2023 Startup Challenge Semifinalists

We’re proud to announce this year’s Semifinalists for the 2023 Startup Challenge.

Teams consist of students from The Wharton School, The College of Arts and Sciences, The Graduate School of Education, The School of Engineering and Applied Science, The School of Veterinary Medicine, and The School of Social Policy & Practice.

The Startup Challenge and Showcase attracts the best and brightest entrepreneurial minds from across the Penn community as they compete for a chance to win more than $300K in cash and prizes.

NOTE: For a key to all school abbreviations, click here.

Flagler Health

Flagler Health aims to be the leading treatment recommendation tool in the musculoskeletal space.

Albert Katz, WG'23; Will Hu, GEng'19; Leon Anijar

Spring

Spring is a matchmaking service that enables peers to become matchmakers for their friends by connecting with other matchmakers. Matchmakers are connected to other matchmakers by being friends, and the exchange of information is facilitated through a mobile app.

Annie Xu, WG'24; Anne Woepse, SEAS'14

Groov

Groov uses proprietary 3D phone-scanning to sell fully-custom "athleisure orthotic" insoles to the mass market, conveniently and affordably.

Daniel Cataldi, WG'23

Zmiles Same Day Aligners

Zmiles Same Day Aligners is disrupting the invisible aligner industry by delivering treatments to consumers within an hour of their first visit as opposed to the industry standard of 4-6 weeks for treatment delivery.

David Navarro, W'23

SecureFlow

SecureFlow is the first-ever web-based platform that streamlines the workstreams required to exchange cash in mergers and acquisitions. It prevents errors and phishing scams, automatically tracks deal-related data, and brings order to chaos.

Evan Adamo, WG'23; Conor Brown, V'23; Aayush Garg, WG'24

Miren

With Miren, financial institutions can monitor their investments in preparation for regulatory exams.

Gabriela Ariana Campoverde, GEng’22, WG’22

Sonura

Sonura is committed to developing solutions that allow every person to thrive, from infancy to adulthood. Our device protects neonates from harmful noises in the NICU environment while maintaining cognitive development and facilitates the parent-child connection via sending of audio messages.

Gabriella Daltoso, SEAS'23; Gabriela Cano, SEAS'23; Sophie Ishiwari, SEAS'23; Caroline Magro, SEAS'23; Tifara Boyce, SEAS'23

Unison

Unison is the first social influencer network built to bridge the gap between education and the next generation of students. Our self-serve platform supercharges education marketing by allowing organizations to create content alongside emerging campus creators and launch high performing social campaigns directly to their audience.

Gerardo Ballesteros, W'23; Shashwat Kansal; Brandon Neo

2023 Summer Venture Award Winner
* (in honor of S.J. Dilenschneider, W’28)

NEPRI

NEPRI pasta is made using an ancient Mediterranean grain, offering the health-conscious consumer greater nutrition per serving while preserving the taste of pasta. NEPRI pasta has 50% more protein, 40% less calories, 60% less carbs and 2X fiber than standard pasta.

Jessica Ramses, GEng'23

Fitalyst

Fitalyst humanizes campus engagement data to close the achievement gap for First-Gen students and their institutions.

Jonathan Muruako, SAS'17, SP2'24

InvenTABLE

The invenTABLE is a workstation for kids to make whatever they can imagine out of cardboard. It includes a kid-friendly power tool which enables kids from 8-12 to turn cardboard waste into valuable STEAM learning opportunities.

Kausalya Raman, GEng'23; Max Liechty, SEAS'22

Rooted

Rooted is a fast-casual restaurant customers can trust. Our menu is hyper transparent to ensure everyone - including the food allergic and intolerant - can enjoy healthy, delicious, and efficient meals. All menu items consist of 7 ingredients or fewer and each ingredient is displayed on our public-facing menu (including oils/spices).

Lily Rivkin, WG'24

Alopex Golf

Markerless motion capture to collect data and graphically reproduce a user's golf swing. Leverage modern stereovision techniques in combination with high speed cameras to produce accurate 3D renderings for a holistic perspective on the user's golf swing.

Lindsay Smith, GEng'22; Ryan Hosler, SEAS'22

Nolly

Nolly is a food pre-ordering mobile app that allows customers to pre-order and skip the line.
We're currently working with schools to eliminate long snack/lunch lines, and we plan on later expanding to restaurants.

Louis Chung, SAS'24; Wenxuan Chen, SAS'22

Orble

We are creating an automated bubble tea machine that will create a variety of customizable boba beverages to-order at a competitive price and within the average crafting time seen at shops. This machine will enable consumers to have a similar, custom “grab-and-go” experience, without having to frequent boba establishments.

