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CS Nest Pitch Competition

By Grant Watkins

May 16, 2025

Grant Watkins and Finalists of CS Nest Competition

CS Nest is a venture creation program designed to help entrepreneurially-minded students, postdocs, recent alumni create high growth startups. CS NEST is a partnership between UW Computer Sciences, WARF, and gener8tor. This program is held every fall and spring along with the CS NEST Pitch Competition open to all UW-Madison students in the spring semester. CS NEST is run by nationally ranked startup accelerator, gener8tor.

What a great way to wrap up the year! We had 92 people attend the showcase and a classroom full of attendees. We also had 88 people vote in the Crowd Favorite vote. 

Students from UW-Madison spent the last semester developing and fine tuning their business ideas and demonstrates the hard work the students put into this year’s program. We have everything from drones that deliver life-saving medical care, deeptech AI, cofounder matching, campus transportation, laser tag and much more just in this cohort.

The winners are:

Janil Makwana of BoxMate
BoxMate, founded by Janil Makwana, won 1st place and the Crowd Favorite vote

Reese Highbloom of MedWings - CS Nest Competition
MedWings, founded by Reese Highbloom, won 2nd place

James Julich and Abdullah Khan of Alira
Alira, founded by Abdullah Khan and James Julich, won 3rd place

Dev Ahluwalia of Mad Matcher competing in CS Nest Contest
Mad Matcher, founded by Dev Ahluwalia won 4th place

Ayo Kolawole of AR Keys at CS Next Competition
AR Keys, founded by Will Cobb and Ayo Kolawole, won 5th place

A huge shout out to the winners of this year’s CS Nest Pitch Competition. You all were amazing! I was honored to be a small part of your startup journey. Congratulations!


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