Draper Pitch Competition Finals

Well, good evening everyone. My name is Scott Garner and I am proud to serve as your host tonight. It is the Draper Pitch Competition finals here at the University of Texas at Dallas. We are so excited to have you with us tonight as we celebrate innovation, entrepreneurship, and the incredible student and alumni talent here at UT Dallas. To kick things off, I'd like to welcome our first speaker tonight, the executive director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Carol Marcus Rettmeyer.

Thank you. So, good evening and welcome. Tonight marks a very major moment for us here at the university. This is our 19th year of what you have known as the Big Idea Competition. And today we are proudly continuing that legacy as the UTD Draper Pitch Competition. Made possible through the extraordinary generosity of Tim Draper and the Draper Foundation. Thank you very much to Tim Draper and the Foundation. Because of their support, we are awarding $350,000 in prizes and scholarships tonight. The largest cash prize event ever in UTD history. This is a powerful investment in ideas, ambition, entrepreneurial potential, and our students and our alumni. This year we received 181 outstanding applications for this competition. Through a rigorous preliminary round, a competitive semi-final, and now today the final, and months of hard work, we've arrived at today's top nine that you are going to see. These founders have refined, tested, and built their ideas that they believe can make a true impact. And for the students and alumni that will be on the stage, and those watching here in the audience, this is just the beginning. Tonight launches an exciting entrepreneurial journey, one that we at UTD are proud to help ignite, and are committed to continue to guide. We invite our students and alumni to stay engaged with us throughout the year in our entrepreneurial programs, and join us again for next year's Draper Pitch Competition. This event would not be possible without an incredible community. Thank you to our university leaders, to our distinguished VIP judges, and many mentors, and our dedicated team members who made this competition possible. And thank you for being part of this journey to each of you who are here today for supporting bold ideas, courageous founders, innovative thinkers that are going to shape tomorrow's companies. Thank you.

Carol, thank you so much. Well, next it is my honor to introduce the president of the University of Texas at Dallas, Dr. Pablos Moglia.

Can we have the lights on the audience, please? I just want to ask questions of the students. Is it possible to do that? There we go. A little bit less lighting so that they're not so exposed. There we go. Thank you. Good evening. Students, good evening. No, come on. You can do better. Good evening. Awesome. I'm guessing that some of you at the back there are here by your own will. You're not being forced to be here. Is that right? Okay. So, I am so thrilled. Friends, we're a family. And this is like the best part of being at UT Dallas is bringing our most audacious minds. I've been talking to many friends from outside. By the way, I've been here about 7 months. I moved from New Jersey. One of the things that I worked on in New Jersey was, and you probably heard of a great inventor called Edison. Yes? Okay. Came from Jersey. Was one of the most prolific inventors out there. You probably heard of Bell Labs. Yes? Okay. The Bell Labs was one of the fountains of innovation in the United States. They are the ones who developed amazing new things like a Unix operating system. And many, many, many discoveries that not only led to Nobel Prizes, but also led to fundamental innovations. Well, guess what? In my job at Rutgers, the governor of New Jersey said, 'There's a big hole in the ground right next to the New Brunswick train station.' For those of you that have no idea what New Brunswick is, imagine New York City and imagine traveling down south along the shoreline. You heard of the Jersey Shore? Yes? Students, why are you so muted today? So, imagine coming down this Jersey Shore all the way down to Washington, D.C. through Philadelphia. Somewhere in between is this town of New Brunswick. And the idea was to create a compelling stop for the trains that came down from New York to stop in New Jersey. Right? Usually New Jersey is a state that you just pass by. There are many terms for it. But let's just say it's passing by. In this big hole that was dug in the ground, the idea was to stand up something amazing. Eight years later, I am proud to tell you, and you can Google this, and look up New Jersey Helix, one of the largest innovation exchanges in America has just taken shape on the East Coast of America. One of the most vibrant metro corridors in America today. Friends, that is both an exemplar and that is also our competition. I am telling you as Texans, Texas, wake up, create the next exemplar for innovations and entrepreneurship here in one of the most booming metroplexes in America. You know what the forecasters are saying? So long as the traffic on Dallas North Tollway and Highway 75 and all that doesn't hold us back, the forecasters are saying we're going to edge out Chicago and become the number three city in America in the next 10 years. So, I am asking you a simple value proposition. As this city grows, we will need to be the university, as a university for STEM, business, humanities, social sciences, and the arts. We need to be the university that brings our best minds to solve the problems of society, of humanity, and of the human condition. And you know what we have that no one else has? Folks, do you know what we have that no one else has? We have those people sitting at the back. You see, look people in the front, turn around and look at the people in the back. Turn around, look at them. These are the minds up there. Those are the minds that are going to fuel the innovation rise in Texas. Because these are some of the best minds that UT Dallas attracts. And we are one of the best. We're ranked number one in North Texas amongst the publics. We're ranked number three in Texas overall. We're number four in the nation for national merit scholars. But I'm proud of the fact that one in four students sitting back there is coming from a first generation to college family. You know what? Some of those students are the brightest students that Texas has not discovered. And that is my job as the sixth president of UT Dallas to bring them into the fold, cultivate those minds, and then unleash them. All I need to do is unleash them so that you, the friends out there in the ecosystem, can then work wonders. So the dream is the following. The dream is to take this kind of a pitch competition and multiply it by 10. In order to multiply it by 10, we need 10 times the number of students coming in from all over America and abroad to UT Dallas. So UT Dallas will be known as a place that attracts the most innovative and disruptive thinking students. And then it's our job at UT Dallas to make sure that we give them the most stimulating spaces to think broadly, possibly to fail forward, to pivot, to get seasoned, and to get better. Because students, guess what? The best entrepreneurs that you know of today have failed repeatedly, picked themselves up, pivoted, gotten seasoned, and tried and tried and tried again, and then they became these amazing entrepreneurs you know today. They were not afraid to try and to fail. And that mindset we have got to imbue into your minds. And for that, I'm going to rely on our friends from Richardson and from North Dallas and from North Texas and from the DFW metroplex, from Austin, from San Antonio, and from all the other places, including Houston, the East Coast, the West Coast, the Midwest, and abroad. So, my dream is to launch a venture foundry at UT Dallas that's going to multiply these efforts. It's going to create an ecosystem where our faculty, our inventors, our researchers are alongside you, the students. Our entrepreneurs in residence from elsewhere, our angels, our venture capitalists, our private equity firms, all the way from the family foundations to Old Parkland to the Capital Factory multiplied by 10 have to find a way to be welcomed at UT Dallas. And when that happens, friends, we will stand up that exemplar. Like the NJ Helix, we will have something here that competes with the West Coast around Stanford, with the East Coast around One Kendall Square, around University City in Philadelphia, around tech in Atlanta, around Rice University in Houston, and around the tech focus around Austin. That's when DFW will be known as a place of innovation, and a public research university is central to creating that beating heart. That is my dream. I am confident that we will succeed because we have an amazing team of deans and faculty, and amazing people that we're recruiting here. I am so thankful for the amazing minds that we have here judging today's contest. And remember, only nine of you are going to be brought out on the stage at the end of the day. But let me tell you the rest of you that will not be here. You got to pick yourself up, and you're going to try. You're going to be thinking smarter and outside the box, and then you will be on to your next big wins. Remember, this is a marathon. This is not a sprint. And you're going to continue to work at this because ultimately, the goal is simple. The goal is to improve the human condition. And that's the way that we're going to restore the trust in higher education because we as a public university is here in service of our communities. I wish you well. I hope you enjoyed the tension in the room, which is palpable, but also celebrate the great talents that are coming with you. And I can't tell you how proud I am to be your president of this amazing university we call UT Dallas. Thank you.

