UW-Madison’s emphasis on building a founder-first culture was on full display at the 9th annual DePaul University Pitch Madness Competition. The Weinert Center, along with a multitude of student orgs, such as Transcend and Women in Entrepreneurship, as well as the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub, have increased support of what promises to be a strong generation of student founders.
MottoNote, led by Siddharth Singh and Slava Iudenko, uses AI to solve the problem of organizations losing knowledge when employees move on to new opportunities. The undergraduate team was accepted to TitletownTech, but traveled down to Chicago for the event.
ESA (Empire Salon Advisors), led by undergraduate Marilyn O’Day, helps small hair salons make money by finding freelance stylists to fill empty chairs.
Judges awarded ESA with $1,000 and the opportunity to pitch in front of the judges.
Both teams benefited from hours of pitching to attendees at DePaul before the final pitches. For student companies, the ability to pitch in this conversational format is a coveted complement to the more familiar pitches before a panel of judges.
This is UW-Madison’s fourth year participating in the competition. Nine total universities competed in the competition, including DePaul, University of Chicago, University of Iowa, Michigan State, to name a few.
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