Start Up Demo Day: An event showcasing business pitches

Featuring 10 business pitches, Iowa State Pappajohn Center for Entrepreneurship held its Startup Demo Day.

Hannah Kirkendall, a program specialist in the business department, said preparing for this event consisted of an 18-week incubator program.

“So we’ve been working with all 10 companies for the whole semester over 18 weeks when we go through really basic business elements and help them identify markets for their technologies,” Kirkendall said.

Kirkendall mentioned that it’s free to get involved in the program. 

“Everyone who is participating in the program is participating voluntarily,” Kirkendall said. 

Furthermore, she said attendees don’t have to be affiliated with Iowa State.

“The program is open to anyone in the community,” Kirkendall said. “We see it as a fulfillment of our land grant.”

Maddie Peiffer, a junior in agricultural business and Molly Freese, a sophomore in agriculture communication, are both interns for the Pappajohn Center.

“We’re here just to help with the logistics for the day,” Freese said. “So the Pappajohn Center helps to support the startup factory and all those that participate in it.”

Peiffer said this event is for people to pitch their businesses, and people who are interested in investing or helping the companies can get more insight about these companies.

“They’ll pitch the business for about five minutes, and then afterwards, they all get to mingle and talk a little bit more,” Peiffer said. 

The cohort of the program included 16 companies, and 10 of them participated in presenting.

The Pappajohn Center of Entrepreneurship website lists the 16 companies involved as follows:

• EazeClasp (Emily M.S. Worrall and Megan Lenzi): An accessible jewelry company that creates innovative, stylish designs for all, including those with limited dexterity.
• ReMag Solutions (Ihor Hlova): Delivering critical materials solutions by developing innovative technologies for energy and chemical conversion, with a focus on a sustainable future.
• The Athletes Health (Gabe Rummel): A mental performance coaching service aimed at improving athletes’ confidence and composure to help them reach peak performance.
• MedLib, Inc. (Eranda Sooriyarachchi): Empowering physicians and informing patients using AI technology.
• MedTrans LLC (Hala Deng): A medical interpreting software providing real-time speech-to-speech interpretations, making complex medical jargon accessible to patients.
• Lunar Lighting Alternatives (Adam Thiessen): Conducting research and development on elementally doped receptacles to light low atmospheric missions for non-terrestrial missions.
• Immuno Nano Med (Balaji Narasimhan, Michael Wannemuehler, Kevin Legge and Tom Waldschmidt): A start-up focused on developing particle-based vaccines against infectious diseases.
• Pocianet (Wensheng Zhang): A decentralized platform for social networking and personal data management, enabling users to fully own and control their data.
• Ecoessence Solutions (Silas Ongadi, Warda May): A Kenyan company specializing in eco-friendly briquettes made from sorghum bagasse and other local waste materials, aiming to reduce agricultural waste, combat deforestation, and provide sustainable, affordable energy alternatives.
• CeraExel (Anand P.S. Gaur, Jun Cui, Xiaoli Tan): Developing energy-efficient capacitors for advanced green electric vehicles (EVs).

Hala Deng, MedTrans LLC founder, said she came up with her business idea in February and won $5,000 from the pitch-off competition, but this program has changed her viewpoint. 

“It changed my entire viewpoint of starting a business because when I came up with this idea in February, people were like, great idea,” Deng said. “It’s amazing. We need it. I used that $5,000 to create a prototype. I was like, okay, now I’m going to create the MVP, now I’m going to create the product.”

Deng said before this program, she hadn’t done a customer discovery, a business model or a financial model.

“I thought I was just gonna create something and release it,” Deng said. “So this program just really provided me with that structure of knowing what starting a business is all about, from the technicalities of like the actual software programming, to like the financial aspect and the business aspect.”

Additionally, Deng said you have to have the mentality to be coachable and to be able to learn and absorb new information.

“I’m not an entrepreneur, so this is a whole new endeavor for me, so it’s just providing me the groundwork of what it means to be an entrepreneur and start a business,” Deng said.

Deng said this program provided a lot of networking.

“Each week we were presented with a new board of individuals that had a background in either finances, legal, just a whole bunch of different advisor boards, and that just allowed us to be able to learn about the different sections of business,” Deng said.