Thank you so much, President Moghe. Fantastic. We now have a short video message from one of the true legends of venture capital and entrepreneurship, the founder of Draper Associates, DFJ, and Draper University, Tim Draper.

All right. Now joining us is Suba Zaeem, head of investments at Draper University Ventures.

Well, hello, hello. Hello everyone at the back. Okay, not bad. Well, it's a pleasure to be amongst all of you today representing the Draper ecosystem. So, who here, show of hands, has anyone heard of Draper before or connected with the Draper ecosystem or the funds in our ecosystem or pitched to apply at any of our pitch competitions? Okay, amazing show of hands. But also something that I was expecting. So, no other way to say this, but the Draper family is the founding family of venture capital in Silicon Valley starting with the formation of the first fund in 1958. Tim Draper's grandfather, William Henry Draper Jr., was that person. Bill Draper, Tim Draper's father, seeded companies like Nvidia. Tim Draper, the third generation, took the Draper name global. And his VC career literally launched by him taking, he borrowed $6 million from the government, and he took a bet on six companies, six startups. And five of them went to IPO. So, that launched his career. He then went on to find funds like DFJ. And he literally became one of the first, one of the early checks in companies like Tesla, pre-Elon, Colossal Biosciences, SpaceX, Hotmail, Skype, Cruise Automation, which otherwise now, you know, you hear about Waymo and you hear about all other self-driving cars, but back then we only knew Cruise Automation. His children, the fourth generation, now have their own funds. You may have heard of them, maybe. Boost VC, Halogen Ventures, Bath Ventures. So, this is a family legacy. I might be biased in saying this, but I don't think it's celebrated enough, but you know, just to continue, he did officially found the Draper ecosystem in 1985. And fast forward to 2012 when there was a sentiment going amongst VCs that entrepreneurs can't be trained. They're born with it. And those are the ones that we want to invest in. But Tim, having the rebellious and fun nature that he has, I mean, to all of you he may be Tim Draper, but to us he's our Dumbledore. So, okay, not a lot of Harry Potter fans, I see. So, Tim being Tim said that's not true and I'm going to prove it. You know, challenging that notion, challenging the status quo, and that's how he pioneered startup education in Silicon Valley and he founded Draper University. He was literally the VC who was sourcing the first class of 2012 by himself with his one partner. And he was like, I'm going to train them, I'm going to mentor them, I'm going to show them the ropes, and I'm also going to be their first check. That took a lot. But that's who he is. That's what this family is. And that's what this ecosystem is all about. So, he did. In fact, in '22 I got to interview, I was having goosebumps when I was interviewing her. I got to interview one of those alumni that after 50 rejections Tim was her first yes and she was a solo founder. And long story short, she went on and got acquired by Boston Scientific for 275 million. And she wrote a book on it. Yes, she became an author, but before that she also became the first partner at YC and went on to make her own investments in early stage biotech companies. So not only did Tim invest in her company, she became a venture capitalist who paid it forward. Right? And so it's like a ripple effect. What you do just continues, your legacy continues and you don't know who you're inspiring. But lost my chain of thought, but you know, those are some of the ways that Draper University continues the Draper legacy. We still invite early stage entrepreneurs and when I say that I mean students with world-changing ideas that are building for the next 100 years and then finding a way to make us live for that long to witness the change that they're going to bring and build. And we're not only sourcing those founders, but we like being first, second, and third checks. We like being the first yes after these founders have heard, 'No, your idea is crazy. It's sci-fi.' Now it's called deep tech, but back then it was called crazy. So if you are someone who has this crazy idea and you will not give up on it and it keeps you awake at night and you know it's going to change the world and you're looking to build your team and you're looking to learn from Tim Draper, be mentored by him, call him your Dumbledore, and be part of the Draper ecosystem and carry that legacy forward, I would love to connect to you. Even if you're at pre-seed stage, seed stage, or now it's early series A. We have a whole ecosystem and we're open to dialogue to see how we can work with you, or even be your customers. Yeah, so well, that's us in a nutshell. And thank you for having me. And thank you to UT Dallas.

