and a big issue is when GPS navigates them somewhere unsafe and it is too late to change course.
We use crime source data and Real-Time User Input to create the safest walkable path to their destination.
Partnerships with the city departments of police and crime experts are crucial.
That's why we are in contact with the chief of police in Coral Gables, a crime analyst from North Miami Beach and a professor with literature and crime mapping.
GUIA is a perfect resource to walkers.
as they attend local community events walk home after work or simply go out into the city.
We calculated our total addressable market due to our impact in the lifestyle, navigation and social media app market.
And we use the population of all U.S. cities for our service available market and look towards the users in the top 20 cities for our service obtainable market.
Our cost structure includes a developmental cost, maintenance business, operations and marketing.
We all have been impacted and know what it's like to walk through the streets and feel unsafe.
I'm leading the product development and usability and with others focus on the business model and its project management skills and technical background for our algorithm.
We believe we can make this a reality.
At GUIA user safety is our top priority.
Whether they are planning an itinerary for their city trip or simply going out to grab a coffee.
GUIA we'll be there to guide them.
All right.
Let's now go to the J's to get one last cue for the team from the U.
Reveals.
So have you considered any liability that you may hold once you're suggesting these routes that are deemed safe?
Now, I'm so glad you asked that so at GUIA our focus is primarily not to only have walkers feel confident, but feel primarily safe when they're safe as part route routing algorithm.
We really want to focus on be able to guide users through a city and a navigate in a safe manner.
And now what we want to focus on is not only just focusing on liability, but making sure that when users are guided that they feel safe.
And with that, we can't we know that we can't promise people feeling safe, but we know that they can feel they can feel more capable while walking through their journey.
And that's your time.
Thank you.
And who are these mysterious judges that sneaked on to our stage to grill our teams?
Well, I'm glad you asked because somebody put together this video to introduce them to Hey I'm Marques Colston founder and CEO of Marques Colston Enterprises, we're a professional development services company that helps athletes, entrepreneurs and executives with tools and strategies to shift their mindset and repurpose their unique skills and experiences to position themselves for sustainable success.
Hi, everyone.
I'm Ravila Gupta and I lead a consulting firm where we help entrepreneurs and other businesses grow and develop.
I am so excited to be part of the ACC InVenture Prize this year.
I'm Sri Divakaruni vice president of business development for Rhizome Network.
We assist companies small and large with the research development and innovation projects.
This is the second time I'm judging the ACC InVenture Prize, and I'm delighted to be here with all of you And we are delighted to have you.
Our next presenter is literally steeped in the technology of, well, stepping here from Syracuse, University is happy, loose leaf tea nearly 160 million Americans drink tea each day.
Each year, Americans consume over 84 billion servings of tea.
That's 3.8 billion gallons.
In fact, tea is the most widely consumed beverage in the entire world after water.
If you're a tea lover, loose leaf tea is the way to go.
It's high grade and produces better yield and flavor but if you brew loose leaf tea, you know there's a problem.
It's made in a small metal basket or infuser, and it's messy, cumbersome, impractical, inconvenient, and it's not portable.
And it's impossible to brew a great cup of loose leaf tea on the go.
I'm Noah and I love loose leaf tea.
That's why I created the happy tea ball.
It's a portable and flexible tea sipping device with a proprietary mechanism that produces the perfect cup of tea.
Fill the happy tea ball with your favorite loose leaf tea, then set your desired brew duration using a simple dial When it's done, it automatically stops the steeping process through a pan pending technology.
No more over or under brewing your tea.
You get a mess free cup of tea on the go.
It's really that simple.
We have a fully functioning 3D printed prototype.
We've worked with legal counsel to complete an extensive international patent search, hold a provisional utility patent and are on the way to a non provisional filing.
Happy Loose Leaf Tea is a C corporation that is ready to launch and we are currently in talks with manufacturers.
They're happy tea ball will be sold directly to consumers, to the Happy Loose Leaf Tea online marketplace.
And we are connecting with tea companies for affiliate partnerships and are fortunate to have advisors who are global leaders in the tech industry helping shape our roadmap.
Tea is beloved across cultures and centuries and has become more popular during the pandemic to boost immunity and enhance well-being as well as preventative, cardiovascular, cognitive and calming health benefits.
The demand for high quality is only growing Much like the artisanal coffee sector exploded over the last decade.
Gen Z drinks as much tea as coffee.
Tea is having its moment as a new generation of tea lovers who are looking for innovation, convenience and sustainability.
We are that solution.
