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It’s a wrap – CU Boulder’s 2024 Sustainability Hackathon results are in: five teams walked away with a share of $10,000 in prize money for proposing viable solutions to sustainability issues. During the weeklong competition, a record number of 20 teams worked around the clock to ideate, develop ideas and prepare pitches.

Solving problems and making an impact

2024 Winning Teams

This year’s winning teams addressed a variety of sustainability concerns:

First Prize ($3,000) – Good Watt

• Solution: A device that helps consumers monitor and reduce energy waste.
• Team members: Talha Ather, Hudson Curtis, Samir Dherar, Nabil Djaber, Nathan Mahary, Mohamed Mohamedali and Zuhair Rao.

Second Prize ($2,000) – SAGA

• Solution: An app that supports sustainable product purchases while reducing carbon emission in deliveries and returns.
• Team members:  Siddharth Mathur and Marisha Parikh.

Third Prize ($1,000) – Peak Energy

• Solution: A gamified app to help consumers reduce energy usage in their homes.
• Team members: Matthew Nelson, Renner Skidmore and Alex Stelzer.

Additional Prizes:

TaskerBee Prize ($3,000) – TaskerBee Team

• Solution: An AI chatbot that can perform customized, administrative tasks on behalf of human resources and operations managers.
• Team members: Camdon Frisco, Oscar Gonzalez, Preston Rogers and Hamed Sidiqyar.

1000 Gretas Prize ($1,000) – Mallard Energy

• Solution: A modular solar energy storage system.
• Team members: Ben Partee, Walter Richard and Cooper Wathen.

This annual event provides the opportunity to “hack” or come up with a clever approach to resolve a concern (such as energy waste or purchasing products sustainably) and develop an innovative solution to address the problem. Participation is open to students, faculty and staff, who have 168 hours to form teams and focus on building out an impactful idea.

Throughout the course of one week, teams work closely with industry partners and technology and startup ecosystem leaders, who share business expertise and offer guidance. Participants attend workshops, meetings and pitch practice sessions in advance of submitting video pitches to a judging panel of industry and academic leaders. Teams are scored on multiple criteria including creativity, execution, design thinking, feasibility and scalability. The top three teams are invited to pitch live for judges and the audience at the Grand Finale, where winners are announced and prizes awarded.

Establishing a footprint

The Sustainability Hackathon started as a way for students to learn design thinking and gain agile development experience and has grown into a much-anticipated annual event. Over the past two years, participation and event attendance more than doubled, with team members coming from multiple disciplines.

Members of the CU Boulder community participate too, helping support the Sustainability Hackathon through financial and in-kind sponsorships and offering time and talent as workshop leaders, mentors or competition judges.

“It is exciting to see the continued growth of the Sustainability Hackathon,” said Stan Hickory, director of CU Boulder’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative. “We have students coming together from across the campus and multiple universities to develop solutions to real sustainability problems. And none of this would be possible without the support of our sponsors, mentors and community partners.”

This year, community partner Taskrbee offered a “Bounty Project,” a special opportunity offered by an industry partner that includes a cash prize awarded to a team that creates a viable solution. The Taskrbee Team is focused on the development of an AI-powered platform for sustainable HR onboarding. Companies interested in discussing potential Bounty Projects should contact Hickory at hickorys@colorado.edu.

Stepping up to the New Venture Challenge

The Sustainability Hackathon is a stepping stone to the New Venture Challenge (NVC). Ranked 15^th among U.S. collegiate entrepreneurship competitions, NVC is the heart of CU Boulder’s entrepreneurship engine. NVC startup teams pitch for hundreds of thousands of dollars in funding and attend year-round events – such as the Sustainability Hackathon – while networking and collaborating with mentors to refine ideas. Registration for the 2025 New Venture Challenge is open until Feb. 8.

Looking ahead

While the Sustainability Hackathon happens once a year, there are plenty of opportunities to ignite  innovation and creativity. Stay up to date on details, events and programs, and learn more about support ing real-world impact and problem-solving by joining the .

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Six startup teams will vie for up to $100,000 in prizes at the 12th annual New Venture Challenge (NVC), CU Boulder’s premier entrepreneurial startup competition.

A record number of 146 ventures took part in this year’s competition, which kicked off in September 2019. In the months since then, faculty and students from every corner of campus have explored their ideas, technologies and passions with an eye on reaching the Championships—and maybe even beyond.

