On Thursday August 24th, I had the privilege to represent SAP at the Wildfire Demo Day held at The Garage on the campus of Northwestern University. Eleven different startup teams demonstrated unique and disruptive business or process innovations.
The Garage is Northwestern's hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation. It brings together a cross-disciplinary community of students, faculty, staff and alumni who all share a passion for building new ideas. The 11,000-square foot space, located in the University’s North Campus Parking Garage, is currently home to approximately 60 student-founded startups per academic quarter. Twice a year, The Garage runs Wildfire, a pre-accelerator program, to prepare student teams for the next stage of their start-ups—be it an accelerator program, raising capital from angel investors or bootstrapping their way to success. Over 1,000 students, faculty and staff visit The Garage each month for classes, office hours, events and workshops.
The Garage’s Summer Pre-Accelerator Program, Wildfire, presented in partnership with the Farley Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation hosted its end-of-program Demo Day last night. The eleven Wildfire teams showcased and pitched their startups to an audience of Northwestern students, faculty, mentors and partners for a prize pool of $10,000, awarded Shark Tank style by a panel of judges. The competing teams are described below.
BOSSY
BOSSY connects socially conscious travelers with local female business owners, facilitating ethical traveling and purchasing while empowering women worldwide.
Community Currency
Community Currency is a 501(c)(3)-incorporated non-profit that repurposes leftover foreign currency from international airport travelers, changing the lives of underprivileged children by funding local charities.
Eden
Eden is a social music streaming, discovery and messaging platform that uses analytics to identify and track influencers and quantify their commercial value to bands.
HotPlate
HotPlate is an app designed to help you decide what to order at restaurants. Users can rate individual menu items, so that it is quick and easy to see the best dishes. HotPlate also allows users to see friends’ ratings, search by specific dish item, and receive tailored recommendations
Local Technologies
Local connects local students interested in earning money with local community members interested in reducing the recurring costs associated with homeownership while synonymously engaging the youth to complement their lives.
Mogo
Mogo is a video challenging social network looking to create sustainability in users doing “viral video challenges” by creating a creative, interactive, competitive, and socially aware platform.
Bundles of Health
Bundles of Health is the only lifestyle management platform that enables healthy living through the support of friends and family for new moms in an era in which it takes a village to raise a family, yet the village is at a loss for what to do.
ORIHD
ORIHD is the world’s first designer for a true functional and intelligent mask, which makes clean air endless.
PedalCell
PedalCell aims to address the alternative energy crisis through convenient, powerful and wicked cool measures, starting with the ubiquitous bicycle.
Unruled
Unruled offers a sustainable notebook for creative thinkers. Unruled empowers thinkers to break free from conventional structures and unearth their minds’ creative potentials.
Pryde
Pryde aims to connect VR players and their experiences to social media with easy video creation and sharing integration.
- SAP Managed Tags: