Jason Li – Apr 19, 2024
Madison, WI–Innovation is alive and well here in Madison.
This past Friday, April 12th, I had the opportunity and pleasure to cover the 2024 Transcend Innovation Competition.
This annual competition is hosted by Transcend UW, a student organization at the University of Wisconsin-Madison that is focused on “providing invaluable resources and opportunities to students on campus who are interested in and in the process of creating their own ventures.” Transcend is part of Madison’s broader entrepreneurship community, serving to connect the student body with industry professionals.
This Innovation Competition is Transcend UW’s marquee event in doing just that. The structure of this competition follows that of a traditional pitch competition, where student teams present and defend their startups before a panel of judges. The competition ends with an awards ceremony and networking session, where the best teams are rewarded with cash incentives and public recognition. For this year, Transcend has a prize pool of over $40k in prizes, and a panel of 10 judges coming from companies and organizations in the greater Madison area.
When asked about the impact and importance of this competition to the UW-Madison entrepreneurship community, Ben Lukszys, the Vice President of Transcend, stated, “Without this competition, some of these ideas may not exist.”
“This competition and the $10k grand prize gives student entrepreneurs the motivation and an excuse to work towards something big. There is a chance that many of these ideas and companies may never have started without Transcend.”
See below for a breakdown of the top five teams, in order of award received.
- Sprout — 1st Place ($10k)
- MarketMate — 2nd Place ($7k)
- Armada Trading Technologies — 3rd Place ($5k)
- Will It Recycle? — Top 5 Runner-Up ($500 + $5k in AWS Credits)
- Teksi — Top 5 Runner-Up ($500 + $5k in AWS Credits)
- Sprout — 1st Place ($10k)
Sprout seeks to transform how children interact with investing by turning spare change into meaningful investments. This startup offers a physical piggy bank paired with a mobile investing platform, aimed at financially conscious parents who want to teach their children about investing from a young age.
Founded and led by Jacob Dennis, a senior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Sprout team is currently composed of eight student employees and two professors as advisors.
Dennis points out the psychological benefits of investing at an earlier age, as he wants Sprout to “teach kids of applicable investments.”
“My goal of Sprout is to help people learn more about financial literacy through active investing.”
As of three months ago, Sprout boasted over 100 accounts made. The startup is currently in beta and will launch in May 2024.
- MarketMate — 2nd Place ($7k)
MarketMate wants to revolutionize the way consumers connect with markets, vendors, and products. This startup is a mobile platform that serves to showcase and navigate local farmer markets. Through the app, users can search for products, filter search results, and have access to real-time updates.
MarketMate is structured on a freemium subscription model, where users can freely access the platform with advertisements, or pay a recurring fee to remove ads and unlock perks such as direct messaging vendors. On top of this, MarketMate has a daily vendor fee for all participating vendors on its platform.
This startup has already attracted investors, as they have secured over $20k in investment capital. MarketMate also has a philanthropic partnership with the Ronald McDonald House to donate leftover food and produce from participating local farmers markets.
Chloe Gruszynski and Graham Moody, the co-founders of MarketMate, tell me their prize money will help fund their app development, allowing the two to focus more time and energy on building their brand nationwide and giving back to their community locally.
- Armada Trading Technologies — 3rd Place ($5k)
Armada Trading Technologies (Armada) aims to provide software solutions for the research, development, and deployment of automated trading strategies. Armada’s primary product is Boatwright, an open python library that optimizes strategy performance and deploys real-time trading strategies.
The startup is designed to cater towards institutional investors, retail investors, and e-brokers and data providers.
Armada is the idea of Jonathan Van Blarcum, a PhD candidate at UW-Madison for Plasma Physics. Blarcum is looking for a co-founder to help manage the startup, which he hopes to license to clients in the future.
- Will It Recycle? — Top 5 Runner-Up ($500 + $5k in AWS Credits)
Will It Recycle? is an app that uses computer detection to scan items through a person’s phone and provides recycling instructions based on the item and current location. This app is designed for environmentally conscious users and customers, such as students, shoppers, and businesses.
In line with this, Will It Recycle? would be free for individual customers and organizations, and have a subscription model for professional recycling sites like Material Recovery facilities (MRFs).
This startup is founded by Adam Martin and Charles Granger, both PhD students at UW-Madison who previously studied at Brigham Young University.
- Teksi — Top 5 Runner-Up ($500 + $5k in AWS Credits)
Teksi serves as an educational, web-based platform that offers resources for those trying to enter the hardware-engineering industry. This startup includes resources such as an interview question bank, hands-on projects, and an interactive community. Teksi boasts a feature called “Project CAB,” a physical hardware development board with “industry-level online support packages and software with input and output peripherals.”
Teksi caters towards current and recently graduate students, as well as university career services and industry employers. The startup follows a subscription model of $25 per month, and $100 for the “Project CAB” hardware board.
Paul Boadu Adu is the founder and CEO of Teksi, and is pursuing a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering and Physics at UW-Madison.
A lot goes into making this Innovation Competition happen.
In the fall semester, Transcend hosts three events focused on cultivating entrepreneurship among the student body. This year, Transcend brought in speakers from the UW Makerspace and Fetch Rewards to talk about early-stage hardware and software prototyping, respectively.
Transcend also partnered with graduate student Sanket Deshpande and the Technology and Entrepreneurship Office (TEO) to put on multiple Innovator Meetups, where the study body can socialize with industry professionals.
In the spring, Transcend hosts pre-requirement workshops for the Innovation Competition. Two events are mandatory; IP Talk and Project Review. IP (Intellectual Property) Talk had expert Leah Haman of the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) going over the fundamentals of intellectual property. At Project Review, competing teams got 30-minutes of 1:1 time with an experienced mentor to review the current stage of their project. A third workshop is optional, where event sponsor TEO leads a workshop about the business model canvas.
All logistics are overseen by an eight-person executive board and club advisor, Stephanie Salazar Kann. Logistics include managing event marketing/outreach, securing a panel of judges, and obtaining the event prize pool.
Moving forward, the Transcend team is primarily focused on continuing to grow their Innovation Competition by expanding their prize pool and cultivating the entrepreneurship student community.
“We are right where we want to be,” says Luksys. “This event will always be our magnum opus.”