IDEA Center Pitch
The IDEA Center is determined to bring Notre Dame’s best ideas to market. Last week, 17 student teams signed up to pitch for a portion of the $10,000 that the IDEA Center will allocate this month for the most viable business ideas. Students have 5 minutes to pitch, followed by 3 minutes of questions to sell the judges on their idea. Each team can ask for up to $2,500 to help the next steps of their venture. Each team had the opportunity to meet with an entrepreneurship coach that perfected the team’s slide deck and offered advice to help maximize the team’s chances of receiving funding. Eleven ESTEEM students contributed to a total of 5 teams that pitched in this competition.
ESTEEM Student Isabella Martinez was among those pitching and she felt good post-pitch, claiming that "we have talked about this idea so much that it was muscle memory being up there. However, it was a very different experience having to prove this idea was worth the IDEA Center's investment, definitely a learning experience."
At the end of the night, ESTEEM students walked away with 6 awards and a total of $5,450 in funding for 4 different ventures. The competing ventures included:
- Enlighten Mobility: a mobility device for patients with unilateral immobility that facilitates a healthy walking pattern decreasing physiological breakdowns and recovery times;
- Evolution: a hard shell laptop case with multifunctional capabilities and minimalist modern design;
- Gigil: a subcutaneous injection stabilizer providing patients an easier and more accurate administration of medications into the proper layer of tissue
- Navahealth: a facilitator between low socioeconomic status patients and primary care physicians while simultaneously mitigating ER costs;
- Kloud: a therapeutic water purifier that aligns the handle with the center of gravity of the pitcher to decrease stress caused by pouring.