These 6 UD-born startups are Hen Hatch’s 2020 finalists

On the evening of Dec. 3, University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship will host its seventh Hen Hatch pitch competition, this year on Zoom with free access via registration. This year, there’s a prize pool of $50,000 plus in-kind resources and services.

Past finalists and winners include Carvertise (then called PenguinAds), TheraV, NERDiT NOW, WilmInvest and 360 VR Technology.

This year, there are six finalists on two tracks: pre-revenue and post-revenue. (See all 2020 semifinalists here.) Founders on both tracks are students; the faculty, staff and alumni competition is slated for neoFest in the spring of 2021.

The finalists, with descriptions via Horn, are:

Pre-Revenue Track

• Blue Tusk Biotechnology; John-Carlos Saponara — Blue Tusk assists in data consultancy for the food processing and handling industry. The venture provides proactive data analytics and is able to find and diagnose productivity bottlenecks before they cause slowdowns or breakage of factory equipment.
• CyberSecLabs; Casey Rock, Dylan Martin and Jason Reynolds — CyberSeclabs’ mission is to provide hands-on training tools for students and cyber security professionals, while preparing them to combat the cyber threats of today and tomorrow.
• Nuvensus; Markos Zerefos, Henry du Pont and Mason Faust — Nuvensus is a real estate investment startup that uses a proprietary data interpretation that can outperform commercial real estate investment benchmarks by utilizing various data providers and applying advanced modeling architectures.

Post-Revenue Track

• Alchemize Fightwear, Maya Nazareth — A women’s Mixed Martial Arts gear and apparel company, Alchemize Fightwear taps into an under-addressed market. A portion of all proceeds are also donated to trauma recovery and women’s self defense initiatives.
• Backyard Gig, Sury Gupta and Shahroze Ali — Backyard Gig is an online platform and two-sided marketplace where students can connect with community members, residents or small businesses that need tasks, or gigs, completed.
• Potluck; Hope Vega and Abu Kamara — Potluck is an app that connects international food markets with college students, with a mission of helping students access food and remedy homesickness by providing them with an online delivery platform for ethnic grocers.

Check out our profile of Backyard Gig’s efforts to bring “a new type of value to college towns.”