Companies
Winners announced at UCSC Business Design Showcase
By Sonya Newlyn
UCSC CIED
April 21, 2016 — Santa Cruz, CA
(Photo above: Sponsor Kamil Hasan, left, presented the first-place award for Raven by Reflex Robotics to team members Enes Mentese, Zubeyir Mentese, and Seongdo Kim. Contributed.)
“For the Reflex Robotics team, winning the UCSC Business Design Showcase has provided us with an incredible opportunity to validate the market interest in our upcoming robotic cameraman system; Raven. We are incredibly grateful to UCSC for enabling us to showcase our product to the silicon valley market. The interest that we received from winning this award has given us proof that we are on to something big. Now, with the help of UCSC, we are gearing up to head over to the worlds largest robotics fair in Germany, Hannover Messe. We are excited to bringing Raven to an international audience!” — Enes Mentese, Founder & CEO, Reflex Robotics, Inc.
This year’s Business Design Showcase competition organized by the UC Santa Cruz Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Development (CIED) featured 16 entries from either individual students or teams led by UCSC graduate or undergraduate students.
A panel of entrepreneur judges selected first, second, and third place winners, after which all competing businesses displayed their product or service prototypes and gave their pitches in an open-forum reception. Attendees voted with their “Slug Bucks” seed-funding money for the People’s Choice Award. Serial entrepreneur and UC Berkeley Haas Business School instructor Naeem Zafar gave the keynote address at the event, held on April 12 in the conference space of TiE Silicon Valley.
The winning teams are as follows:
First Place ($4000):
Raven by Reflex Robotics, presented by Enes Mentese, founder, CEO, and lead hardware engineer; Abdo Babukr, cofounder and lead embedded systems engineer; Seongdo Kim, cofounder and lead software engineer; Brent Bucci, public relations & marketing; and Zubeyir Mentese, marketing, testing, and business development. Using Nvidia’s Tegra X1, Raven is the world’s first wearable, AI-powered robotic cameraman. Paired with a GoPro camera, Raven locks on, tracks, and captures footage of any moving object without having to touch the camera.
Second Place ($3000):
Transcripter, by Arnaud Gallardo and Teo Fleming, cofounders. A voice-recognition web site, Transcripter interprets and transcribes business meetings in real-time. Featuring several languages, Transcripter is compatible with a wide variety of users, offers multiple log-in options, and requires minimal setup.
Continue reading article here: http://news.ucsc.edu/2016/04/business-design-winners.html
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Tagged CIED, UC Santa Cruz
