Student Startup Madness, an exciting nationwide tournament-style competition for college student digital media startups, has recently chosen the finalists for their official event of the South By Southwest Interactive (SXSW).
These finalists, "The Entrepreneurial Eight," are made up of two teams from the four regions of the Northeast, Southeast, Midwest and Southwest. These 8 finalists come from 8 different universities across seven different states.
The competition will be taking place in Austin, Texas on March 11th. The contestants will pitch their ideas to a judging panel of successful investors and entrepreneurs who have the ability to bring these ideas into fruition.
The top three teams will received $5,000 worth of credits for Google Cloud Platform, which allows startups to build, deploy, and run web applications and mobile app back-ends in the cloud, without the worries of infrastructure and scalability.
The Entrepreneurial Eight Finalists include:
Crowdrx
School: The University Of Texas At Austin
Team: Justin Crites, Tony Llongueras, Macario Lara
Mission - Aspire to crowdsource knowledge to save lives by empowering doctors with a workflow suited mobile application.
Health On Time
School: University Of Illinois At Chicago
Team: Soojin Jun, Jennifer Mourafetis
Mission - A medication therapy management app that allows pharmacists to conduct comprehensive sessions by video conferencing with real time info.
Rentlingo
School: Stanford University
Team: Dan Laufer, Byron Singh
Mission – The social way to find roommates and rentals. See how you’re connected to prospective apartments, roommates and your new city.
Shindig
School: Emory University
Team: Haley Friedman, James Rubinowitz, Julian Tigler, Alex Sloan and Eric Ugland
Mission: The Social Network for Social People. Keep track of your social life by instantly sharing plans with friends. Know who is going where, when.
TempoRun LLC
School: Michigan State University
Team: Josh Leider, Benny Ebert-Zavos, Phil Getzen, Adam Proschek
Mission: TempoRun is an app that will allow users to always run at a consistent and enjoyable pace, using music tempo as guide.
StoryBoard
School: St. Louis University
Team: Darren Jackson, Ty Sondag, Alex Johnson
Mission: Your life is a movie; capture it. StoryBoard is your experiences, your characters, your story, one 30-second video at a time.
Traverie
School: University of California at Berkeley
Team: Guarav Agarwal, Jimming Cheng, Tiffany Yang
Mission: Traverie.com helps you explore travel through friends. Think of us as an interactive travel magazine with content from friends.
UpSmart LLC
School: Rensseleaer Polytechnic Institute
Team: Heidi Beatrice Moore, Samuel Webster Hagen, Aaron Tobias, Ryan William Maxfield
Mission: UpSmart aims to take advantage of the JOBS Act, by offering the first web presence for entrepreneurs seamlessly integrated with crowdfunding.
About Student Startup Madness
The Student Startup Madness concept was developed by Sean Branagan, director of the Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, in conjunction with SXSW. Syracuse University is the organizing institution for this year’s national tournament.
Student Startup Madness is supported by generous corporate sponsors Turner Broadcasting’s Media Camp (Premier Sponsor), Google Developers, Foursquare, and The Newhouse School – with help from other media companies and firms that work with early-stage ventures.
The tournament has been promoted and supported by four anchor universities in four regions across the country: Emory University in the Southeast, Saint Louis University in the Midwest, The University of Texas at Austin in the Southwest and Syracuse University in the Northeast.
Student Startup Madness, along with its sponsors and host universities, believes in American entrepreneurship and on-campus startups-and wants to help young student entrepreneurs succeed and become a part of the SXSW experience.
Student Startup Madness debuted at the 2012 SXSW Interactive with a launch event and kick-off pitchfest, where five student startup teams representing eight colleges and universities pitched their ventures and won prizes. For more on Student Startup Madness, visit the website (www.studentstartupmadness.com), see us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter: @StartupMad.
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