Applications are open for the 2022 Crossroads Collegiate Pitch Competition! The competition showcases startup businesses founded by college students across the state of Indiana. The winner takes home a $2,500 investment from Flywheel Fund, the micro-investment fund run by The Mill, and access to its powerful network and mentoring support.
Last year, we saw pitches from fifteen fantastic startups from eleven campuses around the state. Butler University, Hanover College, Indiana University, Indiana Wesleyan, Ivy Tech Bloomington, Ivy Tech Richmond, Ivy Tech South Bend-Elkhart, Purdue University, Taylor University, the University of Notre Dame, and Wabash College all represented! We’d love to see even broader participation from Indiana’s universities and colleges this year.
Crossroads Collegiate is just the first step for founders. You only have to look at 2021 winner Andre Harakas’s success to see how far a startup can go in a year. Andre, then a senior at Indiana Wesleyan University, won the 2021 competition for his company ProBook Sports, which recently rebranded to All In Sports Team Hub. All In streamlines sports team management, providing a complete platform for player development. Coaches can track and foster athlete development while building team culture through an all-in-one app where they can post game videos, set goals for athlete nutrition, share chat and news in a team feed, and more. After winning Crossroads Collegiate, Andre went on to close a $350,000 pre-seed funding round led by Jim Zarvos and Michigan-based Skypoint Ventures. Flywheel Fund participated with an investment of $50,000.
Other participants from 2021 are also thriving. Menstrual Mates, now Sunny Period, went on to receive a $40,000 pre-seed investment from Elevate Ventures at the Nexus Regional Pitch Competition and $20,000 from Elevate’s Community Ideation Fund. They hope to release their product (a menstrual cup that inserts like a tampon) in 2022. Naxos Neighbors is currently planning a pilot of NaxosOD, an app that summons trained responders to administer naloxone in cases of opioid overdoses. Finally, online reseller Zokos is providing an eco-friendly solution to home goods and building supplies returned to big-box retail stores.
And that’s what makes this competition so exciting: the process of discovery, seeing what’s happening all across Indiana and meeting the next generation of innovators. It’s energizing and inspiring to see the future they’re building!
Crossroads Collegiate Pitch Competition is open to any student currently enrolled at any Indiana university or college with a startup based in Indiana. To apply, submit an executive summary, a pitch deck, and a 10-minute pitch video at https://crossroadspitch.com/ by midnight on April 18. A panel of entrepreneurs, investors, and business experts will judge four finalists on May 20.