These 21 UD startups are Hen Hatch 2021’s semifinalists

Hen Hatch, the annual University of Delaware Horn Entrepreneurship startup pitch competition, has become a bit of a tradition in Delaware’s entrepreneur community.

Since 2014, it’s launched quite a few growing local companies, including Carvertise, NERDiT Now, SimUCare and last year’s winner, Alchemize Fightwear.

In the past, the competition was broken into two tracks — one for students, and one for alumni and staff. That changed last year, so the competition is now exclusively for student-led startup teams. They’re divided into a pre-revenue track, or startups that are not yet in a revenue-generating stage, and a post-revenue track, or startups that have either having generated revenue or have received customer consideration or equity investments.

By the finals on Thursday, Dec. 2, which will be held virtually on Zoom again this year, there will be six teams competing for $50,000 in cash and in-kind resources. To get there, 21 semifinalists must give seven-minute presentations to the judges, followed by a Q&A of up to five minutes.

This part of the competition is not done in front of an audience, virtual or otherwise. Still, at Technical.ly, we’re always interested in all of the ideas that move along the Hen Hatch road to the finals.

“These Hen Hatch semifinal teams are representative of UD’s spirit and tradition of innovation,” said Vince DiFelice, senior instructor of practice and faculty director of venture support for Horn Entrepreneurship, in a statement.

Below is the full list of semifinalists, with descriptions via of Horn.

Pre-revenue track:

• Leaders of the Free World, Thomas Lavar — LFW provides international experiences and transformational leadership development to young Black men.
• Soceaze, Derek Mihalecko — Soceaze is a platform to connect local businesses with local college students to address the problem of certain owners not having the time or the best knowledge to run it themselves.
• ShareWallet, Jason Bangser — ShareWallet puts you and your friends’ product and service referral links all in one social platform, making earning mutual rewards ridiculously easy.
• Crypto Crate, Alexander Pugliese — Crypto Crate offers nonfungible token autograph packs by celebrities via a website platform that is simple and much easier to use, and teaches people the ins and outs of NFT technology.
• ReTeen, Bridget Bergan and Nathaniel George — ReTeen is a personalized activity finder for aging adults who are looking to find a new hobby to keep themselves mentally and physically active.
• Supremely Sweet, Santha Rani and Esha Shah — Supremely Sweet provides sweet and healthy options, starting with a chocolate bar, for their customers made with ingredients that are friendly to their dietary needs by eliminating all traditional allergens like nuts, corn, gluten, egg, and lactose.
• Wardrobe Icon, Gerald Berman — Wardrobe Icon is a platform built to aid individuals in the outfit selection process to enhance their confidence and comfort in their own styles.
• Aspire Interactive, Lily Checkoff — Aspire Interactive will offer virtual wellness and self-improvement coaching.
• Notus, Michael Guigliano — Notus is a digital information platform built around the use of dynamic bulletin boards, known as cards.
• Navigating Access, Amanda Zicherman — Navigating Access is an interactive crowd-sourced accessibility map.
• Dear Volunteer, Isabella Duarte — Dear Volunteer is an app for charities and volunteers.
• Metamorphic Housing Solutions, Carlos Benito — Metamorphic Housing Solutions intends to create communities of young people by helping them find housing near one another to help foster the creation of social connections and essential support systems to end the loneliness epidemic among young Americans.

Post-revenue track:

• Sustainable Fashion Education, Miriam Keegan — Sustainable Fashion Education is an online sustainable fashion and sewing education service for professional educators and conscious consumers of fashion. We aim to provide our customers with the solutions they need in order to combat climate change and the fast fashion industry through education and sewing.
• Stemmer, Samuel Goetz — Stemmer is a web app that automates the organization process of music audio engineers.
• UP Cycle Design, Sierra RyanWallick — UP Cycle Design is a zero-waste, sustainable fashion brand that upcycles materials like fabric, plastic bags, and thread into new products, while supporting community causes and teaching career readiness.
• Rams Head; Karl Green, Mary Kegelman, Eric Bilodeau — We believe in sustainability and environmental responsibility to better the world we live in by supporting local communities, farms, and businesses through which we will produce an alcohol that young adults can identify their own personal beliefs with.
• Common Grounds, Lynn Roberts — Common Grounds is an event-based cultural catering service, which aids corporations in expanding their diversity, equity, and inclusion goals; additionally, a technology platform is in development to establish connections to uplift the community and support the continuation of DEI as a lifestyle.
• Better Delights, Tony Denney — Better Delights is a plant-based candy in sustainable packaging that better aligns with plant-based lifestyles.
• Pick-Up Sports, Michael Meola — Pick-Up Sports is a youth sports program that introduces young athletes to a wide variety of sports to encourage them to be multi-sport athletes rather than one-sport specialists because of things like overuse injuries and mental burnout caused by specialization.
• Special Space, Domenic Massimo — Special Space is an online social platform made specifically for individuals with special needs to develop and grow relationships in their communities in a safe and private manner. Special Space maintains the goal of creating sustainable relationships for the special needs community.
• StatusQ, Mo Mahmood — StatusQ is an innovative D2C health data platform as a new longevity-research focused patient recruitment and engagement channel. StatusQ is reinventing the user value from participation in trials.