(L-R) Luke Blazek ('25) and Brian George ('25) hold the ACC InVenture Prize Competition’s People’s Choice Award trophy
In a startup competition billed as the “Battle of the Best Student Entrepreneurs in the Atlantic Coast Conference,” University of Notre Dame juniors and Routora co-founders Luke Blazek and Brian George knew they had their work cut out for them at the InVenture Prize Competition in late March. Not only would they be pitted against student teams from across the ACC, but the final pitches would be broadcast live on PBS during prime time.
Making matters even more vexing, the student entrepreneurs would have just two minutes to present their companies to the judges. There would be no timer either. When time was up, presenters would be cut off, even in mid-sentence.
Says Blazek, “That was the last thing Brian and I wanted. Since we were both presenting, we had a lot of practicing to do.”
The ACC is well known for the caliber of its sports competitions, with a fair share of national championships among legendary schools like Clemson, Duke, Notre Dame, and the University of North Carolina to name a few. The InVenture Prize competition was different. The undergraduate student teams would meet and mingle over three days, March 25-27, on the campus of Florida State University in Tallahassee. Although camaraderie was the theme, in the back of everyone’s mind was winning the $30,000 in prize money.
In addition to the first and second place prizes, the competition would also award a People’s Choice Award. Knowing how tough the competition would be, Blazek and George weren’t taking any chances. The prize money would help them continue to scale Routora, an AI-driven route planning app and website that generates faster, more cost-efficient multi-stop routes for Google/Apple Maps and Waze users by finding the fastest sequence of stops. With over 40,000 users from 90-plus countries, more capital would help Routora accelerate user acquisition.
They decided their road to victory—and prize money—was the People’s Choice Award. Their strategy was to enlist the Notre Dame faithful. All they had to do was get enough people to send in their code…
George explains. “We had a very specific amount of time to get out the vote. We knew other schools had huge student bodies to vote for them. Our secret weapon was the Notre Dame alumni network; nothing rivals that. We also planned to rally students, faculty and friends.”
The first person Blazek and George enlisted for help was Dolly Duffy, executive director of the Notre Dame Alumni Association. Duffy shared Routora’s People’s Choice Award code and information on the ACC pitch competition with the entire alumni community, encouraging them to vote. Says Blazek, “This made a considerable difference for us. We got so many messages from alumni rooting for us.”
They also reached out to Caroline Gash, managing director of the IrishAngels investing group. She, too, put Routora’s code out to her network. Their advisor, Alessandro DiSanto, co-founder of the Hallow App, worked his network on their behalf. Their professors also shared their message and voting link, including George’s professor in London where he was studying abroad.
To muster Notre Dame student support, they did a Snapchat story that generated 4,000 views. A story in the student newspaper, The Observer, created more buzz. They scraped LinkedIn for Notre Dame contacts and emailed students. Blazek and George even created a link so people could click and vote for them in seconds.
Smiles George, “We made it really easy for people to vote for us.”
When the duo arrived in Jacksonville for the actual competition, things got serious and pitch game faces came on. On the first day of the competition, the student teams met individually with the InVenture Prize judges for 10-minute interviews. “Routora stuck out from many of the other student startups because of our business plan and the fact that we’ve generated more than $18,000 in revenue with no paid marketing. The judges were also impressed that we have built three products in-house in under two years,” Blazek says. “This compared to teams still in the ideation stage.”
Buoyed by the first interview, Blazek and George went into the final live, two-minute pitch sweating bullets. “I think we practice our pitch 50 times a day. We even went to the bathroom ten minutes before we went on stage to practice one last time to make sure we had our timing down,” George says.
The practice paid off. “Luke and I hit our timing perfectly. No pauses, no disruptions. All perfectly timed,” George says.
When the winners were announced, the Georgia Tech team took first and the University of North Carolina team took second. The People’s Choice Award went to none other than the University of Notre Dame team of Blazek and George of Routora.
Winning the ACC InVenture Prize People’s Choice Award was a thrill for Blazek and George who credited ingenuity and school pride. “It was not just a Routora victory,” Blazek says. “It was a victory for the entire Notre Dame community.”
Adds George, “This was the first time Notre Dame has won the People’s Choice Award at the InVenture Prize competition. We were competing with schools with large student bodies, but the Notre Dame network came out on top!”