We bring innovation to technology, to the brewing process to make sure that each cup is your perfect, happy cup.
of tea.
Ravila I see you percolating with the question.
Thanks, Noah.
Do you have any concerns about your tea ball getting copied or you know reproduced with it?
I know you have the patents, but what's the concern there?
Absolutely.
That's a fantastic question.
Currently, we've completed an international patent search and identified that it is in fact, a unique method of brewing your tea.
And we hold the utility patent pending for the tea ball, and we've positioned our patent pending to also encompass other methods that could potentially encroach on our market space.
All right.
You got good things brewing.
I have read the tea leaves and can predict that Georgia Tech is next.
It also says that on my teleprompter, they are here with their innovation carSEAL.
My name is Derek Brewster, and I'm one of the co-creators of carSEAL, an innovative vascular closure device for the carotid artery.
Stroke is one of the leading causes of death in the United States with over 700,000 ischemic strokes annually.
During a stroke, a blood clot cuts off circulation to the brain, requiring a surgeon to operate quickly in order to prevent long term disability and even death for the patient.
Neurosurgeons at the Mayo Clinic currently perform this procedure through the femoral artery in the leg, but that can take over an hour.
Alternatively, they found that direct access to the carotid artery in the neck can reduce the procedure time by half and save up to 60 million neurons.
That's the equivalent of about five to ten years of normal aging.
So why don't surgeons access the carotid artery already?
It's because they don't have the tools they need to safely and effectively close the vessel after the procedure is over.
To solve this, we present car seal our innovative device that leverages the geometry of two concentric cones to plug in arterial access point.
carSEAL consists of a low profile anchor to hold the device against the vessel wall.
A self-guided inlet cone to block the majority of bleeding and an online cone with collagen to absorb residual leakage and create a tight seal.
Current closure devices on the market are unable to meet the challenges of the carotid high pressure environment.
Testing we've conducted at the Mayo Clinic has shown that carSEAL can prevent leakage and pressures well above those seen in humans.
We're conducting additional testing with a Georgia Tech lab to study how carSEAL can perform in a high flow environment.
And we also plan to conduct testing to understand how car seal is deployed in and absorbed by the body.
For our long term strategy, we plan to conduct animal testing, begin clinical trials and seek full FDA approval within three to five years so that car seal can help the 320,000 individuals annually.
Who need stroke interventions.
Our team is composed of five Georgia Tech biomedical engineers working in close partnership with the Mayo Clinic's neurosurgery department, combining our engineering background with the Mayo Clinic's clinical Expertize will help us turn this idea into reality.
Reducing the impact of stroke means more time doing the things you love with the people you love by enabling surgeons to safely and effectively close the carotid artery, carSEAL will save time, neurons and lives.
Okay, judges, it's time to put some closure on carSEAL's presentation with one last question.
Sri?
Great job.
What do you anticipate as your top tech challenges on your way to receiving FDA approval?
So we know that as a Class three medical device, we do have to go through safety and efficacy trials, which will be required for premarket approval However, we have a lot of support with the Mayo Clinic that has helped us through this testing so far.
We were just there the other day testing our device in a bovine carotid artery, getting feedback from surgeons that will help us make this idea better.
We do have coming up cadaver testing and animal testing, which will help pave our way to get a call to our dads.
Those things up for Georgia Tech.
So let's introduce the team from the University of Pittsburgh Re-solution.
My name is Evan Carroll, founder and CEO of Re-solution, and we're tackling medical compliance in terms of contact lens care.
So as it turns out, about one in 500 contact lens wearers will actually get an eye infection from improper contact lens care.
And on top of that, 5.1 million contact lens, wearers have reported going to see their eye care provider about eye redness, dryness or irritation.
And the problem at heart is quite a simple one.
People aren't taking care of their contact lenses, though, often sleep with their contact lenses and feel free to replace them and they won't follow the proper steps of contact lens care.
So our solution is a two fold solution.
We have at first the physical case that's designed to actually carry out the proper steps of contact lens care in an app designed to allow for reminders and tracking of your contact lenses.
With these two devices, we're hoping that this will be able to solve the habitual problems at hand and be able to help over 45 million contact lens.
Whereas the CDC conducted a study and found that 40 to 90% of contact lens wearers don't actually follow the proper steps of contact lens care consistently.
And so these two devices are able to really help push those numbers and help people take care of their eyes or go to market strategy is to go through opticians and use their influence in the market in order to recommend our product.
We're going to start with a free app that's able to help and provide use to all contact lens wearers and then sell our case, which is the added $99 benefit for cleaning the lenses automatically.
