Polsky Announces 6 Finalist Teams for the College New Venture Challenge

Published on Thursday, March 4, 2021

Subli, a peer-to-peer subletting marketplace, took home first place at the 2020 College New Venture Challenge finals. Photo credit: Polsky Center.

The Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Chicago has officially announced the six teams moving on to the finals of the 2021 College New Venture Challenge (CNVC). The CNVC is the College track of the University’s nationally-ranked accelerator program, the New Venture Challenge (NVC).

The CNVC, which began in 2012, has helped undergraduate University of Chicago students turn their ideas into viable businesses including Cubii, Sokowatch, Fronen, Moneythink, and Quevos. Since 1996, the Polsky Center has helped launch more than 330 startup companies still in operation today that have gone on to raise more than $1 billion in funding and more than $7.5 billion in exits through its NVC program.

This year’s cohort included a select group of entrepreneurial students from The Grainger College of Engineering’s City Scholars program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). Through the CNVC course, students from both UIUC and the University of Chicago worked side by side on building high-growth, high-impact businesses.

The 2021 CNVC finalists are:

Bridges Health // Bridges Health is an mHealth app that seeks to better connect patients with physicians, to tackle and prevent cardiovascular disease.
DeepWalk* // DeepWalk is developing a mobile application that scans sidewalk curb ramps and checks if they meet the Americans with Disabilities Act Requirements, saving cities time and money.
fillow // Fillow is the period product for women who no longer need to settle. Fillow disrupts the feminine hygiene industry by giving women not only a product that is leak-free, easy to use, long-lasting, mess-free, and safe; but also by providing women with a voice in a historically stigmatized, stagnant, and underfunded market.
HexNest* // HexNest is developing a replacement for foam that reacts to every impact and changes its stiffness so every impact is as safe as possible.
IVY // Ivy designs, manufactures, and distributes the world’s first consumer 4D printer. Ivy’s product is a highly-scalable system that can rapidly and easily reshape objects with the click of a button.
STIX Financial //STIX is offering the first-ever stock-linked debit card that allows you to make payments by using your stocks as cash.

* This team features students from both the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign (UIUC) as a part of the College New Venture Challenge’s partnership with the Grainger College of Engineering at UIUC.

To join us for the virtual 2021 CNVC Finals on Wednesday, March 10, register here.