In February 2020, all teams competed in Round 1 and panels of community judges selected the top 30 to compete in Round 2. Competition was fierce and six teams were selected in Round 2 to ultimately compete in the Championships:

• Darwin Biosciences — developing a saliva-based diagnostic called SickStick that can detect if you are sick before you develop symptoms
• DocForge — helping software teams of any size write and maintain fantastic technical documentation
• EdBoard — offering circuitry education kits that are fun, accessible, and backed by education research
• Frenz — a phone accessory that lets people discreetly test their drinks for date-rape drugs
• Mycobacteria Therapeutics — introducing next-generation probiotic strains to the supplement industry targeting mental health
• Soulutions — developing an assistive device for people with Parkinson's Disease

“We’re extremely excited to advance to the NVC 12 Championships,” said Jackson Roberts, co-founder and CEO of DocForge and a junior majoring in computer science. “We’re grateful to be included in a group of such interesting and unique startup ideas. Until then, we’re focused on polishing our pitch, improving our product and getting the word about DocForge out.”

Getting to the NVC Championships was always a goal for Zayna Pieper, CEO and Founder of Frenz and a senior majoring in Engineering Plus with a concentration in mechanical engineering. “I had the privilege of watching the NVC 11 Championships in 2019, and the spirit of innovation that seemed to emanate from the stage was something I wanted to be a part of,” said Pieper.

Due to the circumstances of COVID-19, Round 2 took place remotely on March 12 after NVC track leaders, faculty, staff and judges helped pivot the event successfully from in-person to live video within 24 hours.

“Remote pitching for Round 2 really represented that spirit of innovation I had seen at last year’s Championships event,” said Pieper. “It was a team of NVC supporters who found a way to achieve all of our goals of safety and entrepreneurship without sacrificing either.”

Social Impact and Women’s Prize Night Results

The NVC 12 Social Impact Prize and Women’s Prize competitions were held on March 3 and 5, respectively. Ventures that had a socially-conscious/sustainable business model and/or at least one female founder were eligible to compete in these pitch competitions for additional prizes. 

Social Impact Prize:

• 1^st Place: TerraWear ($5,000) — helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint by curbing their clothing waste
• 2^nd Place: Frenz ($2,000) — a phone accessory that lets people discreetly test their drinks for date-rape drugs
• 3^rd Place: EmergenTek ($1,000) — creating an automated fire truck ladder controller called “The Fifth Man” that increases rescue efficiency

Sustainability Prize: FED ($2,500) — a food product for the mass market which utilizes food waste and circular economy principles

Vanessa Frye, Josh Sheetz and Tess Stevens— all graduate students in CMCI’s Strategic Communication Design master’s program—co-founded TerraWear in an Entrepreneurial Design course. The team, with encouragement from course instructor Jesse Weaver as well as industry mentors, sought to challenge themselves by competing in NVC.

“Being socially conscious was very important to all three of us when creating this business,” said Frye. “We hope that by tackling the clothing waste crisis and our society’s overconsumption problem, we will encourage sustainability and show people how easy it can be to help heal the Earth.”

Donna Merten, a graduate student majoring in Environment, Sustainable Food Systems and founder of FED, echoed Frye’s statements of being constantly challenged throughout the competition.

“I have been an entrepreneur for 20 years, but I had no idea how rigorous the process would be moving through the various stages of NVC,” said Merten. “I utilized many resources from multiple departments across campus to help move my company along and receiving feedback at each stage of the competition helped me better define my final product.”

• 1^st Place: Simovations ($5,000) — developing CathPort, which is a novel bladder catheterization device that eliminates tubes, bags, and many of the complications of current catheterization methods
• 2^nd Place: Elevated Eats ($2,000) — a sustainability-focused, healthy baked goods business featuring CBD and Eastern herbs
• 3^rd Place: EdBoard ($1,000) — offering circuitry education kits that are fun, accessible, and backed by education research

Sarah Hecht is the founder and CEO of Simovations, a pediatric urology fellow at Children’s Hospital Colorado at CU Anschutz and a CU Boulder continuing education student. As a newcomer to the CU Boulder community, she continues to be “overwhelmed by the collaborative and vibrant energy that pervades the innovation community on campus.”

“Winning the NVC 12 Women’s Prize has been the most humbling and validating experience in this startup journey,” said Hecht. “I am aware of the high failure rates of medical device ventures, but having access to the CU Boulder and greater Boulder entrepreneurial community gives me confidence that we can realistically bring CathPort to market.

NVC 12 Championships Moving to Virtual Format

Because of COVID-19, the  will also be moved from in-person at the Boulder Theater to a livestream format on Tuesday, April 7 starting at 5:30 p.m. More information regarding the NVC 12 Championships will be available soon and plans are subject to change.

“This will enable our hardworking NVC 12 finalists to compete for up to $100,000 in prizes as planned without endangering public health,” said Chris Gustavson, Director for CU Boulder’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative. “As we navigate this time of uncertainty, we are dedicated to providing a top-tier NVC experience as well as continued support to our CU Boulder entrepreneurs and innovators.”

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