Entrepreneur Challenges Award $130,000 in Prizes to Utah Student Innovators
Student innovators were awarded $130,000 in cash and prizes through the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge and the High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge.
Rubi Life, a student startup developing a wearable fetal activity tracker, won first place and the $40,000 grand prize at the 2017 Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, a statewide business model competition managed by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute — a division of the David Eccles School of Business — and sponsored by Zions Bank.
Rubi Life’s fetal activity tracker uses nanotechnology attached to an elastic maternity band to passively track kick count, heartrate and fetal position. That data is sent to the mom’s smartphone and can alert her if the baby is at risk. Rubi Life founder Eric Stopper plans to use the $40,000 prize to launch a phone app at the end of this year following the current beta-testing phase.
Additional prizes were granted for best video, design, presentation, technology and more. The top eight teams also received in-kind awards from Deloitte and Jones Waldo.
Learn more about the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge by visiting lassonde.utah.edu/uec.
Utah High School Entrepreneur Challenge
Utah’s top high school entrepreneurs won $30,000 in cash and prizes at the 2017 High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge Final Awards and Showcase event at the University of Utah’s Lassonde Studios. The program is managed by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, a division of the David Eccles School of Business, and sponsored by Zions Bank.
Three teams won Grand Prize awards of $5,000 each:
The winner of the People’s Choice Award of $1,000 was Park City High School’s Health For All, which has a line of clothing and accessories that uses a type of subwoofer to be used for healing. Among the other prizes were $1,000 scholarships for 10 young creative minds to live at Lassonde Studios, an entrepreneurial living-learning community at the University of Utah.
The competition received nearly 150 business idea submissions and the top 24 teams advanced to the final round, where they had the opportunity to pitch their ideas to a panel of judges. “Today was a milestone day to have the High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge and the Utah Entrepreneur Challenge together,” said Mike Winder, vice president of community development at Zions Bank. “The energy was explosive and amazing.”
Learn more about High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge at lassonde.utah.edu/hsuec.