With this we're going to be also selling through direct retailers and selling through our store.
Our team consists of myself, Evan, Karen, Shane Riley and Ngozi Amber.
We have a diverse background in product design, engineering and FDA medical device validation.
Thank you for your time.
All right.
Marques, I believe you have a salient question for team Re-solution Sure.
So.
So which which value proposition do you think is stronger for contact lens?
Where's the app or the case?
So I think the case is what actually comes down to you because that takes away the cleaning process off of the actual user.
The app is a great way to, you know, get exposure across our platform and really start to get our case into people's hands and provide tracking functionality that they don't get with just the case.
Thank you both or all three of you.
Sorry, I was thinking of it as they come in teams of two.
Our next teams job is to help you find yours It's Virginia Tech and MassApply.
Hi.
My name is Naman Singh and I'm a senior at Virginia Tech studying computer science and math, and I'm also the co-founder and CEO of MassApply.
My team noticed that traditional methods of job hunting just aren't working out.
Online job portals are a lot like black holes where we toss our resumes in.
But only two to 3% of applicants ever hear back for an interview.
This is because large incumbents in our space are primarily focused on helping companies hire more efficiently, neglecting the needs of individual job seekers.
These pain points became especially clear when the COVID 19 pandemic hit.
Many of my own peers lost their full time job offers because of this feeling compelled to help.
I launch a job hunting CRM, which grew to 5000 users within two months of launching.
Since then, MassApply has built a full suite of automation tools to help students leverage the most effective job hunting tactics.
We have the job hunting CRM from our initial launch, and we also have a quality mailing tool that helps people connect with recruiters.
The way this works is that for 2000 open jobs in tech, we've found the email addresses of the recruiters in charge of all of these positions so that an applicant can send a personalized cold email to the recruiter in charge with a single click called email and creates a simpler and more reliable way for people to land interviews.
We also have a referral feature in Beta, which helps qualified candidates land more interviews by connecting them with willing refers at top companies.
With this set of automated features, Massive Pie has a total of 12,500 users, with 230 people who have reported back that they've actually got an interview with MassApply, and 60 people have gotten offers.
And we're just getting started.
We have a big vision to automate the entire job hunt.
And by focusing on helping job seekers, we believe that MassApply will become the defacto tool to help all entry level job seekers in the United States.
Thank you All right.
Ravila, are you ready to apply yourself with a question?
Sure.
Do you have any thoughts about providing additional services to job seekers beyond just called emailing Yeah, so we've thought a lot about what other features we want to implement and essentially we want to automate the entire job hunt from the full lifecycle.
What we notice is that people really struggle with all landing interviews more reliably and tactics like referrals or automatically customizing their resumes can work super well.
And that will help us reach our vision of creating a more scalable, automated and accessible way for people to land the jobs they want regardless of your time.
Virginia is for technology lovers, so let's keep things rolling with another presenter from the Old Dominion with UVA's AmityConnect, Four years ago, my grandpa had an unexpected heart attack.
During this experience, my family and I felt isolated from his health and did not have any peace of mind with a doubling elder population.
Elder care will be more chaotic, as 92% of caretakers lack a clear understanding of elders conditions.
Understaffed senior living centers are forced to offer reactive care and treatment costs double in the next three years.
So we created AmityConnect, an AI powered caretaking assistant through a machine learning models.
We generate daily risk assessments, medical emergency predictions, and long term elder journeys First, caretakers can put daily metrics in less than 30 seconds, and we aggregate real time data from smart medical devices.
Next, we use this data to predict heart attacks follows an influenza with 95% accuracy.
AmityConnect offers a clear picture of elders health, reduces hospitalizations and costs and personalizes care for each elders conditions are serviceable obtainable market is $342 million and is focused on senior living kings in the US and the elder care market.
Our main competitors are medical devices that react to emergencies, an end to end management software.
Storing general data like billing and documentation.
Instead, our proprietary machine learning models offer actionable insight and are hyper focused on leveraging elder health data.
So far, we've tested at Target Senior Living with 93% satisfaction rates.
Redeveloped our iOS app and are working on partnerships with two of the largest senior living chains A three month goal is a pilot in three centers, and a 12 month goal is expand to one 75 centers and charge 25% per year as we scale or main cost or a GCP backend that helps us store and encrypt data.
We're a team of top iOS and machine learning developers recognized by Apple and Google and will be working on AmityConnect full time as we pilot the app.
