Watch these 7 Penn startups battle each other for $135,000 in prizes

A group of student-founded startups will face off against each other for a chance at a $135,000 prize pool at the Penn Wharton Startup Challenge.

Happening Friday at noon, the event gathers student-led ventures from across the Penn community and offers them access to a basket of prizes including seed cash, plus credits toward business services like accounting, strategy consulting and legal counsel.

The lineup of companies pitching runs a wide gamut, from the makers of a sleek pair of dancing shoes to the creators of plant-based remedies for painful periods:

• #PeriodPainFree — Personalized plant-based healing formulas for women who experience period pain
• FLOAT/THERE — Curated rental apparel delivered directly to a traveler’s destination
• Fuego Shoes — Dance shoes with a custom-developed sole made to go from the street to the dance floor
• Halo — LED monitors on top of Uber/Lyft vehicles that display location-targeted ads
• Elivade — Career advancement platform to connect people of color with peers, mentors and employers
• InstaHub — Snap-on motion sensor for light switches that detects energy consumption and activities (winner of the President’s Innovation Prize)
• Strella — Biosensing platform that detects fruit ripeness and eliminates food waste (winner of The Pitch Live at Wharton, ASU Innovation Open, President’s Innovation Prize)

“The chance to participate in the Challenge and Showcase presents students with the rare opportunity to share their vision and receive critical yet insightful feedback from established entrepreneurs and innovators,” said Penn Wharton Entrepreneurship Managing Director Claire Leinweber in an email. “We hope that the showcase offers inspiration to those pursuing their own entrepreneurial endeavors.”

Have a look at last year’s showcase:

P.S. Wrap up your entrepreneurial day in Old City as Philly Tech Week 2019 presented by Comcast kicks off. Did we mention there’s a tech-enabled scavenger hunt happening?