Thursday, November 11, 2010

Day 4 of the Duke Start-up Challenge Elevator Pitch Competition: Healthcare & Life Sciences Track and Energy & Environment Track

A solid night over in Schiciano Auditorium at the Fitzpatrick Center for Interdisciplinary Engineering, Medicine and Applied Sciences (CIEMAS).  5 teams are advancing (not the usual 4).


Energy & Environment Track

The judges were:
  • Luke Fishback, Founder and CEO of PlotWatt.com
  • Van Morris ‘78, CEO of US Microgrid

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:


  • Audience Choice: CarBone (also was the Judges' runner-up)
  • Judges' Choice: High Tower Energy


CarBone is a patented process that recycles waste animal bone, converting it into carbon electrodes for use in modern electronics. 


(It should be noted that CarBone also won this track last year, but they are eligible to compete since they were not a finalist in the Investor Pitch Competition in the Spring. )


High Tower Energy seeks to "Use retired water towers as high efficiency, low cost energy storage devices to take advantage of huge daily fluctuations in electricity prices."


The Judges' Runner-Up selection also went to CarBone.

Healthcare & Life Sciences Track
The judges were:

  • Jonathan Gindes ‘03, Co-founder and CFO of Affinergy
  • Matt Kane ‘06, Co-founder and CEO of Precision Biosciences

Advancing to the Elevator Pitch Finals with Greylock Partners on November 12th are:


  • Audience Choice: Medical Learning Games
  • Judges' Choice: Camras Vision
  • Bonus Judges' Choice*: ClearBolus

Medical Learning Games is a software company that leverages established sophisticated gaming technology to solve the clinical experience bottleneck in healthcare education.   

Camras Vision writes "We are providing ophthalmologists with a novel device, that can provide an effective first solution to glaucoma and stop the progression of blindness caused by this chronic disease."

ClearBolus is "a bolus for radiotherapy, with the novel property of complete transparency, allowing for more efficient and accurate skin cancer treatment."

* We had an administrative error (organizers fault, not the judges' fault) with the Audience Choice voting.  There was a tie (two teams had 6 votes), Medical Learning Games and Last Call.  The procedure is to let the judges break the tie. But when the information was passed from the MC to the judges, it was that "Team 1 and 5 are tied".  They looked at their sheets (not knowing their order was different) and they said "let's go with ClearBolus" (their Team 5).  (On a side note, it turns out that ClearBolus was already their Judge's Runner Up pick.)

We went forward with the announcements, not knowing there was an error. And we caught the error just after we announced that ClearBolus was the winner.  We paused the event, reconvened the judges and decided to break the original tie (Medical Learning Games and Last Call; they chose Medical Learning Games).  In addition, we didn't think it was right to tell ClearBolus they were now out.  So we added a Bonus Judges' Choice to let them in.  The Judges' Runner-up, it turns out, also went to ClearBolus (but was decided before the error happened).


Pictures of the event are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/hwr2duke/Day3OfTheElevatorPitchCompetitionPartOfTheDukeStartUpChallenge# (Thanks to Olgun Kukrer for taking the photos in both rooms)

Written by Howie Rhee

11 comments:

  1. It is extremely higher for you if you'll extremely respect the author for his or her works. they're providing useful and knowledgeable writing that's most significant. this page http://www.teams2hire.com/essential-documents-youll-need-to-request-from-app-developer-for-hire/ words and he virtually says all of these asked question whereas individuals rather wished to cover.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you for the chance to enter a giveaway! This faculty has its fame a lot of long times for the Master in the education program. You can notice some useful data here http://www.affordabletranslationservices.org/cheap-certified-translation-services/ and you are doing your own reasonably task for your improvement.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Thanks for penning this tremendous article. Glad you found it attention-grabbing and knowledgeable on behalf of me. Here http://www.extendedessayhelp.net/writing-a-good-history-extended-essay/ you'll look very easy with countless new ways they apply for the tutorial paper writing.

    ReplyDelete
  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Social-media has seized the Hearts and Brains of the masses by grabbing no 1 Position in Online World nowadays. You will find this page very knowledgeable. You can find a good place to vitrine their products, services and a web site for free online world is a dream for all of us and Facebook made it true. By close to a billion Facebook users and thousands of online societies to pick from, Facebook has brought many possible clienteles closer to you.

    ReplyDelete
  6. On the blog there is someone talking about Prioritizing Your Digital Channels. In case you want to know more about the topic then you can visit this webpage for further information. You can get along with this website just fine. There are channels like Blogging, email marketing, podcasts, viral marketing, webinars, online communities, and pay per click, forums and many more.

    ReplyDelete
  7. It’s really a nice and useful piece of info. I am glad that you shared this useful info with us. Please keep us informed like this. Thanks for sharing. sem company

    ReplyDelete
  8. I found your blog website on google and check just a few of your early posts. Proceed to keep up the very good operate. I just further up your RSS feed to my MSN Information Reader. Looking for ahead to studying more from you later on!… Luminous Battery price in Chennai

    ReplyDelete
  9. Every weekend i used to pay a quick visit this web site, because i want enjoyment, for the reason that this this
    web page conations really nice funny data too.

    Feel free to visit my blog - 부산달리기
    (jk)

    ReplyDelete
  10. I and my folks were really looking at the extraordinary strategies on your web blog thus abruptly thought of a dreadful inclination I had not communicated regard to the webpage proprietor for them. The vast majority of the folks were certainly as an outcome excited to peruse every one of them and have now totally been cherishing these things. Gratitude for being to be sure obliging and furthermore for picking this type of noteworthy hints a great many people are truly anxious to find. Our own earnest statements of regret for not expressing thanks to you sooner. custom granny flats sydney

    ReplyDelete