We've interviewed over 100 family members, caretakers and elders, and together our goal is to help millions of elders just like my grandpa Judges, I trust you won't be cavalier with your question for the team from UVA.
Sri?
What is the financial incentive today for Elder Care institutions to adopt a solution?
So right now, senior living centers are very understaffed and they're constantly having to react to medical emergencies.
As with us putting together data inputs from a variety of sources like caretakers in devices, we offer them with the ability to predict these medical emergencies, which in turn reduces costs and hospitalizations for medical emergencies, for various chronic conditions that elders in senior living centers mostly have.
And we offer a clear sorry, it's not you, it's me to give you a little more insight about what it takes to make it to our stage tonight.
Let's take a walk on the road to the ACC InVenture Prize the road to the ACC InVenture Prize was once again newly paved in 2022 with a hybrid approach that allowed teams to face the judges virtually before all 15 teams headed to Florida State University to compete on the live broadcast for the first time ever.
This schedule meant an earlier start for students who began months in advance by creating their pitch videos.
These videos were posted on the ACC InVenture Prize website for People's Choice Voting, which opened several days before tonight's live televised event.
All of that has meant a lot of hard work and perhaps even more anxiety as students are finally here tonight to face our judges on the live broadcast.
The only thing left is to watch and see who will win the 2022 ACC InVenture Prize If it feels like your birthday, it's because up next, we're giving you Boston College's GiftPocket Have you ever got a gift card but forgotten it or lost it when you wanted to use it?
Have you ever gotten a gift card to a store you know, that you would never shop at?
I don't know about you.
But this promise happened to me way too many times, and I had to solve it.
And the solution is GiftPocket , a fintech app.
Or you can put all your gift cards on your phone Pay with them in stores or online.
You get a gift card you don't like.
You can exchange it for one thing you do, and you can also send gift cards to over three plus brands.
However, you realize that there's an even bigger problem we can solve, and that is for the brands.
There's this big misconception that brands love gift cards.
However, they can't claim revenue on a gift card until it's actually spent.
So brands miss out on over $6 billion worth of revenue.
However, when someone spends a gift card, on average, they'll spend $59 more than the value of that gift card.
But brands aren't legally allowed to know who their gift card holders are until now.
With GiftPocket, we are leveraging our consumer facing digital wallet to build a marketplace to solve this problem for brands.
With gift pocket, brands can incentivize their customers to spend and buy more gift cards because of how lucrative this type of shopper is when they come into store and when they shop online.
But what makes GiftPocket different?
Besides the fact that none of our competitors are solving this problem for brands, they aren't focusing on the real customer that has this problem.
And that's the people that receive the most amount of gift cards and who receives the most amount of gift cards?
That's teenagers and college students.
And what do college students love?
Free stuff.
And so we've been partnering with brands like Chipotle and Express to give out free $5 gift cards on college campuses.
And the best part about it is this lowered our customer acquisition costs by $7 and we've seen a month over month growth of 20%.
And as you can see here on the screen, our total addressable market is $65 billion.
And the reason why it's that big is because we want to be the leading distributor of all digital gift cards for every single brand, no matter how big or how small, because gift card holders are such a lucrative type of customer that every branch should have access to All right, Sri, you get to unwrap one last question for GiftPocket.
Neat idea, Brooke.
What do you anticipate will be the impact of Apple's app tracking transparency to your app?
I definitely think that will affect how we do ads, especially through Facebook and all those different platforms.
However, we believe in on campus growth strategies, and we've seen a lot of growth from that to passing out free $5 gift cards on college campuses.
And so that really will only impact our advertising strategy.
But through our new strategies of grassroots modeling, that will really impact us with that.
Thank you so much.
It would be a cardinal sin if we didn't next showcase the team from the University of Louisville, represented by TARS.
Hello.
My name is Leon Marcillac and 20 years old.
I'm at the University of Louisville in Kentucky, and I'm here to introduce you to TARS.
Growing up I watch my father try to manage all his business, family, medical and legal, important documents using different binders boxes and files to organize all of these documents.
At the time, I was quite impressed by my father's organizational skills, but not impacted by it all because I was young today.
As a young adult, I really understand the consequences and the difficulty to manage and to organize all this important information.
I became more aware of this issue.
Like as an exchange student, I realized the multitude of information and document official that we have to bring here and to have close to us all the time.
In an increasingly digital world, I was surprised to see how much our most important documents and information is managed in such physical and out-dated way.
This is how I came with the idea of TARS.
A connected bracelet that allows you to carry all your most valuable information and to make payments on your wrist.
