Founders pitch startups in Dragon Den-style event for funding
The Global Venture Forum displayed Northeastern University’s “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Northeastern Senior Vice President for University Advancement Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray.
LONDON – The idea for the plastic-free health-tech startup Hoopsy was inspired by founder Lara Solomon’s own IVF journey.
Solomon realized the impact of plastic derived from urine-based pregnancy tests in the U.K. and started a plastic-free paper pregnancy test.
On Thursday, she received the top award — chosen from among nine founders — at the Global Venture Forum held during the seventh annual Northeastern Global Leadership Summit.
Four other startup founders also won awards. Khushi Shah of Drizzl, Alison Reilly of Closai and Federico Ramirez followed Solomon in second, third and fourth place, respectively. Mohamed Kante, founder of iNERDE Inc. received the inaugural Not-for-Profit Global Venture Forum Award.
The event included a total of £120,000 in funding for the winners.
The Global Venture Forum displayed Northeastern University’s “entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Northeastern Senior Vice President for University Advancement Diane Nishigaya MacGillivray.
Solomon, who participated in the Future of Healthcare Founder Residency program at The Roux Institute at Northeastern University in Portland, Maine, said she realized plastic waste from pregnancy tests in the U.K. resulted in 225,000 kgs of plastic waste in landfills every year, as 15 million pregnancy tests are annually used in the country.
But plastic wasn’t the only problem Solomon had with such tests. According to a study conducted in the U.S., 36% of women were either not sure they read the test correctly or didn’t trust the results, she said.
“This commonly leads to more tests being used, unnecessarily increasing costs and waste,” she said
A Hoopsy survey found that 75% of women would be interested in using the Hoopsy App to have their results in words, and not only in the lines that pregnancy tests rely on.
“It is exciting,” Solomon told Northeastern Global News (NGN) after the award ceremony. With £100,000 in funding, “We would scale a test that we have developed to manufacturing.”
Kante’s iNERDE Inc. is a social enterprise dedicated to bringing radical change to education in Africa by implementing STEM Summer Camps, specifically in Mali, Senegal and South Africa.
Eighty percent of African children can’t read or perform Maths by the time they reach age 10, and 15 million new teachers would be needed across the continent by 2030 in order to meet the demand, according to the United Nations.
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INERDE’s AI-driven model that uses AI facilitators hopes to rise to the occasion. This model, as Kante explained, allows Malian, Senegalese and South African children to learn as if they were using the language learning app Duolingo when they are home, and to power up their learning when they attend in-person STEM Summer Camps.
Kante called his award a “validation” of his work and, regarding the funding, told NGN. “The very first thing would be to hire facilitators, train them and deploy them to African countries.”
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Khushi Shah was the only student among the founders to compete. Her brainchild is Drizzl, a patent-pending smart irrigation system that she began to develop after a visit to India where she saw women and girls walking miles to get clean water.
In the South Asian country, Shah witnessed the impact of water scarcity, and back in the U.S., she developed the venture, specifically focused on irrigation, as it is the sector where most water is wasted.
Reilly is the founder and CEO of Closai, a digital closet and style assistant service, a venture that followed her 10-year-long professional experience at Amazon.
Federico Ramirez is an insurance broker and partner at Prointel Corredores de Seguros S.A (an insurance comparator) in Costa Rica and presented a new venture, Compara Facil (Compare Easily), which aims to expand what has been done with Prointel to credit and debit cards and beyond.
The Global Venture Forum Award kick-started the GLS on Wednesday, when the founders presented their ventures, in Northeastern’s own version of “Dragon Den,” a British show, similar to America’s reality TV show “Shark Tank,” where founders and inventors pitch their ideas in the hopes of attracting one of the multimillionaire investors who serve as judges on the show.
The judges at Northeastern’s version were Rich A. D’Amore, Northeastern University Board Chair and partner at North Bridge Venture Partners; Marco D’Ippolito, managing partner and CEO for Global Private Market Solutions, Patria Investments; John V. Pulichino, from the Board of Trustees at Northeastern University, with a professional background in consumer products; Julietta Dexter, governor at Northeastern University, London and Brand Potential Consulting CEO; Chatanya “Chet” Kanojia, trustee at Northeastern and co-founder at Starry and Unifycx; and Christopher Viehbacher, Biogen president and CEO and fellow Northeastern trustee.
