Startup Frenzy takes students from idea to pitch
Thursday, October 13, 2022
Media Contact: Bailey Stacy | Communications Coordinator, Marketing & Communications | 405-744-2700 | bailey.stacy@okstate.edu
The Oklahoma State University Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship hosted its second annual Startup Frenzy at the Business Building, Sept. 30-Oct. 2.
Startup Frenzy is an immersive experience for all OSU students, regardless of college or discipline. It provides insight into the venture creation process by guiding students through pitch to startup while being mentored by professionals.
On night one, 14 students pitched their ideas to their peers who then voted on the top six. Diverse teams made up of freshmen all the way to doctorate students and 19 different majors were then formed around those six ideas. Student teams then worked to further develop their idea, minimal viable product, conduct market validation and polish their pitch while getting feedback and advise from mentors.
“Startup Frenzy is one of the best places to start engaging with the Riata Center and pursuing ideas,” said Chad Mills, director of the Riata Center. “It allows for idea validation quickly, significant progress forward and a great way to network and meet like-minded people from diverse backgrounds and degrees. After the weekend is over, we do our best to continue engaging all the participants and ideas with our other offerings. Our mission is to help them be as successful as possible.”
On Sunday, teams presented their final pitches and winners were selected by Spears Business faculty members Kim Booker and Alexis Smith Washington, as well as Jai Rajendran from the OSU App Center.
The 2022 Startup Frenzy winners were:
First place: DiagnoSports, a business that provides personalized soccer training to improve soccer skills and general fitness. It utilizes a sensory soccer ball powered by machine learning, Diagnoball, and an app, Diagno Soccer, to create augmented reality sensory data to improve athletes’ skills on the field. The DiagnoSports team consisted of Saad Mohiuddin, Ph.D. physics student; Ellie Tang, economics senior; Bekzat Kozy-Korpesh, management sophomore; Elisa Schulz da Costa Mazzo, quantitative finance master's and Neo Kalungu-Banda, psychology junior.
Second place: Castoff’s Creative, an environmental company that works to reduce the impact of food waste by creating products such as charcoal, compost and smoker pellets from plant-based discard while promoting sustainability. Alison Conway, entrepreneurship and international business sophomore; Lokesh Peta, computer science master’s student; Jazmin Lopez, management freshman; Rafiu Ali, entrepreneurship master’s student; Sunny Li, agribusiness senior; and Zakeya Johnson, hospitality and tourism management senior, were the second-place team members.
Third place: Omni, a company that created Virtual Fit, an app that creates a 3D scan of users’ body to virtually try on clothing while shopping online. It allows online shoppers to see how clothes will fit their body proportions without having the physical product. Omni team members included Noah Lodrigueza, computer science senior; Michael Kane, mechanical engineering junior; Tony Dong, mechanical engineering master’s student; Brighton Snow, agribusiness freshman; and Tessy Xie, agribusiness junior.
To learn more about the Riata Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Spears School of Business visit https://business.okstate.edu/riata/index.html.