Ready to Launch: Students Get Feedback, Awards During “Shark Tank”-Like Startup Competition

With the “Shark Tank” theme music playing in the background, the Aurela team walks onto stage with cups of juice in their hand, the product they claim to be marketing.

After each judge is handed a cup of juice, Aurela members offer a quick cheer before everyone takes a drink.

The judges look confused; the drink tastes funny — like someone has slipped candy in them.

Which they have.

“Unfortunately that’s how easy it is to have your drink spiked,” Aurela team member Addison Bounds says as she launches into the real product they are marketing, an aesthetic piece of jewelry with drug detection technology.

Their jewelry product, which people can use to check if their drink has been tampered with, earned the Aurela team a first-place prize of $1,000 to invest into developing their business.

The jewelry component of the product makes the product blend into everyday scenarios, Bounds said, noting that the aesthetic part of the jewelry was important to her because she “would never wear anything if I didn’t think it matched my outfit.”

Members of the winning team accept their prize. (Photo/Katy Clark)

Hosted by the Cal Poly Entrepreneurs Club, Startup Launch Weekend was a three-day event where ten teams of students came together in the Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship HotHouse to come up with a pitch for their business. On Sunday, each team gave a 10-minute presentation in Spanos Theater to three judges, who then provided feedback to the students.

Two of the judges are entrepreneurship professors at Cal Poly and the third judge is the chief product officer of Code.org.

“The epidemic of date rape drugs being used to tamper with drinks and just drink spiking in general is something that I’ve had second hand experience with and have seen hit way too close to home,” Bounds said. “From that realm, I’m super passionate about protecting women and empowering women.”

The Aurela team was in the HotHouse for five hours on Friday for the introduction of the event and 13 hours on Saturday, conducting customer development interviews and working on the business model canvas. On the day of the competition, they met at 8 a.m.

During the presentation, the Aurela team said that they would market this to sororities and on the Facebook college pages to start, drawing on anecdotes of parents being nervous about their kids going out in college.

Bounds said the feedback offered by mentors was priceless. There were eight mentors, who have all had experience in startups and entrepreneurship, including Cal Poly alumni, students and a professor.

“CIE has been great, and I think that this has been a phenomenal opportunity,” Bounds said. “Just them giving us an outlet and the structure of this three-day competition has helped me take my business to a whole other level that I would not have been able to do without them, and it certainly would not have happened in three days.”

Twist and Toss Pasta Company, a customizable fast casual pasta business, won the second place prize of $750 and Simple, a premium vitamin business, finished in third place with a prize of $500.

Cameryn Pina, Twist and Toss Pasta Company team member and associate board member of the Cal Poly Entrepreneurship Club, had an idea coming into the event and thought that it was going to be a great way to meet people.

“I think the business community at Cal Poly is so large, because there are so many business majors here that it’s really hard to consolidate it in smaller group, so this competition is a really great way to do that,” Pina said.

During the presentation, Pina and her co-presenter, Ethan Furey, said that they want to start their business as a food truck and that they have started to look into possible trucks for sale.

“In full transparency, initially we began this idea with a physical storefront,” Pina said during the judge’s feedback portion of the presentation. “Then, after utilizing our mentors and hearing that feedback, it’s just a lot more realistic to have this startup begin as a food truck, so we can really start to generate revenue and get profits and kind of give back to our community.”

During Simple’s presentation, the team presented a premium vitamin targeted toward college students as a less expensive counterpart to some of their competitors. To emphasize this point, they put vitamins from different brands on the judges table and swept them off the table in the middle of their presentation.

“We’re redefining multivitamins—clean, potent, and exactly what they were always meant to be,” Simple team member Darian Mauriello said.

At the end of the competition, audience members voted for their favorite company. Drift, an online marketplace app for college students, won the vote and received $100 dollars.

Cole Cleminshaw reflected on the three days spent working on the pitch and the presentation.

“I think it was a lot of hard work,” said Cleminshaw, a member of the Simple team. “It was definitely late nights and early mornings and I think less sleep than usual but super fun, nonetheless.”

The Center for Innovation & Entreprenuership has helped many student startups become succesful businesses, creating jobs and contributing to communities. Your support helps the CIE provide students the resources they need to succeed.

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