MIT awarded top prize in its annual $100K Entrepreneurship Competition was last week to Diagnostics For All (DFA), a nonprofit proposing new diagnostic tools that promise to dramatically improve healthcare management in developing countries.
Since its launch 19 years ago, the MIT $100K has served as an indicator of which emerging markets are getting funded by venture capitalists. More than 85 companies with an aggregate market capitalization of approximately $10 billion have been born as a result of the competition.
For the first time this year, entrants competed in seven distinct industry tracks – astro/aerospace, biotech, development, energy, mobile, products and services and Web 2.0/IT. The introduction of industry tracks was intended to help foster VC partner-level and industry specific mentorship and to encourage sponsored prizes.
“The competition’s finale marked the culmination of a new era of the MIT $100K in delivering the specific industry level support and knowledge required to compete in today’s market,” Jeffrey Sabados, a competition co-lead organizer, said in a statement.
With its patent-pending technology providing rapid and accurate diagnostic tools for liver, kidney, and metabolic diseases, DFA beat out the six finalists in other industry tracks for the overall competition title, walking away with $100,000 in start-up funds. Its offering, based on technology developed in world-renowned chemist George Whitesides’ laboratory at Harvard University, provides a platform for simple, portable, low-cost paper diagnostic tools that are easy to dispose.
A panel of expert judges awarded the grand prize after watching presentations by each of the finalist teams. Judges this year included venture capitalists Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande, co-founder and chairman of Sycamore Networks, and Robert Metcalfe, inventor of the Ethernet and founder of 3Com, who also served as the evening’s keynote speaker.
Audience Picks $10,000 Prize Winner
Having teams compete in industry tracks was not this competition’s only first. This year also featured the debut of the first-ever $10,000 Audience Prize. Using an audience response system technology developed by a semi-finalist team from the competition’s mobile track, Poll Everywhere, audience members got to cast their own votes — via text message – in response to elevator pitches delivered by each of the seven finalist teams. The audience chose the team Covalent Solar, which wowed them with its offering for a simpler, cheaper solution for harnessing solar power.
This year’s competition drew 232 initial entrants. Along with DFA and Convalent Solar, the majority of the finalists and many earlier entrants report that they plan to launch businesses built around their competition entries.
To learn more about the MIT $100K, click here.
Comments closed