All right, thank you, Sueba. Well, next please welcome the Dean of the Naveen Jindal School of Management, Dr. Hasan Pirkul.

Thank you. Not to stay, placed me strategically at the end. And they gave me 3 minutes. So, I will try to fit everything I have to say in 3 minutes. Now, I'm officially the old guy at UTD now. So, I have to give you a little bit of a perspective. Carol mentioned this is the 19th year we are doing this. Not exactly this, but something like this was done 19 years ago. In fact, 26 years ago, I have to kind of acknowledge the beginnings of all this at UTD. 26 years ago, Joe Picken, and I know Joe is not here tonight. Joe Picken walked into my office and said, 'I have an idea. I want to do entrepreneurship at UTD.' And that's how it all started. So, it's been going on for quite some time. Many people have contributed to it over the years. Particularly, this institute, I have gone through many, many leaders. And you know, when we set this up many years ago, we did not want it to be a school institute. We wanted to be a university level institute. So, it first reported to the provost, then to the vice president of research, and finally to the vice president of innovation, research and innovation. So, I have to recognize and thank Joe Pac Grazio. Joe was somewhere here tonight. Thank you, Joe. Joe has really helped tremendously and supported this institute and facilitated its success. And Carol has been working very hard. Our faculty and colleagues that have not only supported the institute, but also stood up our degree programs and have done a great job in that. So, Michelle and all my faculty colleagues that are out there, thank you. You know, I don't like to brag, but I'm going to brag a little. Today, our MS in entrepreneurship, innovation and entrepreneurship degree is ranked by Princeton Review as the number 12 school in the nation. That's not something that comes easily. So, a lot of people have been working on this a long time. Our undergraduate program is also ranked in the top 20. So, you know, there has been quite a bit of work done. Many companies started. Many successful companies actually started throughout these years. But now with the help of Draper Foundation and Tim Draper, we are going to take the next step. And so, I wanted to introduce tonight Draper Scholars. We've started Draper Scholars program every semester. We are recruiting 10 students regardless of their degree throughout the university and regardless of their level. Undergraduate, graduate, they're all welcome. They sign up for one course in the Jindal School and throughout that semester, through a flexible program, we help them start, ideate and start their companies. This is repeatable three semesters. It comes with some money to help start things up and it comes with more importantly, a lot of help and advice and support. So, Draper Scholars are here. The first group of Draper Scholars are here today. Please rise and be recognized. There are four graduate students and six undergraduate teams. So, it's a good group, and we'll be recruiting the next class for next fall and next spring and other 10. So, those who are in the audience, get ready and apply. We look forward to hearing your ideas and your vision. So, I wanted to finish with that. Thank you Tim Draper. Thank you Draper Foundation. Where we, I think we believe this program will take us to the next stage. So, thanks for being here.

All right, thank you so much Dean Pirkul. And another thank you to all of our speakers tonight. We appreciate you so much. Well, deciding tonight's winners is certainly no easy task. So, let's introduce the judges who are going to do that tonight. Suzy Batiz, CEO and founder of Poo-Pourri and Supernatural. George Brody, chairman of Turbo Start Global. James Dowd, partner at Walk Sausalito Village Equity Partners. And Suba Zaim, head of investments at Draper University Ventures. Thank you guys so much for your time and your expertise, your thoughtful evaluation. We appreciate that. Your insights, your support means so much to us, so much to the students, to these entrepreneurs. And now it's time for the moment that we have all been waiting for. It's time to get to the final pitches. We have three tracks tonight, undergraduate, graduate, and alumni. And each team has worked incredibly hard to get to this stage, and today they're going to present their innovative ideas to us and to our distinguished panel of judges for sure. And after each presentation, the judges will have 5 minutes of Q&A with each team or individual tonight. So, let's get started. And we're going to begin with the undergraduate track tonight. First up, it's Nathan Rush with Pool Control AI. Let's give him a big round of applause.

