Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

The latest edition of the Fly! Mocs Business Pitch Competition, hosted by the newly renamed Max Fuller Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC), has awarded $10,000 to six student start-ups.

Rizwaan Abdulkadir, who is now pursuing a master’s degree in electrical engineering, captured first place and a $5,000 check from the Spencer Patton Foundation, which contributed all of the prize money. The winning idea was Parleii, first conceived as a class project during Abdulkadir’s senior year at UTC as a computer engineering student. The start-up offers pre-assembled circuit boards and a custom software platform to help students and instructors practice safer and more streamlined lab work.  

1. Second place and $2,500 went to rainipak, a student team consisting of Knox Brashier, Amber Briggs, Sydney Brooks, Ainsley Gillespie, and Apryl Johnson. Their product—a waterproof crossbody bag with built-in umbrella storage—is designed to make it easier for students to get to class on rainy days without having to carry a wet umbrella into class.
2. Connor Mackey received third place and $1,000 for customduckmaker.com, a platform where users can generate and 3D print artificial intelligence-created duck models. Mackey has more than 123,000 downloads on MakerWorld and said the tool is aimed at creators who want to “design ducks like me in minutes with no 3D design software.” 
3. The remaining three competitors earned $500 each for their presentations. They were: (a) Pearson Smith and Harrison Faulkner for The Wellness Stage; (b) Carter Ramthun for Field Locker; and (c) Ana Morris for Foodies. 

Spencer Patton, a Tennessee native and founder of multiple successful companies, served as one of the judges for the competition. 

“The Fly Pitch Competition tries to stand in the way of the ‘build it and they will come’ mentality,” Mike Bradshaw, CIE Director, said. “We’re trying to turn guesses into facts.” 

Bradshaw said that the Fly Pitch competition encourages students to test their ideas early, talk to real customers, and figure out what actually works before investing time or money into building a business. 

“Getting up on stage, thinking your way through a problem, articulating a vision, persuading people and presenting real evidence—it creates something in a student’s mind that I don’t know how you get any other way unless you’re out there pitching in front of investors,” he said. 

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