TARS and the technology that is used is the NFC technology to store and transfer information without relying on battery We are now in an increasingly open world with more and more people wanting to travel to work or to live in a foreign country.
This year, there are more than 1 million exchange student in the United States in 20, 21.
There have been a 96% increase in the digital nomad community there over more than 57 and millions of expatriates and more than two in 240 for millions of immigrants and worldwide.
For all of these travelers passed this year to facilitate the management transportation and security of all personal official or professional information through the use of connected bracelet with the help of my father's knowledge, I was able to patent this idea two years ago and today I'm here to make it happen.
Thank you for support TARS.
All right.
Judges, the designer of this remarkable wrist device is now in your hands.
So one question I have is what other technologies are necessary for for this device to be adopted at a higher rate or a faster rate?
Like, obviously, one of the most important is the NFC technology that we are going to use.
Obviously, also, one of the most important things for us is the security to have all the information that we need, but not how.
And every body that needs the information will have it, but not people who are not allowed to to use it.
So security NFC and encryption also.
Thank you.
Now, let's hand things over to the team from Duke University to present Holoriff.
Hi, my name is Andres and I'm the founder of Holoriff.
Today we're going to be talking about how technology is used within the operating room due to the sterile nature of the operating room.
Surgeons cannot interact directly with computers to access necessary information during an operation in order to circumvent this issue.
Surgeons have attempted to use sterile sticks, clickers and other methods.
Ultimately, these are insufficient.
Instead, many operating rooms have rotating nurses station at computers and other devices.
So they can interact with technology for surgeons.
As you can imagine, this is extremely impractical.
An entire person is removed from working on other important tasks.
Errors in communication lead to large delays, and surgeons are not given the flexibility needed to perform at their best.
Through gesture recognition of solves this problem and so much more Holoriff works by taking in a video feed from any camera and converting it to mouse and keyboard input on any computer.
Through this novel, software surgeons can now directly manipulate technology within the operating room while they are scrubbed and sterile.
They can view MRI images.
They can manipulate controls on devices and can highlight information for the rest of their team to view.
This is a small demo of tolerance functionality on my computer.
Here we have Holoriff's GUI which allows you to put a series of parameters and customize your mouse.
Once we load it up, it recognizes the first hand that enters the camera's field of vision as the mouse.
As you can see, we can move the mouse.
We can scroll and we can click.
Hospitals are a multi-trillion dollar industry, so it's no surprise that their biggest source of revenue.
Operating rooms cost them half a trillion a year to maintain in the US alone.
When it comes to costs, the most obvious benefit from Holoriff is that nurses no longer need to be stationed at equipment and can do other tasks in the operating room they were actually trained for.
Instead, thus speeding up operations.
Additionally, surgeons can now directly interact with technology, making operations even faster by increasing the speed of operations.
We hope to reduce costs of running an operating room by at least 1%.
Our goal is to empower surgeons and nurses to have the control they need of the technology in their environments.
Ravila, what question clicked in your mind?
So beyond the cost savings of the nursing resources.
What other benefits does this product offer?
Thank you for the question.
So one of the main primary benefits outside of nursing resources is a reduction in time of the operation.
In many cases, sometimes surgeons actually have to on scrub and manipulate the MRI images or other device inputs for the nurses because of miscommunications.
And that would cost 30 minutes.
So the time savings is a huge cost reduction.
Thank you both.
Next, we're serving up our home team with Florida State's Barbot.
Hi, my name is Ben Sherman.
I'm the founder and CEO of Barbot.
We like to think of ourselves as the future bartender Barbot is a convenient way for people to make high quality, customizable mixed drinks.
But here is a minimum viable product that we spent the past two years developing with our solution.
You can use any drink you want.
It features is use mobile app reconstructed drinks.
Let us in our colleague customize your own.
While it's extremely important, you can bring it wherever you want you because it also features a rechargeable battery.
Whether that's your next tailgate cocktail party or any other event you can imagine.
Barbot is the solution for you.
Later on this year, we plan to release Barbot through a crowdfunding campaign which will segway into our retail and e-commerce debut in 2023 and the future during 2024 and 2025.
We'll be creating a Barbot specifically aimed at the hospital industry.
Just the first week we have over 36 reservations and counting, probably about preorders.
We have over two and a half million views on our official TikTok channel and we have raised $10,000 in non-dilutive funding to date Barbot's experienced team includes Patrick and Charlie.
Patrick and Charlie were previous recipients of an NSF grant where Patrick managed the finances and Charlie managed the technological research.