Hi. My name is Nathan Rush, and this little guy, that was me when I was 5 years old. And I nearly drowned. I went to a water park for the first time. There was a lifeguard right above my head, and he didn't see me for over a minute. And in these situations, seconds count for lives. And luckily, my friend's mom pulled me out of the water, but I was traumatized from this experience. And this is what led me to become a lifeguard and had me dive into water safety. And so, the CDC says thousands die and tens of thousands more are injured in lifeguarded facilities every year. And you know what the problem is? Lifeguard training is outdated. It's been the same for 50 years. At the beginning of every summer, 10, 50, 100 lifeguards are all trained together, and some slip through the cracks. Just like the lifeguard who didn't save me, he was never followed up with. He was never assessed on his lifeguard skills, and thus, he could have ruined a life. And you know, without systems in place to address lifeguard training, institutions, water park operations, facilities, they drown. And people lose their lives. And that equates to $1.5 billion in lifeguard related lawsuits every year. And what do these departments need? Well, they need a solution that addresses lifeguard training, analyzes who is making mistakes, and most importantly, saves lives. The solution? Pool Control AI. With Pool Control, you're able to track, analyze, and improve your lifeguard department in a simple manner by using our AI agents to conduct tests on lifeguards. With Pool Control, managers get oversight they have never had before. Now, taking a look into our app, Pool Control relays information such as who is failing, why they are failing, and most importantly, what steps need to be taken to make sure this individual does not claim a life. Now, starting in 2026, we had the privilege of working with Great Wolf Lodge, the number one indoor water park in Texas. And during this period, we're projecting that we're saving Great Wolf Lodge $120,000 in liability expenses. And more importantly, we've prevented 16 incidents from occurring. And even more importantly, zero kids have drowned. Now, you can stick with simple group training or my biggest competitor, camera AI detection tools, but when you use Pool Control, you're getting a proactive tool that's addressing lifeguard performance. And more importantly, you're not just getting software, you're getting the expertise from industry professionals such as myself. Now, moving into this market, we estimate that there's over 300,000 facilities in the US alone that employ lifeguards. That's a $4.5 billion market opportunity for Pool Control. Now, how we're actually going to move into this market, we already have 100-plus industry contacts of directors across the world. And we've had the privilege of setting up on-site demos with these directors, where we're going to show them what we can do for their departments. And through this, we've been able to work with Great Wolf Lodge, and we're projecting that we're going to save them 89% in liability just in 2026 alone. Now, imagine what we can do for all 26 of their locations, over $100,000 average liability cost for each of them. And now, moving into the next summer, we plan to deploy in five facilities starting this summer. And in the next summer, five more. And after we continue to improve our product, assess what we can do for lifeguards, the opportunities are truly endless. And I couldn't have done this without an amazing team. I'm Nathan Rush. I've been an aquatics supervisor and trainer for over a year. I personally conducted 2,000 lifeguard tests, trained 200 lifeguards, and saved 26 individuals. My CTO, he's a top 100 software engineer intern in the world. And my advisor, Lindsey, she's been in the industry for over 20 years. So, you're not just getting our software, you're getting industry expertise. Now, I'm going to leave you with this. No child should ever die in a lifeguarded facility. With Pool Control, we save lives. Thank you.

All right, thank you, Nathan. Judges, you have 5 minutes to ask questions.

Thank you. That was a wonderful pitch. My first question would be just to start, you know, deep diving, what are the metrics that you would be looking at to analyze the lifeguards?

Yes, so within our system, we're addressing certain qualifications that lifeguards have. For example, if they are scanning people correctly in the pool, if they're performing correctly in simulated drowning incidents, where we'll have our managers actually jump into the pool, and our AI agent walks them through this process. Actually, the most important one in my opinion is if they know their first aid protocols, because that is a major pain point for where a lot of liability comes into play. With our system, we walk through our testers, our supervisors and managers so that they know what to look for and following those tests, we're able to remediate those lifeguards and that's why it's so important to have an individualized system like Pool Control.

And then, what does the business model look like? How are you going to charge your customers and who are your customers going to be?

Yeah, of course. So, we're currently targeting businesses. Of course, we're mainly targeting larger resorts. We're also targeting seasonal facilities for a smaller start, but our model is $19.99 per month per full-time lifeguard. And in that model, we want to give managers every aspect of what our tool can do because I don't believe in setting paywalls for something that provides safety. But moving forward, we're sticking with that model. If we're going to adjust our price, that will come with more experience.

Question. So, you mentioned the versus your product. What are the advantages you have?

So, one of the major advantages is that it's really expensive to get these cameras, but the biggest thing that I see is they're not proactive and you can't have a camera jump in and save an infant who is already drowned in a pool. If a camera detects that someone's drowning, maybe they're having a seizure, someone still has to jump in, save that individual, know their skills, be able to pull them out, and then they have to know the correct first aid procedures. With a camera, you're investing hundreds of thousands of dollars for something that doesn't even ensure safety.

