Northwestern’s Award-Winning Student Startup Organizations
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Three of Northwestern’s startup organizations, EPIC, Zcruit and EatPakd, won Entrepreneurship Club of the Year and Outstanding Student Startups of the Year at the first annual EntrepreneurshipU Awards last Tuesday. Hosted at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago, the awards were designed to “celebrate the spirit of entrepreneurship and innovation at Chicagoland universities.”
Over 100 students and faculty from Chicagoland universities, including Northwestern University, DePaul University, Illinois Institute of Technology and University of Illinois at Chicago, attended the event. The keynote speaker, Amanda Signorelli, CEO of TechWeek, talked about technology and entrepreneurship outside of Silicon Valley, particularly Chicago’s potential role in these fields.
One of the award winners, EPIC, was founded four years ago with the mission to “empower the next generation of Northwestern entrepreneurs.” More than 60 EPIC members in seven teams strive toward that goal through a variety of programs: WildHacks, Launch, Hack Northwestern and Sprout. This award recognized EPIC as “the center of the Northwestern undergraduate entrepreneurial community, as a collective of passionate founders and startup enthusiasts of varying levels, who learn and grow from each others skills and experiences.” Furthermore, EPIC received $30,000 gift from the Board of Advisors this year.
“I see EPIC becoming an even more powerful hub and a source of empowerment for entrepreneurs,” said Jessica Tan, former president of EPIC. “We will continue to improve our existing programs, and simultaneously pursue Project Xs… We pride ourselves in giving members the opportunity to be able to make a direct impact, regardless of their year and length of time in the organization. Even freshmen can be directors or VPs, and new members can make decisions and take responsibilities that org leaders do in other student orgs on campus.”
Founded by Weinberg senior Ben Weiss, Zcruit is a tool that utilizes predictive analytics to optimize college football recruiting process. Recently, they also took home a total of $4,250 dollars at Wildfire’s (Northwestern’s pre-accelerator program) Demo Day. Zcruit has raised over $17,000 in outside funding.
Weiss came up with the idea when he worked at the Northwestern football recruiting department his freshman year. After two years, his frustration with the inefficiency of the recruiting led to a solution as he and his team built a software platform to improve recruiting efficiency. Weiss described it as similar to the statistical algorithm employed by college admissions to predict the likelihood of an applicant’s enrollment intothe school.
“When I saw this concept was already being applied to general admissions, I realized that it would be incredibly applicable in the world of college football recruiting,” Weiss said. “And testing an algorithm with Northwestern over the course of a year, we decided to build out a software platform that could improve recruiting efficiency for all college football teams.”
Weiss’ vision is to “be able to expand from football to all sports, and help grow Zcruit from a complementary recruiting tool into a primary recruiting tool.”
Winning the Outstanding Student Startup of the Year award, Zcruit has “inspired NU undergraduates by serving as a model for what a team of passionate students can accomplish.”
Finally, EatPakd, co-founded by Rebecca Sholiton and Nate Cooper, a Kellogg graduate student, also took home the Outstanding Student Startup of the Year award. EatPakd’s mission is to “fill kids’ bellies with homemade food to fuel their day” by delivering directly to families with fresh, balanced lunches that are allergy-friendly, responsibly sourced and designed by nutritionists.
“Starting anything from scratch is an incredible challenge,” Cooper said. “From creating our proprietary packaging, ordering custom machinery, and initially making the lunches in our own kitchen, there are numerous challenges we’ve had to overcome, and many more in the future that we will have to as well.”
However, the first five weeks after its launch, EatPakd was able to generate $20,000 dollars in monthly recurring revenue. Currently, it has $150,000 in sales, about 20 employees and has raised over $3 million dollars to date.
“From our initial pilot to today, there have been a few milestones that we’ve accomplished,” Cooper said. “Moving into our own facility was a big one. Raising two rounds of capital is always exciting, and delivering thousands of boxes a week is exciting to see in person!”
Finally, some words of advice from these young entrepreneurs:
From Jessica Tan (EPIC):
“1) Life is a continuous iterative process — keep trying and doing. Don’t settle even once you’ve reached your goals; there is always something more you can do, especially for the society. 2) In any situation: always prioritize your team over yourself. Especially to all the leaders out there, learn from your team and invest in them, professionally and personally. They are your most valuable asset.”
From Ben Weiss (Zcruit):
“Get user validation at every step of the process. At Zcruit, we started by only having an algorithm and spreadsheet so we could prove out our concept. We only built out of software component when we were confident that 1) our algorithm worked and 2) we were solving a real problem in the industry. We still have users help us test out new features and concepts, and we try to tailor everything we do to ensuring that it will provide our users with meaningful value.”
From Nate Cooper (EatPakd):
“If you have an idea, test it! There’s nothing worse, in my opinion, than the lingering ‘what-if’? Ask questions, figure out if people will use your product or service!”
And finally, a big congratulations to the rest of the award winners:
Entrepreneurship Professor of the Year — Patrick Murphy, DePaul University
- Honorable Mention: Nik Rokop, Illinois Institute of Technology
- Honorable Mention: Omar Sweiss, Trinity Christian College
Outstanding Student Startups of the Year
- Deliveree, University of Illinois at Chicago
- EatPakd, Northwestern University
- Kalí Zöe Designs, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Small Pets & Company, College of DuPage
- Zcruit, Northwestern University
Entrepreneurial Student Leader of the Year — Alex Sofranas, DePaul University
Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Course of the Year — Omar Sweiss, Trinity Christian College (for his Lean Startup course)
Graduate Entrepreneurship Course of the Year — Brian O’Connor and Mark Agnew, University of Chicago (for their Entrepreneurship Through Acquisition course)
Entrepreneurship Club of the Year — EPIC, Northwestern University
Campus Entrepreneurial Event of the Year — Cozad New Venture Competition, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Social Entrepreneurship Initiative of the Year Led By a University — Social Innovation Challenge, North Central College
Social Entrepreneurship Initiative of the Year Led By a Student — Tyler Bradley, Columbia College Chicago (HUMANITY)
Future Founders Entrepreneurial Champion Award — Illinois Institute of Technology
