Daniel Kuether got the idea for Electd when he was Democratic Party chair in Sarasota County, Florida.
“Running for office is really hard,” he said. “We often had excellent candidates that just didn’t have adequate tools,” like schoolteachers who would be assets on local school boards.
Kuether, who is in the dual degree MA/MBA program with the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School and the Maryland Institute College of Art, thinks Electd can help. The platform that he developed uses artificial intelligence to connect political candidates with voters and help them manage daunting campaign logistics. If more people ran for office, he says, voters would have better choices.
The judges at this year’s Student Venture Showcase apparently agreed, awarding Electd its $25,000 grand prize in the annual pitch competition on April 28.
The showcase
Six competing teams were chosen from more than 40 applicants, and the judges agreed that all were exceptional. The student founders, with just five minutes each to make their case, quickly summed up the problem they wanted to solve, the way their product would work, their business plans, and both the short- and long-term financial prospects.
Their pitches were followed by eight minutes to answer questions from the judges: Elias Mufarech with Collide Capital, Emily McLanahan with Techstars AI Health, Fay (Fairuz) Zein of Zelaris Group, Jack Hanson of Pax Momentum, Jeff Spitz of 1891 Angels and Parker McKee of Pillar VC.
Winners receive undiluted funds to use as they wish, and all competitors have the opportunity to network and to fine-tune their pitches.
As Carey Dean Alex Triantis noted, artificial intelligence creates new opportunities for innovation and disruption, while at the same time lowering costs to start and run a business.
“That speed and leanness is something I don’t think we’ve ever seen before,” he said.
AI in entrepreneurship
Sure enough, most of the startups highlighted in the Student Venture Showcase underscored the increasing role of AI in entrepreneurship, with ideas for using the technology to make anesthesia doses more accurate (SmartTIVA), reduce the risk of dance injuries (PointeSense), protect against driver fatigue (Neuro Safety Systems), and improve cold storage transportation to keep medications from spoiling (Insu Health Design).
“We believe temperature should not be a barrier for people to get the lifesaving support they need,” said Insu’s co-founder and chief marketing officer, Doris Candelaria, a Carey MBA candidate. The patented technology increases efficiency because it senses temperature and only activates when needed, she explained.
Another competitor, Veina, promised to revolutionize blood draws with a pressure-regulating mechanism in its syringes that cuts the risk of red blood cell destruction, or hemolysis.
”I get so much from hearing student entrepreneurs present their ideas. I feed off their creativity and energy."
Sponsorship, presentations, and outcomes
The primary sponsor since the event launched in 2018 — and donor of the $25,000 grand prize — is Jon Kling, a Carey alum and founder of Municipal Acquisitions.
“Why do I do this? It’s easy to say that I’m giving back to Hopkins,” he said. “That’s a lot of it. But I get so much from hearing student entrepreneurs present their ideas. I feed off their creativity and energy.”
Also at the judging table were three Johns Hopkins students representing HopStone Capital, the student organization that invests in Johns Hopkins startups: Nico Macaluso, Larue Linder, and James Yoon. They chose Neuro Safety Systems, which uses a headset to monitor brain signals for early signs of fatigue, for their $3,000 prize.
Neuro Safety Systems, which also took home a $5,000 check from the Johns Hopkins startup incubator, the Pava Marie LaPere Center for Entrepreneurship, won second place and was the only one in the competition founded by undergraduates: three juniors in Whiting School of Engineering and one in Krieger School of Arts & Sciences.
As co-founders Avaneesh Babu and Will Blake explained, the idea began last spring, when they were studying for finals. “We noticed a lot of our friends were having difficulty staying focused,” said Blake. “Our original idea was to make an app to help people study. We liked the idea of using an EEG [an electroencephalogram, which is a noninvasive way to measure brain activity] to help you focus.”
In search of a more promising market, they went to the Port of Baltimore and asked truck drivers how they managed fatigue. Their goal is to start by marketing to long-distance drivers, and eventually expand to other markets, such as defense or aviation.
The people’s choice winner, selected by audience votes, was SmartTIVA, which took home $3,000 to continue building a business around the AI-powered anesthesia-dosing system developed by Carey MBA candidate Juan Fernandez.
Like other founders, Fernandez said he had worked with the Pava Center to develop his business plan and pitch. Even so, he found the experience of presenting his ideas to a panel of judges stressful.
“Every single piece of information that you put up there has to mean something,” he said. “Finding the evidence and making it appealing is a challenge. This is putting your entire company and your entire life into five minutes.”
Kaitlyn Kumar, a PointeSense founder and a robotics master’s degree student at the Whiting School of Engineering, put herself out there by stepping in front of the judges in an ivory-colored tutu with matching pointe shoes. She stood en pointe to explain the injury risks associated with the classic ballet move, which puts all of a dancer’s weight on the tips of her toes, and explained that her own experience with a dance-related injury inspired her to create a system of sensors that can detect increased risk from poor technique or ill-fitting or worn shoes.
“We realized that this technology doesn’t exist, and everyone can see the value,” she said. “I have a team of dancers and engineers working to make this product a reality.”
Big ideas
After the awards were announced, people lingered in the top-floor event space, with its sweeping Baltimore views, to chat, grab another drink, and congratulate the winners.
“This is one of my favorite events,” said Wendy Crowley, associate director for student innovations at the Carey Business School. “It brings a lot of people together to get some inspiration and to support our students who are working so hard on their startups.”
The high stakes added to the energy in the room.
“Every single student venture that presented tonight was, in my opinion, fundable,” said Kling, a member of Carey Business School’s Dean’s Advisory Council and the Johns Hopkins Real Estate and Infrastructure Advisory Board.
“Whether or not you’re leaving with a check, I just want to say keep going, keep going. There are a lot of great ideas in this room and persistence will reward you.”
