Forty Acres Founders Final Pitch Competition Recap
On Friday, May 1, 2020, four undergraduate students pitched their business for a slice of $20,000. This may sound like a familiar story, but read on.
These students spent 12 weeks establishing product-market fit for their startup concepts by interviewing potential customers, establishing a value proposition, examining possible customer segments, and conducting market and competitor research. They also developed an MVP (minimum viable product), researched effective pricing strategies, and learned the importance of building productive customer relationships.
The rigorous investigations were the students’ first steps because they know the number one reason startups fail is not ensuring a market need exists for a product or solution.
The four students were part of the 20-student inaugural cohort of the Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator Program launched in Spring 2020. FAF student founders worked all semester on validating a problem in the market they are passionate about solving. These founders were supported by a group of ten Graduate Assistants and met with mentors who used the benefit of their experiences to help students design and refine their customer discovery strategies.
Throughout the semester, founders attended weekly seminars that hosted guest speakers utilizing the expertise of university faculty and community partners. Guest speakers helped founders better understand how to apply the different aspects of customer discovery to their individual startup concepts and provided an overview of common frameworks helpful for validating a problem or solution.
The program culminated in a final pitch competition featuring four of the strongest vetted businesses.
The competition was run virtually and guest judges were Dave Heitzer, lead Consultant at EDF Trading North America and HKC Advisory Council member, Blanca Lesmes, Co-founder and CEO of BB Imaging and Consulting and former Entrepreneur-in-Residence, Kip Gordon, CFO of FlexManage and HKC Advisory Council member, and Mellie Price, the inaugural Executive Director for Commercialization at the Dell Medical School, the Managing Director of the Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs in the McCombs School of Business, and Co-Founder and Managing Director at Capital Factory.
Tom Smith, majoring in Asian Cultures and Language, kicked off the pitches with his startup Vrify Health an AI-powered affordable mental healthcare service. Next was Public Health major, Vaishnavi Lakshmanan, with BoxEDu an edtech startup focused on increasing accessibility, affordability, and quality of standardized test prep. Sabastian Brau, Finance major, represented The Collector, an autonomous golf ball picker vehicle that simplifies operations and reduces cost for golf courses. Lastly, Anel Cuarenta pitched CajetitaMX, a CPG product aiming to be a healthier alternative to the traditional confectionary spread ‘cajeta’. At the conclusion of the pitches and Q&A, the judges had half an hour to deliberate and divide the cash reward.
The pitch competition winnings were defined as a “meaningful contribution” by Herb Kelleher Center Director, Dr. Luis Martins determined by the clarity of the founders’ next steps. Vrify Health, The Collector, and CajetitaMX each took home $1,000 and BoxEDu received $17,000 to facilitate launch in Summer 2020.
Dr. Martins gave a few words about the FAF program before revealing the awards. He stated that HKC started the program in order to, “put the arms of UT around [the founders] and help [the founders] launch ideas in the best way [they] can.”
Dr. Martins closed out the competition with a few parting thanks for the students who pitched saying, “it’s been wonderful getting to know [the founders] and to really think about how [they] are working through these important problems that [they’re] trying to solve.”
