And the Winner Is…

24 Apr 2019

And the Winner Is…

Blueland cleans up at 2019 New Venture Competition

Re: Gina Pak (MBA 2015); Jayon Wang (MBA 2018)

Topics: Career-Awards Business Ventures-Business Startups Entrepreneurship-General Competition-General Education-Business Education Education-Campus Life

Photo by Susan Young

The finale of the 2019 New Venture Competition yesterday saw 12 student and alumni teams compete for some $315,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. As noted in the HBS News story on the competition, grand prize winners of the student business, student social enterprise, and alumni tracks each won $75,000.

Claiming both the alumni grand prize and crowd favorite awards was Blueland, which is “(t)aking the weight and waste out of your everyday products” through reusable bottles and concentrated cleaning tablets. “We’re starting with cleaning products,” CEO Gina Pak (MBA 2015) told the NVC crowd, “but the idea here is to really take over your home—and we have innovative, patent-pending form factors to do it.”

The $25,000 runner-up prize in the alumni track went to X-Cor Therapeutics, represented by Jayon Wang (MBA 2018), which has developed a medical device to help treat lung failure.

Wednesday’s finals were the culmination of seven regional alumni competitions around the world that featured 152 teams. As the HBS News item notes, the more than 200 judges included “many HBS graduates, from fields such as venture capital, private equity, law, accounting, philanthropy, impact investing, and social entrepreneurship.”