Winners of Baiada Center Incubator Competition Announced

Winners of Drexel University’s LeBow College of Business Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship Incubator Competition were announced on June 2 at the Laurence A. Baiada Center for Entrepreneurship’s annual conference held at World Café Live in Philadelphia.

Six teams, comprising Drexel undergraduate and graduate students and their colleagues, competed to win space in the Baiada Center Incubator and other prizes for their startup operations.

First place was awarded to Outplay Technologies, led by Dylan Kenny from Drexel’s College of Engineering for his Gamer Glove concept. According to Kenny, “The Gamer Glove is a custom gaming input device. Instead of using the standard keyboard to input controls, the player uses the custom buttons conveniently located on gloves in conjunction with a foot-pad to control virtually any PC game faster and more conveniently than with standard keyboard operation.” In addition to space in the Incubator, he receives $10,000 to be used to defer Baiada Center training and incubation fees and to provide initial seed funding for the business, and $34,500 in-kind support to be used to cultivate the startup such as strategic marketing support from Hunter, financial strategy consulting from ACM Advisors, and legal services from John Pauciolo of White and Williams.

Symetrix Orthopaedics took second place. The team, comprising LeBow College of Business MBA students Doug Cerynik, Michael Adelizzi, Brad Grossman, and Mark Seltzer, created technology that provides quantitative, reliable and reproducible patellofemoral force data to clinicians prior to closing the knee during surgery. The team was awarded space in the Incubator, $8,000 for Baiada Center training and incubation fees, and $16,500 in in-kind support, including communications support by Communications Services & Support and legal services by James B. Dougherty.

Third place was won by Donna’s Designs for Floptopz, a “fun and comfortable insole product for flip flops or sandals,” led by David Hill of LeBow College of Business. He also receives space in the Incubator, $6,000 to be used to defer Baiada Center training, offered by SevenOaks Capital Associates, and $5,000 of in-kind support by ThreeZero Communications, which will provide three months of communications counsel to the company. 

In addition to the student presentations, the annual event featured a keynote address by Christopher Cashman, founder, president and CEO of Protez Pharmaceuticals, and a panel discussion led by Baiada Center Executive Director Mark Loschiavo; Thom Elicker, visiting lecturer in accounting at Elizabethtown College; Bruce Kaminsky, president, Kidd Products and Drexel adjunct professor of music; and Bob Wilson, vice president of sales at Disc Makers.