On April 1, the Hamilton community gathered virtually to celebrate Jeremy Mathurin ’16 and his business partner Scott Burke as they won Hamilton’s 2022 Pitch Competition for their startup AABix: the BixBox. Mathurin and Burke will take the winning prize of $20,000 and legal services from the Brown Rudnick firm back to Cornell University where Mathurin is pursuing his MBA.
The annual Hamilton Pitch Competition, which is open to Hamilton students and graduates of the last decade, is an involved process from September through April. Eight start-ups participated this year, attending conferences on the ins and outs of entrepreneurship hosted by a variety of alumni. In December, each start-up was assigned two alumni mentors who guided the teams through the pitch-making process before they submitted their final pitches for review by a panel of alumni judges. Three pitches were then nominated to attend the finale.
Pitch Competition
Check out all eight startups and watch as they pitched our judging panel.
Designed for use by property managers, the BixBox is a small device that connects to the internet via Wi-Fi or cellular service. When placed around a home, it can sense potential maintenance-based threats and then sends the user real-time updates. The user can view all potential issues on the BixBox interface.
The judging panel appreciated Mathurin and Burke’s pitch and recognized the strong business partnership between them. “You guys were great, and we love the way you interplay with each other. Jeremy is a brilliant speaker, and Scott shows a deep understanding of the product, so we really enjoyed that interplay of strengths,” said judge and emcee Samantha Skey ’94, CEO of SHE Media.
The title of runner-up, along with $5,000, went to Ben Parfitt ’19 and Jack Hay ’19 for Reiform, a software product that would make training artificial intelligence easier and more accurate. Parfitt and Hay noted that data scientists “spend over 66% of their time on data cleaning and analytics and performance monitoring.” Their software recognizes errors in information received by a machine before the machine can learn the wrong cues.
Harry Dubke ’19 and his colleague Perry Griffith took third place and $2,000 for Cortado, a real estate service that would connect colleges and their students to urban housing in locations such as Washington, D.C., New York City, and Barcelona. Cortado’s goal is to provide every student with a safe and comfortable study abroad experience.
The decision was not easy, however, and the judges admired the quality of all three pitches. “I thought it was a phenomenal evening; you guys all did a fantastic job. It was just absolutely baffling that at this college and post-college level these kinds of pitches are created,” said judge Aaron Sanandres ’96, CEO and co-founder of UNTUCKit.
In addition to Skey and Sanandres other judges included Greg Schwartz ’94, CEO and co-founder of Tomo; Michael Tennant ’04, founder, writer, and movement builder; Greg Thomas ’85, CEO and co-founder of The Jazz Leadership Project; and Rachel Weiss ’93, partner, bold corporate venture fund, L’Oreal Americas.