Could you tell me how you're going to address your legal liability exposure?

Yeah, so that is a major pinpoint, but for us, we make sure to work with our companies, tell them, 'Hey, we're not liable for anything that happens. We provide you a good tool that will build up your safety procedures, but at the end of the day, we're not putting any liability on ourselves because we understand there's still opportunities for people to drown, people to have injuries.' We offer basically an insurance policy with additional tools.

Hi. It seems like there are a lot of people required to manage, right? The lifeguards. How much is online training versus in-person training and how do you handle that?

Yeah, so our tool is meant for in-person training, but to just give a little bit of insight on what it would actually look like, a manager or supervisor could simply use their phone to fill out tests with the use of our app assistant who's walking them through the process. And I love this tool because in major water parks, there's 20, 30, 40 supervisors and 100 lifeguards, and there's no way to have everybody in the same boat, so to speak. So, with this tool, you're able to track everything in an overall system, and that's why I'm so glad we have Sacha on board because he's been a cloud engineer at Verizon for 2 years, and he's able to create these large systems.

Judges, are we good? Yes, just the last question. If we go ahead. You have time. Okay. Well, again, just to double down on the competition, there are such solutions in different industries, you know, which a software goes into a camera and then it addresses trespassers or something like that. How are you going to scale this or stay ahead? Like what is the bigger vision here? I know this could be something that you're starting with and then you could have a bigger vision. So, can you talk to us about that? How are you going to...

Yeah, so the biggest vision is eventually moving into other spaces such as moving into training for other industries, but also on your point about camera systems, we would like to start using camera data. While I did sort of push camera AI systems away from me, collecting data from those systems can actually help our product as we continue to scale and create partnerships with bigger resorts and bigger water parks. But yeah, the market across the world for this is truly immense and we're the first product on the market specifically like this.

All right, thank you so much, Nathan. That's Nathan Rush with Pool Control AI. Now it's time to welcome Ferdine Ahmed to the stage to present Sales Pilot.

Hey everybody. Oh. Wait a second. Looks like I'm getting a call. Hey, it's Dean from Toyota of McKinney. How can I help? Hey, I'm searching for a sky blue RAV4. You guys have any? Uh let me check here. It looks like I've got two in stock for you, an XLE and an XSE. Okay, I'm actually going back and forth with Richardson. They offered me 34 out the door. Can you guys beat that? I mean, here's the thing, man. We're already pretty competitive on price, you know. Richardson has a good price for you, but why don't you come in and... That call just lost my dealership $30,000. And I thought it went fine, you know, I was friendly, I was respectful, but no one told me exactly what went wrong. The fact that I didn't build rapport with the customer or the fact that I wasn't conversational, and even the fact that the last thing he wanted to hear was how competitive we are on price. You see, it's not just me. 67% of buyers call during the purchase journey, making it the number one direct interaction between a buyer and a salesperson. You see, the goal of every single one of those calls is super simple. Just set the appointment. Yet, 72% of salespeople never even ask for one. What's going on? After 17,000 calls at Toyota, I realized that our sales team only began getting better after introducing a sales coach months down the line. But here's the problem with that. A sales coach costs $50,000 a year, minimum. And even then, most independent dealerships simply can't afford it. The ones that can, well, that sales coach only sits in on a fraction of calls, and salespeople keep making the same mistakes over and over. This is an entire industry bleeding sales one call at a time. There had to be a better way. SalesPilot is that better way. SalesPilot connects directly into your...

It integrates with your existing phone system and takes the call with no extra steps. Two layers of AI analyze it: one analyzing your tone, your confidence, your hesitation, and the second analyzing your words, your missed asks, the objections that customers threw at you. It doesn't just memorize what you said, but it memorizes exactly how you said it. It then flags exactly what went wrong. On that RAV4 conversation, it would have flagged the fact that I said we're already competitive, and it would have said that was a terrible, terrible way to respond to that. And then next, it's not just me, it coaches you. It'll tell you exactly how to fix that mistake that you made, and it'll tell you what to do next time. Not just some generic tips, but exact language for exact situations. Now, here's where it gets better, guys. Sales Pilot remembers every single dealership, every single salesperson, and every single call. A salesperson from the outside has never sold a RAV4 in McKinney, Texas, and neither has a sales coach. But Sales Pilot has heard every version of that conversation happen. We tested our product at Planet Cars. Four reps, 30 days. And over those 30 days, we were able to yield a 26% increase in appointment rate, 12% increase in sales per rep, and an 8.7x ROI. We hit the ground running with our results. We went live. Now, we have four dealerships, 30-plus salespeople using our products, and $4,000 in monthly recurring revenue in just 20 days. Our business model is simple. A B2B SaaS for dealerships. $799 a month per location, depending on salespeople. Outbound calls for gather, and paid advertisement for advertising. Our market size, huge. Our TAM right now, 18,000 independent dealerships in the US, $799 per dealership for $172 million of a total addressable market. And by the end of 2026, we are targeting $480,000 of annual recurring revenue. Recordings exist, analytics exist, scalable coaching simply does not. Gong and Chorus, they're built for enterprise teams. They have, you know, somewhat similar technology, some could say, but they've never called an independent dealership. That's our market, not theirs. And a human coach, well, just think about the last 10 meals you've eaten. That's how easy it is to forget a conversation. Here's our team. We lived the problem, not just researched it. And our marketing has 3 years of social media management experience. And our lead developer, Rama, has 7 years of Python and C++. And with my industry experience, we're taking SalesPilot to the next level. Every day, dealerships open their doors, SalesPilot make mistakes, and go home. They deserve better than silence after every call. Smarter conversations and measurable revenue. SalesPilot, thank you.

