Stories & Updates

Horn Entrepreneurship is excited to announce all of the accomplishments and successes of our community of creative thinkers, trailblazers and world-changers this quarter.

Students

Sierra RyanWallick and Michelle Yatvitskiy’s zero waste upcycling startup UP Cycle partnered with The Warehouse for teens by teens for a project educating underprivileged youth in sustainable design and entrepreneurship.

Juniors Jack Dubecq and Peter Coker launched their late night golf cart transportation service Doobie Ridez in September and formed a marketing deal with Lang Development. 

Grants

TRIC Robotics founder Adam Stager won the Swim with the Sharks pitch competition on Oct. 20, earning a $10,000 grant from the New Castle County Office of Economic Development’s NCC Innovates initiative.

NERDiT NOW was selected as the winner of the 2020 Reinventing Delaware award by the Pete du Pont Freedom Foundation for their innovative solutions to technology accessibility issues, taking home a $2,500 cash prize.

White Dog Labs, a startup biotechnology firm founded by UD alum Bryan Tracy that produces an alternative single-cell protein for food applications received a new round of funding from Omani venture capitalists to support the renovation of their new Minnesotan manufacturing plant.

The Female Food Foundry founder Lily Wolfe was selected as a semi-finalist for the Aussie Business Plan Competition, receiving a grant of $1,000 and a Roo Crew Fellowship position.

Faculty

Julie Frieswyk, Assistant Director, Youth Programs, was named to the Delaware Business Times's Women in Business 2020 list.

Dr. Yushan Yan’s business W7 Energy was named as one of the 10 Most Promising Companies by industry experts at the 18th Annual and First Virtual Edition of the Rice Alliance Energy Tech Venture Forum.

Stephanie Raible, along with her co-author from CSU-CI, was awarded the Best Ethics Case Award from the North American Case Research Association (NACRA) for their case, "Go Baby Go: Scaling a Social Movement Around Mobility".

Matthew Saponaro, Ph.D., CEO/Founder of A.I. Whoo, was named a finalist for the New Castle Chamber of Commerce 2020 Small Business Awards in the Rising Star in Business Award.

Alumni

360VR Technology co-founder Sury Gupta and A.I. Whoo CEO & Founder Matthew Saponaro were speakers at the 3rd Annual Delaware Entrepreneurial Summit, a high impact virtual summit built around an emphasis on business growth, recovery and connection in Delaware.

Lauren Graupman was placed as an operations analyst with Knight Aerospace as part of her Venture for America Fellowship, a 2-year program for recent college graduates looking for work at a startup.

Carvertise made this year’s Inc. 5000 list, one of only 11 companies from Delaware to make the cut. The business came in at #1,270 on the magazine’s yearly ranking of fastest growing private companies.

Recent graduates Abu Kamara and Hope Vega launched the website for their startup Potluck, a grocery delivery service for ethnic foods.

UD-founded TRiC Robotics was featured on the cover of Vegetable and Specialty Crop magazine for their work developing the use of UV-C light as an alternative to pesticides in collaboration with the USDA.

TRIC Robotics founder Adam Stager; Second Chances Farm founder Ajit George, and Lignolix CEO and co-founder Eric Gottlieb were all finalists for the 8th annual Swim with the Sharks pitch competition on Oct. 20.

Garry Johnson III made an appearance to talk about First Founder’s Accelerator on Divergent Unicorns, a podcast created to give advice and provide actionable steps to people that have been typically underrepresented (Black and Latinx) in fields related to Technology, Startups, and Venture Capital.

Second Chances Farm was named the Technical.ly Business of the Year as nearly 3,000 individuals voted in the 2020 Technical.ly Awards.

About Horn Entrepreneurship

Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the US, Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.