Nastassja Kuznetsova, SEAS'23; Lada Korotaeva, SEAS'23; Sarah Tadlock, SEAS'23; Esther Amao, SEAS'23; Sophie Takahashi, MT'23

Odyssey Notebooks LLC

Odyssey Notebooks creates premium and sustainably-crafted notebooks and journals for fountain pen users, artists, and bullet journal enthusiasts. We use specially sourced / proprietary paper types from Japan to serve an unfulfilled gap in the market.

Rainbow Yeung, WG'24

Coached

Coached is a platform that allows users to submit sports footage and receive virtual technical feedback from professional athletes and coaches of their choice, improving access to top talent and removing barriers to skill development.

Ronald Joseph, WG'24; Kori Carter, WG'24; David Russell, WG'24

Nemu

Nemu helps families manage personal property transfers efficiently, fairly, and transparently, while preserving emotional and financial capital. Through our application, families catalog, price, equitably divide, and sell their personal property.

Sarah Powers, WG'23

Grafi AI

GRAFI AI is the world’s first AI content writing platform made specifically for healthcare and medical writers. GRAFI’s mission is to leverage generative AI to create factually accurate content for the healthcare industry.

Sean Sodha, WG'23

EmployAI

EmployAI is a decision intelligence platform for ecommerce executives that provides actionable strategic insights in boardroom-ready slides and an interactive dashboard.

Tara Balakrishnan, WG'23; Amelia Cohen, WG'23

Equimeter

Equimeter is a PINNS-backed software solution that utilizes the PDE of Beer-Lambert’s Law as a physical constraint for current-day pulse oximeters to effectively mitigate systematically inbuilt racial biases.

Advait Thaploo, W'25, Ujjayi Pamidigantam, C'25, Parthiv Patel, W'25

Route

Everyone gets stuck at mental roundabouts; not everyone can get therapy. Route gives each of its users their own GPS to navigate their mental health using a proprietary conversational model and a data-driven user roadmap.

Thomas Ross, WG'24; Dasha Aven, WG'23; Roger Gould; Gary Kurtzman

FullFlock

FullFlock aims to help prevent avian flu outbreaks amongst poultry: a problem that has led to over 57 million dead birds and incurred an estimated >$3 billion in losses during the current outbreak alone. We will do so through a chicken feed harnessing a potent, plant-based, cost-efficient antiviral protein.

Vasundhara Macherla, W'23, SEAS'23; Ananya Dewan, LSM'23; Yuwei Guo, LSM'23, Haichuan Yang, SAS'23

Jochi

Jochi is a seamlessly integrated personal management platform focused on creating a more fulfilling schooling experience for middle and high school students. Through our mobile/web app, Jochi enables students to better organize their time, manage workload, schedule interactions with teachers and peers, participate in extracurriculars, and develop study habits.

Yash Dhir, SEAS'24

Quiver

Quiver is a snow sports rental and data aggregator software that brings rental supply online and consolidates it on a best-in-class website for users. The goal of Quiver is to 1) drive additional revenue for ski shops with increased bookings 2) increase snow sports access and transparency to consumers from diverse backgrounds by providing better information

Tooba Ali, WG'24; Jake Guarino

PopEye

PopEye is the world's first autonomous anchor-monitoring system for large commercial vessels. At the intersection of mechanical design, electronics, and computer vision, our "camera-in-a-box" both solves the problem of anchor loss, malfunction, and danger, and takes the first step toward fully autonomous, more sustainable anchoring.

Nicholas Anderson, SEAS'23; Orestis Skoutellas, W'23, SEAS'23; Jacob "Rocco" Bendell, SEAS'23; Mario Ferre, SEAS'23; Benjamin Abt, SEAS'23

rareliquid

rareliquid is an "edutainment" company founded in January 2021 first as a YouTube channel focused on career topics and now with over 135,000 subscribers. Through content and educational products, rareliquid’s mission is to help people land their dream jobs and build their ideal careers in business.

Hyun Chon, WG'24

Probook

ProBook automates scheduling and dispatch for HVAC businesses, cutting windshield time by 30% and increasing admin efficiency by up to 5X.

George Eliadis, SEAS'24, W'24; Toby Hirsch, SEAS'24, W'24

Crush

Crush helps you capture the chance that you otherwise would’ve missed. Crush is an on-campus casual dating app that set up blind dates for people who match with their “crush”.

Carrie Wang, WG'24; Amy Lau, WG'24