All right. Thank you, Fardin. Judges, 5 minutes.

So, it's more so training after every single call, not less of like a booklet or like a slideshow to go through. So, it's more so building a profile around a specific salesperson, like someone who misses objections frequently, or, you know, doesn't ask for an appointment. And it pinpoints these weaknesses per salesperson, so it knows that this guy doesn't do this, and maybe this guy's really good at this. And it'll give training to people based on what they lack. So, it kind of just reads that data, and then it also reads the dealership data as a whole. Maybe one dealership keeps getting hit by objections from another and vice versa.

Absolutely.

Correct. We're not pre-revenue. We're simply pre-scale. We are making sales right now. We have four dealerships that we have contracts with and that's the stage we're at and now we're just really looking to build our systems and to scale up, keep marketing. Because the market has got need. There's a company that's based here in Dallas itself using AI bots scaling like crazy. So there is opportunity definitely here.

And one more thing that I'd like to add on is we're not staying in the automotive industry. We're just using that as a wedge because we just know the industry really well and the pain points. So we're just using it as a wedge to, you know, build our revenue, build our systems and then go into other call-heavy verticals such as, you know, service-based businesses or insurance and things of that sort.

Absolutely. So I didn't address the rest of it just for the sake of time, but it is typically $799 per month because most independent dealerships have less than 10 sales people. But when we jump from 10 to say 15, it goes to $1099 and then if you have 40 plus sales people, we're jumping to the like, you know, $5000 range. So it really just depends on the credits the sales people are using through our APIs per month.

Correct. Based on the number of sales people.

Absolutely. Would you be able to repeat the question again? Sorry, I'm a little out of it. I had nine stitches yesterday.

Absolutely. Now, that's an amazing question and I think this really comes down to the core of why people buy from people. You know, in the sales world one thing that we're taught, you know, very aggressively is be friends with your client. That's the biggest thing. Before you're the information guy, before you're the numbers guy, you need to know how to become friends with people. And, you know, that's something that's always been emphasized in the sales world and that's something that I really think will stick and is one of the key reasons why, you know, maybe you bought your last car at a certain dealership versus one down the street that's selling it for the same exact price. And I think it's truly about that sales person and building that connection and, you know, the comfort factor with, you know, having a person in the industry. So, I think we're, you know, going to eventually decrease the turnover rate in the sales industry and as sales people get better, they have pipeline and they just have more repeat customers coming to them, therefore expanding that.

Absolutely. We haven't figured out the complete structure yet, but we did think of a kind of an incentive pool where the managers would actually be paying for it. So, say it's a trip, say it's, you know, a gift card, you know, something in the range of $500 to $1,000 for the top salesperson that month. And we could have different kinds of prizes for, say, the one who improved the most versus the one who's consistently on that leaderboard. And with the database that we've built, it tracks every single sales person, so they can see how they're doing against their, you know, their peers, and, you know, create some friendly competition there.

All right, Fardeen, thank you so much. Judges, thank you very much. Let's give them another round of applause. And now for our final undergraduate pitch, which comes from Ivan Tong with MedScepter.

