Last month, we hosted the annual Entrepreneurship Cup Competition pitch competition. Finalists in the Social Entrepreneurship track pitched their impressive startup idea for a chance to win one of the five $1,000 awards. Read more about the finalists below and keep an eye out for our winner spotlights on social media in the coming weeks!

Social Entrepreneurship Track Winners

College Contact LLC by Sophie Smith 

Description: College Contact LLC is a fully remote, college counseling platform for underserved high school seniors and their families. 

Distro by Gregory Perryman

Description: Distro is a real-time energy marketplace connecting distributed energy storage (DES) systems with grid-scale utilities. 

Petrichor by Curie Chang

Description: Petrichor is the first apparel manufacturing and disposal startup specializing in zero waste and closed-loop processes. 

SafeRoute UVA by team members Reese Poe, Caroline Buehler, Heidi Pan

Description: SafeRouteUVA enables UVA students to map their safest route home utilizing crowdsourced data from their fellow students. 

Tofali Zetu by Andrew Rummel

Description: Tofali Zetu is striving to provide affordable housing to rural Tanzanians to make an economic, sociological, and environmental impact through the distribution of Interlocking Earth Bricks. 

Social Entrepreneurship Track Finalists

Anti Ignis by Vishnu Lakshmanan 

Description: Anti Ignis is an autonomous drone that is able to put out fires in high rise buildings efficiently using an ammonium phosphate ball. 

CM2 by team Joseph Hester and Will Harmon

Description: CM2 seeks to deliver e-bikes and e-scooters in a convenient and affordable manner: a rent-to-own model. 

Consent Check by Jonah Wilentz

Description: Consent Check is an app built to simultaneously prevent coercive sexual assault and better sexual experiences in general.

Inti Solar by Yirui Gui, Santiago Barrio, and Amy Smith

Description: Throughout remote villages of Latin America’s Andes Mountains, 5 million people do not have clean energy sources for hot showers. Inti Solar fights this energy and health atrocity by turning waste into power. 

NicheNotes by EG Ginsberg, Shreya Sriram, and Amelie Liu

Description: NicheNotes is a platform for crowdsourcing notes.

If you have a start-up idea yourself, Darden’s iLab is hosting a Discovery Stage Workshop with Damon DeVito on Tuesday, December 6. Attendants will have an opportunity to share their venture so DeVito can translate tactics into easy action items. This workshop is open to everyone and you can find the registration link here. 

Additionally, if you have questions about the Social Entrepreneurship Minor, make an appointment to meet with our SE Fellows to learn more about the program or the field of social entrepreneurship! You can make an appointment with Liza or with Drew using their Calendly links!