The 707 Hub and Brady Corporation will host the Brewed Ideas Challenge on Friday, April 25, from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. in the 707 Hub. The Brewed Ideas Challenge is a Shark Tank-style pitch competition that follows a series of bootcamp workshops where student founders, mentored by leaders from Brady Corporation, take their concept from an idea to a pitchable business proposal.
Register online to attend. Food will be provided.
This year, eight finalists will compete in two tracks: mission-driven and traditional business. First-place winners in each track will receive $8,500 in seed money and second-place winners in each track will receive $3,500 in seed money. There are also two $2,500 awards: the Brady Innovation Award and the Inclusive Impact Award.
This year’s finalists:
Mission Driven Track
Safe U – Julianne Browne
- Value Proposition: Our Platform helps a society who wants to respond to emergencies by reducing response time and increasing survivability.
APT – Cole Engebretson, Ray Guo, Josh Ryan, Ben O’Bryan, Anas Alzamli, Zach Anderson and Gabriel Del Rosario
- Value Proposition: Our hydration testing device helps athletes and patients who want to perform well and be healthy by reducing cost and providing instant feedback.
Inquire – Hannah Frain
- Value Proposition: Our AI-assisted learning platform helps undergraduate students who want to excel academically by generating personalized study tools and offering 24/7 customized academic support.
OmniMerit – Pouya Mirzaei and Rouya Mirzaei
- Value Proposition: Our advising agency helps middle- and lower-income students who want to earn scholarships and attend college by reducing application burnout and providing application assistance.
Traditional Business Track
Breadboxd LLC – Riley Condon
- Value Proposition: My bread-based recipe app helps college students who want to learn more about baking by simplifying recipe searches into a one-stop shop for reviewing, rating and logging recipes with a personalized AI feature.
Fresh Social – Jaden Brozynski, Chris Miklosy and Logan May
- Value Proposition: Our smart kitchen app helps young and busy professionals who want to automate home cooking by avoiding time-consuming and complex planning and increasing the amount of home cooked meals.
Cherries Nature Aquarium – Allen Ortega Moran
- Value Proposition: Our luxury aquarium store helps nature enthusiasts who want to create luxury green spaces by avoiding a lack of green space and having a one-stop shop with luxury quality.
Urbane Aromatics – Drew Goetz
- Value Proposition: Our fragrances help fiscally minded and young, financially limited folks who want to feel confident and put forth a best impression by providing a luxury product for less and feel more confident.
The challenge will be judged by Olivier Bojarski, president of Americas and Asia at Brady Corporation, and Nicole Westenberger, vice president of marketing at Brady Corporation. Also judging will be Marquette and Brewed Ideas alumni Marc Minani, the founder of Ukuli Chocolates and portfolio analyst at Molson Coors.
