The University of Notre Dame’s 25 Startups From 2020
To qualify as a Notre Dame startup, the initial business or invention disclosure must undergo a rigorous vetting process.
| Startup | Short Description | Founder(s) | Startup Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aopia Biosciences | A high throughput, low cost biomarker technology. | Nan Su | Faculty |
| AskYourDoc | AskYourDoc is an Alumni telemedicine company building a Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) communications platform used for Urgent care & Follow-up visits. Ask Your Doc is designed from the clinicians’ perspective with one purpose - to deliver the best care for patients. | Connor O'Rourke | Alumni |
| Bee Brand | A clothing brand that donates 10% of all profits to bee and pollinator charities. | Keian Gatewood | Student |
| Bumbleroot | Bumbleroot bridges the gap in the food industry between regenerative agricultural farmers and consumers looking for ways to eat cleaner and healthier, all while contributing to the fight against climate change. Bumbleroot is a multi-category, CPG company focused on promoting regenerative agricultural practices through their food and beverage products and content. | Sara Andrews | Alumni |
| Dandy | DANDY makes the party experience easy and friendly. Create events and share moves with friends and squads. | Isabel Bolanos | Student |
| Debtly | A debt management app that lets users consolidate and pay all of their accounts from one place. Americans paid over $100 billion in credit card interest and fees. With the use of artificial intelligence, users will never overpay for their debt again. | Daniel Jimenez | Student |
| Digital Leader Academy | External (B2C) training platforms for blockchain development are not adequately preparing developers for blockchain jobs. Hence, blockchain developers usually get trained on blockchain technology after being hired. These internal training methods are proving to be inefficient for blockchain employers because high learning curves extend training time and costs. We want to provide a virtual blockchain bootcamp to help prepare developers for blockchain jobs and shorten the training time for employers. | Ellen Joyce | Student |
| ENTRYLEVELBOSS | ENTRYLEVELBOSS is an online school independent career services, in the form of structured classes; tips, templates, and tutorials, and phone chats to recent graduates and job seekers. With a proprietary 9-step method, it helps job seekers refine their resume, pitch, networking strategies, and explore employment opportunities to pursue a career of their choice. | Alexa Shoen | Alumni |
| Expressive Woodworks | To bring custom woodworks to Notre Dame students, Notre Dame alumni, and the greater South Bend community. | Jeff Riney | Student |
| FloWaste | If food waste was a country it would be the 3rd largest greenhouse gas emitter in the world, with 1/3 of food produced for human consumption being wasted. While this cronic misuse occurs, 11% of the worlds population is severely undernourished and we have entered a climate crisis. FloWaste aims to gather data on food waste and derive recommendations to allow the user to make changes, reducing their food waste and consume food more sustainably. | Rian Mc Donnell | Student |
| FOREager | The first peer-to-peer golf equipment rental marketplace. FOREager's platform will solve numerous challenges related to golf travel, while expanding the game's market by diminishing barriers to entry. By removing dependencies on inventory and shipping, FOREager will employ a lower cost structure than competitors and consolidate their value propositions into a single solution. | Forrest Riddle | Student |
| GittaSitta | GittaSitta is an app that allows parents to seamlessly organize and schedule their babysitting contacts. GittaSitta removes the hassle of the constant back-and-forth waiting game associated with coordinating a babysitter (especially at the last minute). With GittaSitta, parents can rank-order a list of possible sitters, specify the date, time, and preferred pay rate, and send out the request. The system will reach out to each individual in order until a match is achieved. Sitters will be allotted a certain window of time during which they can easily communicate their availability. | Lilian Piz | Student |
| Kinetic Brewing Company | A nootropic enhanced cold brew coffee. Used to solve the problems that come along with heavily processed pre-work out drinks. | Nicholas Wilt | Student |
| Leadworx | A website visitor identification system. Our software allows marketers to identify who visits their websites and provides them with their name, company and other information.Website visitors can be synced to a CRM system and included in a marketing funnel, therefore increasing lead generation. | Alex Fishleder | Student |
| Lumos Health | The Lumos Health team has designed a pair of light therapy glasses to treat Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD), a type of depression that is related to changes in seasons. The glasses use special lenses to reflect the light shined from a source in the arms of the glasses so the glasses appear to be almost identical to normal eyeglasses, allowing for comfortable use in public areas with no fear of judgement. | Lingfeng Tao | Student |
| Miracle Essential Oils | A premium quality essential oil startup founded by a Notre Dame alumni. The company gained quick traction via online advertising and email lists that allowed them to reach over $9 million in revenue their second year. By not following the current industry standard business model of MLM and free trial subscriptions MEO can develop its brand into an asset for future acquisition. | Brock Gallagher | Student |
