We are hearing a ton of buzz from CES about the latest and greatest innovative products from some of the world’s top companies everything from the world’s first human flying drone, to refrigerators where you can buy groceries from fridge. All of these ideas had to start somewhere and today we are seeing the innovators behind these great products starting younger and younger.
College students today are more interested than ever about entrepreneurship. Today one-third of all business incubators are housed on college campuses and the number of entrepreneurship courses has increased from 250 in 1985 to more than 5,000 recorded in 2008.
This week RECESS, a college Music & Ideas Festival, welcomes 15 of the top college startups out to Los Angeles for their 3rd annual Field Trip powered by Southwest Airlines.
Meet the 15 most innovative startups from 15 different colleges around America:
- Company: Royal
- College: University of Miami
- What They Do: Royal is re-engineering loyalty they way it was always intended to be experienced.
- Company: Ziel Solutions
- College: Rice University
- What They Do: Ziel Solutions develops wearable technology to help minimize the risk of injury from repetitive physical activity. Their first product is a patent-pending sensory sleeve for baseball pitchers to reduce the risk of arm injuries.
- Company: Ezkie
- Colleges: UCLA & Florida Institute of Technology
- What They Do: Ezkie ("easy key") is an Airbnb for university students on the move for an internship, study exchange, accelerator program or temporary job.
- Company: Black Pine Engineering
- College: Michigan State University
- What They Do: Black Pine Engineering is commercializing a simplified method of manufacturing turbines and compressors using continuous carbon fiber.
- Company: HubCharge
- College: Babson College
- What They Do: HubCharge provides wireless charging solutions for mobile devices while enhancing shopping experiences through BLE technology.
- Company: Fiddler
- College: Southern Methodist University
- What They Do: Current wind energy solutions are expensive, ugly, and inaccessible to the consumer, so we designed fiddler turbine; the first smart-connected wind energy source for the modern home.
- Company: KrafftIT
- College: University of Southern California
- What They Do: KrafftIT is a tech company that uses its unique software and hardware to provide new solutions for the internet of things. As of now we are mostly focused on provide indoor/outdoor air quality solutions.
Want to see the other eight college entrepreneurs and their startups? Continue reading...
- Company: Maidbot
- College: Cornell University
- What They Do: Maidbot is a robotics company on a mission to revolutionize the hospitality industry.
- Company: Nona
- College: University of North Carolina at Charlotte
- What They Do: Nona is an automatic personal knitting machine that can produce wearable clothing at the click of a button.
- Company: Oncolinx
- College: Dartmouth College
- What They Do: Oncolinx is developing targeted cancer therapeutics, that destroy cancer cells and not healthy cells, and thereby avoid many of the adverse side-effects of traditional chemotherapy.
- Company: Play Business
- College: Babson College
- What They Do: Emerging markets and mostly Latin American countries have nearly zero investment in early stage companies. Play Business is addressing the first round of investment called pre-seed and seed rounds.
- Company: ThirdEye Technologies
- College: University of Pennsylvania
- What They Do: ThirdEye is a product that empowers visually impaired persons by verbally recognizing what they are looking at.
- Company: Top Tier Learning
- College: University of Texas at Austin
- What They Do: Top Tier Learning provides affordable academic services to students in communities across the nation. We employ high school seniors who embody the intelligence and leadership to spread the Top Tier Advantage!
- Company: WAVVE Stream Inc.
- College: University of Houston
- What They Do: WAVVE Stream Inc. produces patented technologies that significantly enhance contaminant removal capabilities for existing water filtration membranes and systems. Both the nanomaterial coating and hydrogel bead systems are a more effective and cost efficient solution for water filtration.
- Company: Yorango
- College: Cornell University
- What They Do: Yorango builds software to simplify rental for small to midsize landlords and their tenants. Our easy-to-use suite of online tools has already helped thousands of renters, and includes online rent collection, e-signing, maintenance tracking, messaging and listings.
RECESS traveled across the entire country visiting 9 campuses this Fall where they hosted Shark Tank-style Pitch Competitions, speaker series, and pop up villages where students could meet and connect with brands. The winning team from each of these campuses and 6 teams elected through an online application advanced to an all-expenses paid excursion to Los Angeles for a once-in-a-lifetime-opportunity to take their ideas from the dorm room to the board room.
The Field Trip is a startup summit weekend of networking events, educational sessions, and opportunities to interface with prominent investors, mentors, and advisors from the LA startup community that culminates in them pitching 13 of the top Silicon Beach Venture Capitalists, investors, and brands.
“Coming from a company founded on an idea sketched on a cocktail napkin, we’re inspired by these young innovators and what their ideas can hold for the future of customer experience,” said Heather Figallo, Southwest Airlines Senior Director of Product and Innovation. “As the Travel Sponsor of RECESS, we’re excited to provide these students the opportunity to travel the country pitching their big ideas.”
Only one team of entrepreneurs will win this week. But it's clear that these 15 bright college startup teams are winning on campus and in their fields.
Want to meet even more Under 30 entrepreneurs? Check out the 2016 30 Under 30 here in Forbes.
