AVriculture and Tube Access Point win 2 spots at SLU's Real Elevator Pitch Competition

12/12/2014 Preena Patel

Written by Preena Patel

MechSE graduate students Samantha Knoll and Brian McGuigan (right) with Alex Kreig (left), a PhD candidate in bioengineering.

Congratulations to AVriculture’s Samantha Knoll and Alex Kreig, and Tube Access Point’s Asha Kirchoff, Mallika Modak, Divya Tankasala, Amelia Johnson, Stephanie Slania, and Ravi Chandra Yada for becoming finalists in this year’s SLU Real Elevator Pitch Competition. The SLU Real Elevator Pitch Competition is held in one of the tallest buildings in St. Louis. In this competition, each finalist will travel up 40 floors and has approximately 30 seconds to pitch to a group of judges. When the doors open, the contestant must exit the elevator and move on to the next elevator to pitch to a new set of judges. If the judges are impressed with the pitch and are interested in hearing more, the contestant is given a business card. After all of the pitches have been given, the contestant with the most cards wins $2,500 for their entrepreneurial idea.

After placing 4th place out 113 teams in TEC’s 2014 Cozad New Venture Competition, Knoll and Kreig decided to continue pursuing their idea. Knoll and Kreig initially were interested in the competition because of its unique forum through which to pitch ideas as well as the opportunity to receive feedback after pitching from a variety of potential investors.

Tube Access Point was developed in a competition this past summer at the Coulter College competition. After winning first place, they decided to continue their idea for their senior design class. In the hopes of continuing the development of their idea, their team decided to participate in this competition which would allow them to get in contact with industry experts that can advise them.

Alex and Samantha created AVriculture to help farm owner/operators regularly understand the state of their land as well as allow them to more efficiently distribute resources.

Tube Access Point is a medical device that aims to reduce IV tube entanglement. Their mission is to minimize the occurrences of tubing disconnections and misconnections while increasing line traceability for clinicians.

Knoll states, “We are excited to have the opportunity to participate as finalists in the competition, and look forward to building connections through it as we continue to build our business.”

Good luck to AVriculture and Tube Access Point in this weekend’s competition!


Share this story

This story was published December 12, 2014.