Winners of LaunchPad's 2024 Ideas Fest

Sept. 26, 2024, 3 p.m.

student winners holding up giant checks in front of LaunchPad

The Blackstone LaunchPad hosted its largest event on record since its inception in 2016. Ideas Fest, the annual LaunchPad student innovator competition, was held in Bird Library on September 13, 2024. More than 120 student teams registered for the first competition of the semester, with team winners from across campus. Student teams delivered a 90-second ‘elevator’ pitch on their entrepreneurial idea to a panel of judges, and winners received nearly $25,000 in cash and in-kind prizes. The competition is designed to put early-stage funding into founders’ hands to help offset startup expenses.

There were nearly 100 people registered to watch the competition, many of whom were attendees of Coming Back Together, the Black and Latine triennial alumni reunion on campus.

Student winners of 2024 Ideas Fest included:

Ideas Fest judges included subject matter experts, many of whom were SU alumni:

About Syracuse University Libraries’ Blackstone LaunchPad

The Blackstone LaunchPad is Syracuse University’s innovation hub, connecting the campus resource-rich ecosystem with a global network that provides support for aspiring entrepreneurs, inventors and creators. The program serves faculty, staff, students and recent alumni across all disciplines who are interested in entrepreneurship, venture creation and innovation careers. The program supports a key pillar of Syracuse University’s academic strategic plan to give students experiential opportunities that help prepare them to be trailblazers in an entrepreneurial world.

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