New and Returning Startups Present at Startup Launch Event
In 2019, Startup Launch received more than 350 applications from teams of students who wanted Georgia Tech’s help in getting their entrepreneurial ventures off the ground. Only 44 founders took to the stage at Demo Day on Thursday, August 22, to present their startups to friends, mentors, classmates and potential investors.
Startup Launch serves as the culmination of CREATE-X, a Georgia Tech initiative to provide the knowledge, skills, abilities and experiences to be successful entrepreneurs. It’s is an intensive summer program that provides students the funding, coaching, and legal services to launch their startups and take their ideas to market.
“Our alumni startups [as an aggregate] have generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue, have raised tens of millions of dollars in investment, and most importantly, have created dozens of jobs here in Atlanta. Our students, when given the right resources, can not only create their own jobs, but also provide value for the society they are a part of. We could not be more proud.”
Raghupathy Sivakumar, director of CREATE-X
Each year, Demo Day serves as an event for students to get practice pitching their startups and telling people about the work they’ve been doing. This year, Sivakumar also encouraged a few Startup Launch alumni to come back and share their own stories about life after CREATE-X. The Startup Launch alumni presentations served to show the audience and the newer founders that CREATE-X was just the beginning and there is a lot of hard work – and potentially success – to come.
Newly founded startups took the stage in seven different categories: Agriculture and Hospitality, B2B, Consumer Products, Education, Finance, Healthcare, and Music and Fashion.
Here are some highlights from teams with founders in the College of Engineering
Nix
Nix is a team of developers, engineers and designers that works to stop nicotine addiction through the use of eCigarettes that are programmed to automatically taper the dose of nicotine the user is consuming. Last year, NIX participated in the 2019 Georgia Tech InVenture Prize competition and won the people’s choice award.
Nix was founded by Thomas Olson (Computer Science), Mohammed Aamir (Mechanical Engineering), Robert Patterson (Mechanical Engineering), Cory Stine (Mechanical Engineering), and Clara Sparkman (Chemistry).
Next Century Farms
Next Century Farms aims to eliminate mundane and repetitive tasks associated with managing poultry houses on farms such as sorting eggs, checking mortality and feeding and watering. This team previously used machine vision and thermal imaging to locate poultry that have died, and this summer worked on deploying a system of sensors that monitors eggs on conveyor belts to check for mistakes and prevent egg breakage.
Next Century Farms was founded by Shivam Sharma (Computer Science), Samuel Hill (Mechanical Engineering), Adarsh Sasi (Mechanical Engineering), Melvin Juwono (Mechanical Engineering), Taylor Hetrick (Mechanical Engineering), Austin Segars (Mechanical Engineering), and Rahul Patel (Computer Science).
Medsur
Medsur is a group of two female undergraduate engineers who want to alleviate period leak anxiety through tampon innovation. They created a leak-safe disk that sits at the bottom of tampons to prevent leakage. The team has two patents pending.
Medsur was founded by Sammie Hasen (Biomedical Engineering) and Ashley Broderick (Chemical and Biomedical Engineering).
Precision Neuro
Precision Neuro intends to use deep brain stimulation to help patients with Parkinson’s disease, essential tremors, and other movement disorders to be able to go about their lives with ease and comfort. The team, composed of engineers from the School of Biomedical Engineering, uses optimization to find the right pattern of deep brain stimulation for each patient quickly and safely.
Precision Neuro was founded by Mark Connolly (Biomedical Engineering), Sang-Eon Park (Chemical and Biomedical Engineering), and Robert Gross (adjunct instructor in the School of Public Health at Emory)