Student inventors compete for cash

Students submitted competing business plans to judges on Saturday at the annual TigerLaunch Business Competition, which pitted prospective proprietors head-to-head on the stage of McCosh 10. Students entered submissions in one of two categories, business entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship, each of which awarded a total of $10,000 to award winners.

In the business entrepreneurship category, Alex Gasner ’10 won $5,000, the largest prize, for his CoAx proposal, which he said could revolutionize geothermal heating and cooling systems. Gasner designed a system in which hot and cold water flow in tubes that are not separate, as in traditional models, but located one inside the other. This system, Gesner said, could reduce upfront costs by as much as half. He noted that this cost reduction is especially important because current installation costs render geothermal systems unaffordable over a five- to seven-year period.

“I created a moderately complex heat-transfer model to compare the two systems, but it doesn’t take into account all of the various complexities that are [present],” he explained. “There is a lot more work to be done, but at a basic 5,000-feet model, it’s been done.”

Gasner is currently in the process of trying to patent his design.

Identical twin sisters Leah Cohen-Shohet ’12 and Danielle Cohen-Shohet ’12 received a second-place award of $3,000 for their proposal, TransACTion Technologies, which would digitize sales receipts. The proposal aims to provide smart solutions for retailers and consumers and would be environmentally friendly.

“While there is a tremendous amount of paper waste involved with retail print media, we realized that converting that media to digital form benefits retailers and consumers in more than just a green aspect,” Leah said in an e-mail. “It allows for smarter marketing which retailer and consumer are receptive to.”

Jacob Hiller ’10 won the third-place $2,000 prize for his plan to recycle wine bottles.

Hiller, who said he plans to begin a bottle-recycling center in the Williamette Valley region in Oregon, drew upon international operations as inspiration for his plan.

Most wine bottles are reused in France, Hiller noted in his presentation, but Americans have been slow to adopt this eco-friendly custom. Widespread bottle reuse would significantly reduce the need for glass production in the United States, he said.

Two groups shared first place in the social-entrepreneurship track, each taking home a prize of $3,000.

One of the TigerLaunch competition organizers, Faaez Ul Haq ’10, said in an e-mail that, “While TigerLaunch has been organized for the past 10 years, this was the first time a separate track for social enterprises was added.”

Students who took EGR 495: A Social Entrepreneurship Collaboracy originally wanted to form a social-entrepreneurship organization, Ul Haq explained, but instead decided to merge with the existing entrepreneurship club.

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One co-winner, em[POWER], was proposed by Ul Haq, Fahad Shams GS, Michael Smit ’10, Dalia Nahol ’11 and Hiller. Their project is a plan to convert high-organic landfill material into renewable energy, which would reduce greenhouse gas emissions while providing a sustainable source of income for people living near landfills.

“While we have been producing methane from waste for hundreds of years, the tricky part is harnessing the technology in an innovative manner such that it produces optimal money and social value for a very under-served group of people,” Ul Haq said in an e-mail.

The other co-winner was Cocherapy, a project proposed by Caroline Clark ’11 and Jennifer King ’11, which will provide speech therapy to people with cochlear implants at a reasonable rate.

“It can cost up to $52,000 a year for speech therapy,” Clark said. “I had a cochlear implant, and I was extremely fortunate to have the resources for it, so I wanted to step in and offer it to others.”

King noted that, following the cochlear implant procedure, “A very critical part ... is the rehabilitation afterwards ... which isn’t always covered by insurance. So we wanted to provide a cheaper alternative to it.”

Daniel Echelman ’11, Kathlyn Adamson ’11 and Fatu Conteh ’10 won the second-place prize of $2,000 for their project, Sauti Ya Kina Mama, which will establish a mobile theatrical group to educate women in sub-Saharan Africa about breast health and breast cancer. Two proposals — Filtron Nigeria, proposed by Hazel Miranda GS, Payal Hathi GS, Sehar Tariq GS and Jessie Buendia GS, and ITSERA, proposed by Cally Robertson ’10, Chris Lumry ’10 and Trace Feng ’12 — won honorable mentions and took home $1,000 each.

Previous TigerLaunch winners have capitalized on their winnings to form successful start-up companies.

TerraCycle, founded in 2002 by Tom Szaky ’05, is a successful fertilizer company. SCVNGR, which was founded by Seth Preibatsch ’11 and won first place in the 2008 TigerLaunch competition, uses text messaging to guide participants through elaborate interactive games capable of spanning an entire city.

The event was sponsored by the Princeton Entrepreneurship Club.