On April 13th and 14th, the Discovery Building was bustling as Transcend UW held their 8th annual Transcend Innovation Competition powered by Discovery to Product! After many months of hard work from the Transcend team and competitors alike, 36 UW-Madison based student teams arrived ready to pitch their ideas for a chance at their share of the $50,000 prize pool.
The 2023 Transcend UW Innovation Competition consisted of two full days of pitches and chances for competitors to meet the public. On the first day of competition, teams explained their ideas to curious public onlookers in the poster session as they patiently waited their turn to pitch their idea to a panel of unique judges. After pitching on Day 1, the judges divided teams into one of three different tracks: the Top 5, Advanced track, and General track with each track comprised of its own distinct prizes. After having the opportunity to pitch to a new set of judges on Day 2, teams waited patiently as judges deliberated to assign prizes to teams.
During deliberation, competitors, sponsors, and other public attendees participated in a new addition to the Transcend Innovation Competition: the Networking Session. This time was ripe with conversation and connection about everyone’s past couple days and passion for innovation & entrepreneurship. Thanks to Dylan Hart who organized the logistics, the Networking Session was a big success, and we highly recommend anyone interested to attend in future years!
A list of the prizes and the winners can be found at the end of this article. Anyone who walked through the Discovery Building during the competition could feel the excitement and adrenaline and spirit of innovation that emanated from all the competitors and the Transcend Competition Team.
During the awards ceremony at the end of Day 2, Transcend’s President Addison Latterell and Vice President Abby Krause provided words of wisdom to future innovators and their thanks to their team. Before the awards began, Mary Carbine, a strategic project administrator at Discovery to Product, also gave talked of her excitement of the ideas and thanked all of those involved in innovation on campus and the Transcend Innovation Competition.
The top three teams were those the judges deemed ready to take their venture to the next level. Taking first place was team Crib, which is an app focused on matching subleases with subleases. In second place was team Tixplorer, which is a website to compare ticket prices for sports and music across multiple websites to find the best deal. In third place was team EducatAItors, which aims to create a LLM (large language model) specifically to help students study from their textbooks. We will be releasing a full list of winners and their descriptions on our website (www.transcenduw.com) in the coming week.
All in all, the 2023 Transcend UW Innovation Competition was a smashing success, and the Transcend team hopes to take the momentum gained from this exciting spring semester to continue to grow and support budding entrepreneurs and innovators at UW-Madison. Be on the lookout for more information on future Transcend events and the 2024 Competition!
Prizes, Awards, and Winners
General Track
| Award + Amount | Team Name | Team Members |
|---|---|---|
| Alumni Award ($500) | Rice Time | Jaden Radcliff |
| Best Visual ($750) | GÜnGelir | Asude Aydagül |
| Best Pitch ($750) | Pockets Of Wisdom | Lena Skowronek |
| On the Horizon Award ($1,500) | ThinkPONICS | Ben Yang, Corbin Neutgens |
Advanced Track
| Award + Amount | Team Name | Team Members |
|---|---|---|
| Alumni Award ($750) | NFTxs | Yoel Nasi Kazado |
| Best Prototype/Demo ($1,000) | AdaptiveTools | Maxwell Rammer |
| Best Pitch ($1,000) | PHD Insiders | Jake Khoussine |
| Future Prospect Award ($2,500) | Stuniverse | Nikolai Grin, Takuzen Lu |
Top 5
| Award + Amount | Team Name | Team Members |
|---|---|---|
| 5th Place (Contrary Startup Package) | Jaiye | Damola Owolabi |
| 4th Place ($1,000 + Contrary Startup Package) | Poop Loop | Charlie Olesker |
| 3rd Place ($5,000 + Badger Consulting Hours) | EducAItors | Subramanya Mudigere, Archit Thakur, Shivam Nanda, Arjun S. Iyer |
| 2nd Place ($7,000 + Badger Consulting Hours) | Tixplorer | Cameron Roth, Matthew Samuels, Caleb Troll |
| 1st Place ($10,000 + 12 mo. StartingBlock Membership + Badger Consulting Hours) | Crib | Huan Yoei Lee, Vinesh Janarthanan |
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