| Mission Hire | Mission Hire is an executive recruiting tool that leverages AI to measure a candidate's fit for the vision of the organization. | Bill Keneally | Faculty |
| NXSTEP | For the prospect, who needs an alternative to the tedious, expensive and confusing traditional college research and touring process. NXSTEP is a web (and application) based service that provides an unmatched method for prospects to learn more about colleges in a way that is inexpensive, organized and personalized in order to prevent them from attending a University that does not meet their wants and is incompatible with who they are (Hence a college transfer rate of over 35%). Unlike the traditional college research/tour process, our product will offer: ● A feature that allows for a high school student and a college student (algorithmically matched by personality, interests, major, etc..) to communicate about the school (that the college student is attending) in a comfortable, unstaged, and open-minded virtual environment. ● A highlight reel that allows prospects to see what college students consider “highlights of the school” (presented in images with a short caption) ● Statistical information and all of the important information about the school in one convenient space. (Information will be presented according to wants, interests, extracurriculars, study interest, etc.. of the high school student) ● A ranking system that allows prospects to filter all of the non-useful NXSTEP mentors out of the service ● A way to learn more about a school and how it fits the prospect in less time for a fraction of the cost. The plan is for NXSTEP to be viewed and utilized as the “norm” when prospects are apply to and deciding which schools to apply to or attend. "" | Edozie Ezeanolue | Student |
| PWR | Currently, young female elite athletes do not have a proper training program geared to their physique, which causes injury and bad habits as they progress in their athletic careers. Because most gyms, training regimens, and personal coaching is tailored to a male’s body, female athletes - especially at a young age - are learning habits that can cause serious implications to their success as an elite athlete. PWR provides training programs and coaching tailored to that of a female athlete's body, PWR is setting a foundation for young female athletes to establish healthy physical and mental habits to excel in their athletic careers. | Phoebe Tzannes | Student |
| Santa Calls | The decline in malls has taken with it the staple of every child's Christmas holiday: the Mall Santa. Even in our digitized world, belief in Santa among the youth has not declined, yet, to turn a kids imagination into reality, a parent must lug their children to a mall--which they never visit--wait in lines that average a couple hours, and then pay $30-$50 for a picture with Santa. Santa Calls will infiltrate market gaps through providing an easy service for parents to request a video call from Santa Claus himself while getting a video memory of their exchange for a price well below market standards, $10. The application works by pairing verified, contracted Santa Clauses with requested calls--think Uber just for Santa Clauses. | Gregory Miller | Student |
| Sciath (ChainTrail) | ChainTrail is a way of mining transaction data from a blockchain, decoding that data, and formatting it in a way that allows sophisticated analytics in an analytics-first database | Ian Taylor and Jaroslaw Nabrzyski and Andrey Kuehlkamp | Faculty |
| STUDIA | I want to create a website that helps students in science classes better prepare for their tests, and that helps professors design better tests. Rigth now, students use textbooks or old assigments to study for tests but it would be much better for them to be able to have access to thousands of problems with step-by-step solutions. Right now there are very few databases with solved problems in science and they are very expensive.The solved problems for my website will be provided bya network of graduate students in science all over the world (who would be paid to do this task). | Sebastian Murgueition | Student |
| Terravigil | Terravigil will be a software application that provides a visually stunning view of the earth as if viewed from space, depicting major weather patterns and time of day throughout the world. The application will integrate weather and astronomical data, overlaid on real satellite imagery to provide a simulated real-time view of the earth. The intent is not only to provide weather and astronomical data, such as sunrise/sunset times, tidal data, and moon phases, but also to inspire interest in space and a greater world view. Terravigil will allow users to view the globe on their iPad, stream to a TV, or set as a device background, so they can always access an inspiring and informative view of the world's weather. | Ryan McNamara | Student |
| Tradelasts | Tradelasts’ mission is to create memories by establishing a community of trusted vacation homeowners. Recognizing the tireless efforts of physicians and medical responders in this pandemic,Tradelasts has pivoted their business model to match vacation home owners with medical personnel to provide these first responders and their families a free vacation stay as a gift of gratitude for the care to our communities they selflessly provide. | Pier White | Alumni |
| Yoke | YOKE is a 2-sided marketplace that allows fans to interact with their favorite celebrities through live video chat in their mobile device. We are about to start beta testing and hope to launch within the next two months. | Mick Assaf | Student |
For more information about these startups, please contact Nick Swisher at 574-631-2984 or nswisher@nd.edu.