This makes Barbot have a very versatile team.
Our skillsets allow Barbot's business plan and product to be as strong as possible and have the best chance of succeeding in the market.
A serviceable obtainable market is 300,000 customers located inside the US.
A future price target of $400 with profit margins of 31.25% leaves us the ability to generate 37 and a half million dollars in future revenue.
Hey, I'm Dr. Mark McNees, but I wasn't always a doctor.
I've actually had 20 years in the beverage industry and that's why I'm so excited about Barbot.
They have created a really cool appliance that makes everyone a bartending expert.
We are happy to represent FSU and so they see competition.
I look forward to the future.
Bartending for Barbot.
Okay.
Judges, in addition to the questions you've already gotten to ask for Barbot, Marques, looks like you could use one more shot so my question is, what was the thought process behind starting with retail versus hospitality?
So with retail our product can be pretty much in anyone's kitchen or really wherever you want to bring it, whether to your next tailgate since the battery operated or to the beach or really to any event that you can imagine.
So we plan to grow our user base, and once we have a very solid user base, then we will reach out into the commercial market to prove to those venues that, hey, we do have the traction, we do have the product, that our product is the future bartending All right.
And with that, we say cheers to the team from FSU.
Give me a little hometown love as the ACC InVenture Prize helps launch this year's crop of competitors.
We thought it would be fun to see how some of their predecessors have done.
It's something we call Where are they now?
While you don't have to win at all to find success after the ACC InVenture Prize winning both first place and the People's Choice Award, in 2019 provided the validation the team from UVA needed.
Since then, they have pivoted their focus to men's weight loss, changing their name to Alfie.
They were accepted into Y Combinator, his most recent batch, and have since begun generating revenue out of their New York City offices last year.
Second place team Reachable Solutions has also been on a roll continuing their sales momentum from last year's PBS broadcast.
All this before graduating from the University of Pittsburgh this spring and the 2021 People's Choice winner Eats2Seats from UNC Chapel Hill has grown their stadium staffing service across the ACC and beyond, hiring almost 5000 contractors since last year's show.
The ACC InVenture Prize validated our idea of profits for purpose, where we could pair a socially driven concept with a viable, sustainable and scalable business model.
Now we work with thousands of contractors serving venues across six different states in the Southeast.
All right.
If Victor Hugo were to write a novel about our next team, he might call it the lunch pack of Notre Dame.
You're welcome.
Here is Blueberry.
Hi ACC, I'm Allen Gordon to the fouder of Blueberry, and a freshman at the University of Notre Dame.
My team's mission is to enhance the quality of life for the 150 million Americans living with dietary conditions.
Did you know these conditions cost U.S. Congress over $400 billion annually?
But more importantly, it's on a personal level.
These conditions damage the quality of life for people diagnosed with them.
Symptoms include weight loss, weight gain, stress, anxiety, just to name a few.
And these conditions truly damage the physical and emotional health people diagnosed with them.
Current companies in the Space Force these customers to choose between the physical and emotional side of their condition.
And we have Blueberry believe this is wrong.
What we want to create is one platform that becomes a one stop shop for everything these people need to manage their condition.
So on that note, Blueberry is a web platform that connects our users firstly with tailored meals designed specifically for their condition.
And secondly, a community of support of people with the same condition.
Blueberry.
We partnered with a number of specialty milk brands to provide a range of tasty, healthy meals designed specifically for these conditions.
So from my own experience, we've been in sort of I know the physical health, so only half the bottle and this is what Blueberry will also be home.
It's a condition dedicated communities designed specifically to help people manage the emotional side of the battle on these platforms.
We hope that our users will share personal tips, support stories and words to help manage that mental side of these challenges.
I've been teamed with three web developers with Silicon Valley experience currently working on our prototype, and we're also working with two medical professionals to shore up the health side of this market.
Between this team, we have the skills to make Blueberry a household name.
Okay, judges, I think you have one last juicy question for team Blueberry/ Sri.
Yes.
Your platform has been hacked.
There are 2 million names that have been released with specific medical conditions.
What do you do next?
I'm sorry, could you repeat the question again?
Somebody hacked your platform Right.
There is a list floating around with lots of names of people with specific medical conditions.
What are you going to do in this situation?
So that's actually something we're looking at right now.
We're working with a specialist in the legal side of the business to shore up firstly, our database and our security.
One thing we're looking at is putting terms and conditions in place to protect ourselves in that scenario.
All right.
Thank you very much.
Our next team being brings big ideas for little learners.
Welcome.
