Food Tech Idea Wins Chicago’s Startup Competition: MBA News

An idea to advance healthy, yet quick, cooking through the use of technology has won first place in an annual startup competition held at Chicago Booth’s Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation.

Maestro picked up a total of US$70,000 in prize money at the New Venture Challenge (NVC) for a business plan centered on a cooking implement for the home that promises to prepare meals in 30 minutes using an approach that has been likened to Keurig’s coffee makers. 

The winning team behind Maestro featured a number of members of this year’s graduating MBA cohort at Chicago Booth, including David Rabie, who spoke of the value a business school’s network can offer those with entrepreneurial aspirations:

 “The network that Booth opened up gave me and my team lots of credibility. Even in advance of us having a project, being part of Booth and the NVC lent us that credibility,” Rabie said.

Winners grateful for guidance from Chicago Booth professor

Enrollment in the startup competition amounts to taking a single-semester course involving faculty coaching and, in this respect, Rabie was quick to give credit to Chicago Booth professor, Waverly Deutsch:

“Waverly’s class helped us forecast and shape what our business plan might look like going forward,” he said. The cofounder told the Chicago Tribune that his team now plans to further develop Maestro before taking it onto crowdfunding platform, Kickstarter, in six to eight months’ time. 

All students at the University of Chicago were eligible to enter the startup competition, as long as teams included at least one graduate student. Indeed, the NVC final in which 10 shortlisted teams presented their business plans came at the end of a university-wide innovation week. However, many of the entries came from Chicago Booth, where entrepreneurship is said to have grown to become the largest single concentration.

For instance, there was also a strong Booth MBA student presence in the team behind NETenergy - a thermal energy storage (TES) company and one of two runners up in the NVC, each of which was rewarded with US$30,000 in prize money.

Launched almost two decades ago, in 1996, the University of Chicago’s annual startup competition also has a separate category for startups focused on social impact and financial sustainability, known as the Social New Venture Challenge (SNVC). The winning team in this category (which featured a master’s in public policy student at the university) was BallotReady, an online guide that aims to make people better informed about candidates, policies and the power of their vote ahead of local ballots. They received US$30,000 in prize money for their efforts.