It’s 7:30 p.m. on a Tuesday evening at The Mill, and most of the lights are off—except one. Inside a glass-walled conference room, Eli Serrano leans over his laptop, a few empty Red Bull cans within reach and a pitch deck glowing on the screen. He’s fine-tuning every last detail ahead of a big day: the Honors Fund $150K Virtual Startup Competition.
Most nights, you can find Eli here—refining code, sketching product ideas, or answering late-night emails from the student founders he mentors.
Tonight, he’s shaping the story that will bring his startup a major investment.
A National Stage for Emerging Founders
The Honors Fund $150K Virtual Startup Competition is a national showcase for the next generation of innovators—student and faculty founders building bold, software-driven ideas. Hosted by Honors Fund, the program invests $150,000 into standout startups and connects finalists with a network of mentors and investors. It’s designed to help young founders turn campus-born ideas into real, scalable ventures.
Out of hundreds of applicants across the country, Eli’s team was selected as one of the finalists—and ultimately, the winners.
The Idea: Making Code Human Again
Eli’s winning startup, V Codinator, is on a mission to make coding feel intuitive, expressive, and fun—a space where learning to program feels less like memorizing syntax and more like creating something alive.
The concept draws on Eli’s rare combination of technical expertise and creativity. As a full-stack developer, founder, and ecosystem builder, he’s spent years helping others bring ideas to life. Through his work with IU Innovates and The Mill, Eli has helped hundreds of Indiana University students transform classroom projects into real startups—launching ventures that span industries from AI to the arts.
A Builder with Many Chapters
V Codinator isn’t Eli’s first ambitious idea. Before this venture, he founded Epoch, a testing and learning platform for the high-frequency trading (HFT) industry—an ultra-technical product designed to make advanced trading simulations faster, smarter, and more accessible.
And even before that, Eli created Airoma, a VC-backed mobile app that encouraged people to get outside and improve their mental health. He also led app development at HotDrop, a Techstars portfolio company that blended music, creativity, and social connection. His work has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance, and The Herald-Times.
He’s also a Claude Build Club Leader with Anthropic, a Founder University Cohort 11 participant, and, of course, The Mill’s own Ecosystem Development Coordinator.
A Win for Bloomington’s Innovation Community
Eli’s $150K win is more than a personal milestone—it’s a reflection of the innovation culture growing in Bloomington. Through his dual role as a builder and a mentor, Eli embodies the kind of creative energy that The Mill exists to amplify.
When asked about the news, Mill CEO John Fernandez notes that "his win sends a clear message: that you don’t have to leave Bloomington to launch something world-class."
