Startups

Second 1776 Challenge Cup winner is … a banana exporter?

“There’s always money in the banana stand,” became the tag line of the Saturday finale.

Last week, 80 startups flew to Washington, D.C. with hopes of taking home 1776’s second Challenge Cup and its $150,000 investment prize. One came out victorious Saturday night: Twiga Fruits, an exporter of bananas, pineapples and avocados in Kenya and the finalist in the cities and transportation category.
By cutting out the middleman and implementing digitized tracking for produce, Twiga has lowered prices and augmented the incomes of Kenyan farmers. “No more 5 a.m. trips to the wholesale market: people can sleep longer, or they can work longer,” explained CEO Grant Brooke. “Expanding product line is not entirely difficult when you solve how you distribute the product.”
Winners in each of the other three categories — education, energy and health — will receive $100,000 in investment from 1776. Here they are:

  • Education: Cognotion, a mobile platform that aims to be a “community college in your pocket,” explained founder and president Jonathan Dariyanani.
  • Energy: Brooklyn-based Radiator Labs, the maker of The Cozy, “a smart, drop on enclosure that can control the amount of heat from the radiator,” explained lead data scientist Meg Sutton.
  • Health: Reliefwatch, which allows clinics and hospitals to keep track of inventories through a basic cellphone-compatible app. “All they need to do to respond and digitize that data is hit the keys on the number pad,” said founder and CEO Daniel Yu.

Besides the cash prizes, the participating startups spent a week attending tailored round tables and learning sessions, and polishing their pitches during the semifinals. 1776 “made sure every competitor that participated got value,” said the incubator’s cofounder Donna Harris, touting the “social and intellectual capital that we can invest in those companies even if we’re not writing a check.”
Harris, one of the cup’s judges, added that Twiga Fruits emerged the winner because it did not propose an incremental, nor an innovative idea. But rather, it proposed a “completely disruptive one.” It is a “swing-for-the-fences idea.”
Runner-ups were LearnLux, HandsFree Learning (the startup didn’t make it to the finals because founders attended the funeral of Rachel Jacobs, the new ApprenNet CEO who tragically died in the Port Richmond Amtrak crash) in education; BaseTrace in energy and sustainability; Unima in health; and EverCharge in transportation and cities.
Audience members appreciated the free T-shirts, creative one-minute pitches to win over the audience and the international aura of the competition.
Richard Graves, the cofounder of 2014 Challenge Cup contestant Ethical Electric, noticed a distinct improvement in “the quality of the competition.”
“It takes time to be established as an international event,” he said.

Companies: 76 Forward

Before you go...

Please consider supporting Technical.ly to keep our independent journalism strong. Unlike most business-focused media outlets, we don’t have a paywall. Instead, we count on your personal and organizational support.

3 ways to support our work:
  • Contribute to the Journalism Fund. Charitable giving ensures our information remains free and accessible for residents to discover workforce programs and entrepreneurship pathways. This includes philanthropic grants and individual tax-deductible donations from readers like you.
  • Use our Preferred Partners. Our directory of vetted providers offers high-quality recommendations for services our readers need, and each referral supports our journalism.
  • Use our services. If you need entrepreneurs and tech leaders to buy your services, are seeking technologists to hire or want more professionals to know about your ecosystem, Technical.ly has the biggest and most engaged audience in the mid-Atlantic. We help companies tell their stories and answer big questions to meet and serve our community.
The journalism fund Preferred partners Our services
Engagement

Join our growing Slack community

Join 5,000 tech professionals and entrepreneurs in our community Slack today!

Trending

The person charged in the UnitedHealthcare CEO shooting had a ton of tech connections

Northern Virginia defense contractor acquires aerospace startup in $4B deal

From rejection to innovation: How I built a tool to beat AI hiring algorithms at their own game

Where are the country’s most vibrant tech and startup communities?

Technically Media