The team from Wake Forest, ByteSize Learning.
Hi, everyone.
My name is Andrew Rust.
I am co-founder and CEO of ByteSize Learning, an online education company that is rethinking how we teach computer topics to children.
We offer live summer courses and everything from Photoshop and video editing to game design and programing I can still remember sitting in my first computer science class at age 17 thinking, Why couldn't I have learned this earlier?
It turns out only a third of North Carolina high schools have a single computer science course, and across the US only 51 offer computer science as a subject.
It's no secret that technology skills like coding are super important for the next generation.
But these days, kids are more interested in playing video games or watching YouTube videos than teaching themselves how to code Barbot Learners in our classes get personalized instruction.
They're building their own creative projects throughout our weeklong courses, while we teach a variety of software programs and computer skills.
All our classes have one thing in common they are a blast.
So far, our kids have loved making everything from movie posters to anime inspired video games to engineering miracles in Minecraft.
All they need is a computer WiFi connection and their endless creativity.
Beginning with our live summer courses are low overhead and high customer return rate.
Allow for our classes to be profitable even if they aren't full Over the last 16 months, we've held dozens of bite sized earning classes and obtained partnerships with five local Winston-Salem organization.
In the future, we will grow through several different channels, including additional partnerships, varying course modalities, and expanding our course topics.
Education and technology are both booming industries and parents especially, are always looking for ways to give their child a fun summer experience, as well as getting the upper hand when it comes to career readiness.
So ByteSize Learning classes are a perfect option for millions of families across the U.S.. To find out more about our course topics and our efforts for equitable access.
Visit our website at ByteSizeLearning.org.
Thank you.
Judges, one last chance to educate yourselves on ByteSize Learning.
Ravila?
So do you have any thoughts about expanding beyond just summer programs?
Of course, that's a that's a great question.
Thank you for bringing that up.
I think a big part on that will be obtaining partnerships with schools and working on our courses to supplement their current offerings, both in computer science as well as our creative multimedia classes.
So kind of adding onto the existing topics they have will be a great part of getting out of the summer and into the academic curriculum.
So thank you, Bite-Sized Learning.
And our final presenter of the evening has their finger on the pulse of a new medical technology Here is NC State's Abilihand.
Eric Buckner is a 40 year old father living in West Virginia.
However, Eric's life is far from simple.
Like many of us, you can open doors and screw a Gatorade bottle, even open up a bag of chips.
Eric Buckner cannot complete any of these everyday tasks, and for many years I have struggled with painful arthritis.
I've tried many products.
Nothing seems to help I'm looking forward to any product that could help provide more grip strength.
So I perform everyday tasks that we all take for granted.
Now, Eric's like millions of other Americans suffering from a return arthritis and those with this debilitating disease suffer from it can grip strength and pain in their hands.
Most likely, someone, you know suffers from arthritis.
So we can go straight to half of all men, and a quarter of all women develop osteoarthritis in their hands by the age of 85.
Alike.
Eric, this story is the very real story of our team member, Brandon Uncle.
And when Brandon saw his uncle suffering on vacation this past summer, he knew there had to be a solution.
Now at the team of Abilihand are a group of NC State students with unique engineering backgrounds, and we've come together to improve the lives of those suffering from arthritis.
Our products an easy to use exoskeleton glove, and it has two main functions.
First, compression textiles that reduce pain and inflammation joints.
And second, a powered exoskeleton will be layered on top, applying the desired amount of force to greatly improve grip strength.
A unique system is designed to give Eric and those suffering from this disease their lives back.
Now, according to the CDC, arthritis is already caused to injured $4 billion in medical costs and earning losses in one year.
Now Abilihand offers a more efficient and cost effective solution with no downtime.
Using feedback from medical professionals and those suffering from this disease, we've completed our proof of concept prototype.
We're only months away from a full scale prototype which provides force to all five fingers.
Our next step or FDA approval filing for patents as we work with manufacturers and finally scaling up for mass production with the funds and the unique experience that the ACC InVenture Prize competition provides us with, we'll be able to effectively purchase molds and begin the patenting process.
So join us at Abilihand and help those affected areas find strength and relief to take back control of their lives.
Okay, judges, your last question of the night goes to Abilihand .
Marques, take it away.
Sure.
So how would the exoskeleton kind of calibrate to the individualized needs of each customer or patient?
I guess I should call them.
Awesome question.
Thank you so much.
So we're hoping as we iterate the process, the prototype process, to develop a ring structure that adjusts to each patient's hand.
And that way you can find the perfect placement of the strange that will be used.
