Every Spring, the Columbia Venture Competition gives out $350,000 dollars in cash prizes to the next generation of Columbia entrepreneurs.
Alumni judges from Brooklyn to Bordeaux to Beijing evaluate and advise competitors until three winners are chosen for each challenge track, which this year includes: the BlocPower Columbia Climate Challenge; Columbia-CareOne Healthcare All-Stars Challenge; Brown Institute Innovation Challenge in Journalism, Media, and Technology; the StartupColumbia Challenge; the SIPA Dean’s Public Policy Challenge Grant; the Technology Challenge; and the Undergraduate Challenge.
Founded by Columbia College alum Daniel E. Straus, CareOne is a healthcare and assisted living community, exclusively committed to the life and health of seniors across every stage of life. The Innovation team at CareOne, headed up by David Baruch ’13CC, embraces the winners of the Healthcare Challenge and aims to help with compliance advice, beta testing, customer discovery, and networking. Columbia and CareOne promise to never stop innovating for our customers.
Congratulations to the winners of the Columbia Venture Competition – Columbia-CareOne Healthcare All-Stars Challenge!
First Place, $20,000 prize, tied
ColonAI
ColonAI is a software company that uses artificial intelligence to help gastroenterologists (physicians who specialize in diseases of the digestive system) efficiently screen, detect and treat tumors during colonoscopy and wireless capsule endoscopy.
Founders: Jacob Nye ’20SEAS, Bina Bansinath ’20SEAS
First Place, $20,000 prize, tied
Lunchbox Health, Inc.
Lunchbox Health helps employers administer benefits and manage healthcare spending in a radically new way that removes the need for a group health plan.
Founder: Basil Vetas, ’19SEAS/Data Science Institute
Third Place, $5,000 prize, tied
BestFit, Inc.
BestFit is reimagining the social safety net for college students.
Founders: Asha Owens ’18TC, Rebecca Kwee ’12CC
Third Place, $5,000 prize, tied
Sharper Sense
Sharper Sense is wearable neurotechnology that improves sensory acuity by enhancing the brain’s ability to clearly process sensory information.
Founder: Charles Rodenkirch PhD, ’19SEAS
The Columbia-CareOne Healthcare All-Stars Challenge aims to foster viable innovations in what we are calling the “less-regulated” healthcare space (no pharma or class three devices). Examples include Healthcare Delivery and Services, Diagnostics, Memory Loss and Cognitive Decline, Social Determinants of Health, Class 1 and 2 Medical Devices, Patient Empowerment, Remote Care and Telemedicine, Medication Management, Wellness, Substance Abuse, Nutrition, Education, Public Health, Policy, Content and Communications, and Age-in-Place solutions.