3 years ago, I was dispatched to this call. Male, mid-40s, found unresponsive. I spent the last 6 months in EMT school training for this. So, I knelt beside him, ready to go, and the adrenaline just hit. I remember my mind started going blank. He wasn't breathing. I couldn't find a pulse. I remember I started CPR, but my hands were everywhere. And what I didn't find out until later was that he had a gunshot wound in his back. He was bleeding out the entire time. He died. And it was my fault. Fortunately, this was not a real patient. It was a practice scenario for a job interview. And as you can probably guess, I did not get the job. But, while mine was just a simulation, over 4,000 people die every single year from EMS-related mistakes. And if that wasn't bad enough, when I interviewed over a hundred other EMTs, 96% of them said that they did not feel prepared when they entered the field. Why? Because there's a huge difference between memorizing textbook content and actually applying it to a patient. That's when I realized that there has to be a better way to train our future medical first responders. Introducing Med Scepter, an AI patient simulator that lets you assess and treat a patient in real time. You can talk to the patient, listen to lung sounds, perform treatments, and when you're done, it gives you personalized feedback on exactly what to improve on. What this does is it drills the step-by-step framework that every EMT needs to know, so that when your adrenaline hits, they don't freeze. It's the same national framework that every EMT school uses, and it's working. We found that after just five scenarios, students typically see a 75% increase in their scenario pass rates, a 26% boost in their confidence, and a 33% improvement in their assessment scores. And as you can see, our students, they love it. But we're not only seeing success in the classroom. Med Scepter is currently generating $125,000 in annual recurring revenue, which is up 62% in the last month alone. We've helped train over 7,000 EMTs, have two institutional partnerships, and won first place at the National Collegiate EMS Conference in Washington, D.C. So, why are so many students flocking to Med Scepter? Well, VR headsets that specialize in healthcare training cost $3,000 a year. Video platforms like InSiteU let you watch a scenario, but not actually practice one. And ChatGPT is just going to make them up and kill your patient. MedScepter is the only platform that is realistic, affordable, and convenient. And speaking of affordable, anyone can try MedScepter for free. And if you like it, $20 a month gives you unlimited access to all of our patient scenarios. And for just $5 more, you also have access to our test question bank to prepare for your REM exam. And institutions, they get bulk discounted pricing depending on their size. This gives us an incredible market. There are over 100,000 new EMS professionals certified every year, creating a $7 million market. And on top of that, the 1,200 EMS training programs, 27,000 fire departments needing ongoing training, and you have a $20 million opportunity. And once we expand into emergency care chain, we're talking physicians, nurses, $3 billion. And this is exactly how we're going to take that. Firstly, paid testimonials on social media, where real EMTs share their MedScepter experience. With this strategy, we've already hit over 5 million views across social media platforms. And for every $1 we put into marketing, we got $9 back. Secondly, we're posting over 100 times a month in online communities like Reddit, where students are already asking for our solution. We're also hosting a booth at the International Rescue and Emergency Care Association conference this June. And we have a very clear sales pipeline that has led to two institutional pilots in 1 week alone. And by the end of the year, we're also... Sorry, got a little excited. Let me back it up a little bit. So, since launching MVP last October, we've grown to over 700 paying customers, which is largely due to launching our marketing campaign just last month. When the summer, we're expanding to paramedics, and by the end of the year, expanding into nursing. By the end of the year, we're also on track to hit over $1 million in annual recurring revenue, which only increases exponentially as we expand into adjacent markets. And in the next five, six, maybe seven years, these are the top three companies that are most likely to acquire us. First of all, we're the perfect team to execute this. My name is Ivan. I'm the EMT captain of one of the best collegiate EMS organizations in the nation, a social media influencer with over a hundred thousand total followers, and UTD's 2025 Texas Business Hall of Fame already. Outside of EMS, I manage distribution for eight figure companies and YC back startups. And our CTO, David, is a former software engineer at NASA and another YC company. And finally, our clinical director, Nicholas, is a paramedic instructor who verifies all of our scenarios. So, together, let's improve EMS training to help save more lives. Thank you.

All right, thank you. Judges, five minutes.

Yes, when they're en route. But not necessarily like while you're on the call. I mean, yes, when you're on transport to the ambulance, but if you're on the call assessing the situation right there, you're not calling the MD right there.

Okay. That's a great question. And so, when it comes to EMTs giving communications to MDs, it all comes down to our radio report. So, that means that our radio report as we're on route to the hospital, and also our radio report when we arrive to the hospital and hand it off to them, right? And so, our platform has that radio report built in. We tell them like, when you're on route when you say, 'Okay, I'm at the hospital now.' We tell them, 'Okay, give your report.' And we grade you based on that report.

So, just to clarify the question, it's who is my current ideal customer right now?

Yeah, thank you so much for that question. I was actually hoping someone would ask that. So, basically right now, we're very focused on B2C, mostly because that's also my specialty from all the social media marketing and all that. It's also the easiest to immediately get into, you know, you don't have to worry about those large sales cycles. But, as we transition, we want to move on to B2B. We want to have lower churn and start... Yeah, lower churn, higher LTV, and yeah, we just want to make sure that we focus on the B2B side as we transition using this like bottom-up sales funnel.

Mhm. Get us done. Yeah. Thank you.

Yeah. So, great question. So, right now, our primary focus, once again, is B2C, but we want to primarily stay into the training aspect, because that's just our positioning, not really doing with, you know, right there on the field. Now, we could also, and we are planning on going to agencies, but once again, it'd be the training process for those agencies, not directly while they're on the field. Because if they're on the field, we don't really want them to like have to pull up this information that we want them to really know on the spot. Does that answer your question?

Scale our team?

Okay. So, basically, in terms of team, we're probably going to first start scaling into the marketing aspect. So, right now we have six active creators, but we're trying to scale that into a content creator army. That's where our projections come from. And so, what we need is somebody else to help manage those creators. Now, I already found somebody, he's doing a great job, but when you go from six to 40, 50 creators, then we need somebody else for that. So, we're primarily on the marketing side. And then, in terms of development side, our developers are amazing. I love my developers. And so, with the power of AI, they move extremely fast. So, it's not entirely something we're looking for right there at this moment. But, as we expand to paramedics and nursing, we do need somebody to head the nursing department as well.

Yeah. Great question. So, of course, we have our paramedic instructor. He goes through all of our scenarios and makes sure that they're accurate. Of course, with my expertise, I'm also going through these scenarios myself. And we're also always keeping up to date with latest trends in like the latest documentation, new studies. And so, we also have a pipeline that feeds us that report every single morning to make sure that everything that we produce is accurate.

All right, Evan, thank you so much. Judges, we appreciate you very much. Thank you. That concludes our undergraduate track, and it's now time to get into our graduate track. Leading off Ismael Cassiem of NanoPulse Therapeutics, who will present our first graduate pitch of the night.