So as they grip whatever forces use, their proportional force is applied to that.
This necessary proportional force is applied to that.
All right.
Let's give them a hand.
And that completes all 15 presentations.
So as our judges go off to make their final decisions, let the deliberations begin.
And if you haven't already done so, cast your vote for the People's Choice Award.
Text your team's code 24159657445.
Now, as the big moment draws nigh, let's hear from our host school, Florida State University Good evening.
I Rick McCullough, president of Florida State University.
Innovation and Entrepreneurship are critical areas of focus for today's universities.
The challenges we face at every level, from local to global require the next generation of leaders to be creative problem solvers.
Universities are responding by promoting innovation and instilling an entrepreneurial mindset in our students across the disciplines.
Here at FSU, our Innovation Hub and our top ranked Jim Moran College of Entrepreneurship are inspiring students to work together to create novel solutions for the most complex problems of our day across the ACC universities.
We see similar efforts to prepare and mobilize students to confront the challenges of our times.
This competition reflects those endeavors while serving as inspiration for all of us.
I wish you all the best of luck in tonight's competition and in the adventures that await you in the future.
Thank you once more Florida State for hosting this wonderful competition.
I am surrounded by so much genius.
It is now time to announce who you our audience has selected as your favorite, velcro, a wonderful innovation.
The People's Choice Award goes to Florida State University, Barbot!
Congratulations, guys.
All right, I'll drink to that.
Now, before we reveal the results, I spoke with the judges after they first questioned the student teams so that we could share some insight on their decisions.
I'm curious, who do you see as your primary competitor?
What does the pattern cover?
Who is your ideal customer?
How hard is it to make this decision?
The hardest part to me was really playing God.
You want to see them all succeed.
You know, there's some really really great talent and some life saving ideas.
Just so, so many bright young entrepreneurs, so many really good life changing ideas.
Is the fact that some of them are actually life changing and maybe even life saving?
Is that something that pushes them to the top for you?
I think the evaluation one really gives us as judges an opportunity to to kind of level the playing field.
They also put on my business person's head and said, if I were an investor, why would I put my next increment of dollars?
Summarize in a few words what you think you bring to the judging process.
I look at the company to see where's it going to go.
Where was the endpoint for this company?
Optimism and possibility.
That's kind of my lens, bringing that investor lens.
I really try to bring that dimension here.
What surprised you all the most?
Just just to sophistication, you know, a college student at this point and I wish I could be a kid again okay.
And like magic, our judges have transported from our screen back to the stage here.
They come with their selections May I have the envelope, Come up and join me.
Envelopes, period.
All right.
This is first.
Okay.
You have the second.
Okay.
Whoa.
This all right?
The 2022 ACC InVenture Prize.
Second place winner is a very full envelope.
Who will receive $10,000 is from.
Okay.
There are two in here which has never happened before.
So there is a tie for second place.
Very exciting.
That means you will get.
We'll order an extra trophy and you'll share the prize money from Clemson team CatheSure.
Come on, up here.
And Duke team Holoriff.
Congratulations.
Go on here.
All right.
You all can stay here.
I think you all need to lay hands on this equally.
And congratulations, all of you.
All right, now it's time to announce our first place team.
Who will?
Is this.
Is this the first place done?
I don't.
Okay.
Thank you.
Who will receive a check for $15,000 and, you know, maybe join me for a celebratory dip in Westcott Fountain, if I'm lucky.
All right.
The winner of the 2022 ACC InVenture Prize is from Georgia Tech.
carSEAL!
Congratulations.
Come on up here, guys.
All right.
This is yours.
And please tell me whom you would like to thank our mentors at the Mayo Clinic at Georgia Tech Department, our family and friends, family, friends, everyone watching from across the country.
And thank you to the GT InVenture team, Chris and Russia here who have been with us this whole weekend.
We have a lot of people that made this possible.
So thank you to everybody.
Thank you so much.
Congratulations.
And that concludes the sixth annual ACC InVenture Prize.
We have a lot of winners.
Thank you so much for watching and being a part of this celebration of the best in collegiate innovation.
Congratulations to all students on this stage who made across the ACC who made it to tonight's show and to the teams of educators behind them.
You are truly world changers now.
Thank you also to all the wonderful people at Florida State for hosting this year's competition and all of the dedicated people behind the scenes who make this show possible.
We will be back here once again from Florida State University.
Until then, please remember every accomplishment begins within a ACC.
Good night.
Funding for this program was made possible in part by the Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Consortium and the 15 ACC member schools
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