You wait just 1 second. I think our judges want some time just to write down a couple of details before we get started here. Give them about 30 seconds or so, and then we'll get going. Again, for those of you that are new, this is a big year for UT Dallas because our first-place winner gets $50,000. Our second-place winner gets 30, and third place gets $20,000. Absolute huge bankroll for this tonight. So, we thank everybody for chipping in and for making this as big as it's become. Judges, are you ready? Everybody good? All right, thank you.

Cancer remains as one of the main causes of death for pets and other animals for a long time. And the reason for that is the problem that we have for cancer detection and cancer treatment. For the existing methods like chemotherapy and surgery, they are expensive and invasive. Moreover, they are stressful for both pets and owners. And also, they are not acting specifically on the cancer cells. Because of that, they are showing lots of side effects. And also, they are not accessible and adoptable for different species. To solve these problems, we are offering nanobiotherapeutic kits. In this case, we have two products, product A and B. Inside product A, we have magnetic nanoparticle and anti-cancer drug. After injecting of our product into the body, it will go to the cancer cells, and it will release drug there. And then, by using of our second product, which is a magnetic field generator, we are able to generate heat inside the cancer cells through magnetic nanoparticle. Also, these magnetic nanoparticles give us MRI visibility. However, with this combination, we are offering cancer detection and cancer treatment together. Here, you can see cell viability against different temperature. As you can see, at 37 degrees Celsius, which is our body temperature, it's still 45% of the cancer cells are alive. While, by increasing the temperature to 45 degrees Celsius, almost all of the cancer cells are dead. On the top picture, you can see how effectively we are able to shrink the size of the tumor. And in the bottom pictures, you can see how effectively we are able to see and live monitor the cancer treatment before and after treatment. Veterinary oncology market is expected to grow rapidly and reach to 3.1 billion by 2030. And the reason for that is the increasing number of pet ownerships. SOM, SAM, and TAM for this market in 2026 would be 0.95, 1.1, and 2 billion dollars. Our primary customer would be veterinary oncologists, zoos, wildlife conservation, government, and so on. Our key competitors, they are mainly focused on dogs and canine cancer. While we are offering treatment for a wide variety of cancer and different species. In order to reach the market, we will have a 1-year pilot test in three animal hospitals like VCA Dallas Animal Hospital. And for this, in order to approach the people, we will participate in the seminars as a speaker and also we will publish papers. Our revenue model would be subscription-based model and our gross margin for product A would be 97% and for product B would be 50%. Here you can see our progress and our future plan. We already done with phase one and right now we are in phase two which is animal study. Our next step would be making our AFM generator or magnetic generator. For making our AFM generator, we need $25,000 and also another 25,000 for patent and $200,000 for pilot testing for making three AFM generators and sponsoring that 1-year pilot testing. Me and my brother Hussein, we are founders and Dr. Stefan and Dr. Akku they are our advisors from UTD and Dr. from South Florida University is our another advisor. Thank you.

Thank you so much, judges. 5 minutes.

Yeah, we look to have patents here.

Right now for the United States. Yeah. Right now for United States and then we can expand it, yeah.

Yes. Because, you know, we have magnetic nanoparticle in combination and also we have for the AFM generator. So, because of that we will have different, like, you know, patents.

We already in contact with VCA like animal hospital, plus animal hospital. And, you know, we can see a big market and nobody's working in this area. So, we are the first one working in the animal, like, you know, in this area, you know, on the animals.

As I told you, we already synthesized our first product, which is our combination of magnetic nanoparticle and drug. And right now we need to make our portable AFM generator. We have lots of AFM generator or magnetic field generator, but for us it would be, you know, adoptable for different species and portable for different species in order to that we be able to use it in anywhere like zoos or maybe wildlife conservation or anywhere. So for that one we need to make that one. So we already have, we are in the half of the way.

No, no, no. $25,000.

Yes, yes, yes, it is. Yeah.

Oh, it would be like, you know, we are selling, you know, our product at least the first product, like, you know, for the product A we will sell it like $200 something like that. And, you know, they can sell it like maybe anywhere anything like, you know, $500 something like that. And for the second product we will sell to them like, you know, with $25,000, $50,000 and they are just charging people, you know, based on the treatment that they, you know, based on treatments.

Since we're working with animals it would be for us so easy to go to the market. We are not right now we are not working on the latent human. So, because of it would be easy. Maybe that's maybe just 1 year, 2 years something like that. We can get, you know, like, you know, go to the market and get or, you know, like, you know, FDA approvedness.

You know, actually in the past I didn't actually thinking that to having any kind of pets. But right now I'm thinking I need to have one day. I don't know why, but right now I'm loving pets. Because of that I thought, yeah, let's work on that. Yeah.

All right, we've got time for one more question.

Just $25,000 for making that one.

Yeah, it depends on the what in which scale we should wait, you know, we should make it. We need to make it in three different scale at least, you know, like, you know, for a small animal, for big animals or yeah, or maybe something like universal. But usually the average would be like around $25,000.

We will sell it like, you know, around $50,000. Mhm. Yeah.