News & Events

The TechCelerator@State College Announces $10,000 Winner!

State College, PAOn Tuesday, May 24, 2016, the BF TechCelerator@State College awarded a cash prize of $10,000 to a graduate of its latest Business Startup Boot Camp for Entrepreneurs. The event, which was attended by other budding entrepreneurs as well as potential investors, highlighted the business startup presentations of six entrepreneurs who had gone through a ten-week program targeting tech startups. Each spoke about the market they planned to enter, the problem their product or service solves, and how their idea will make money for them and future investors. A team of judges from the local community made the final decision on the winning presentation. The winner, Joel Edelstein with Triglyph, developed an energy-efficient, smart lighting system for use in the film, TV, and photography markets. The presenters included:

  • Jack Chernega with AbDisc developed a Wearable-Tech device that specifically addresses the serious health issues caused by “Sitting Disease”.
  • Amit Sharma with DeZI developed a smart phone application capable of creating supply chain links between local farmers and food retail establishments.
  • John Stogin with Scribble Online developed a drawing app that allows multiple users to write on the same virtual page and talk to each other through VoIP.
  • Beth Kirchgessner with Sights LLC developed an easy to use card pack that allows teachers and parents to provide more effective instruction for the first 200. most common “sight” words.
  • Matt Woods with X Materials Processing developed a low-cost metal 3D printing system with multi-material processing capabilities.

Guests participating in a Pennsylvania Angel Network meeting at Innovation Park attended the graduation event of the Ben Franklin TechCelerator followed by a networking event. The Pennsylvania Angel Network is an organization serving the angel investor community in Pennsylvania. Attendees represented ten different angel investor groups including Blue Tree Allied Angels, Robinhood Ventures, Delaware Crossing and Lehigh Valley Angel Investors. The angel investors came to Innovation Park to learn more about BFTP/CNP and the Invent Penn State initiative.

Don McCandless, Director of the TechCelerator, commented, “For the past ten weeks, all the participants gave it their all!  This process is not an easy one and we consider everyone who get to the end a winner. Everyone did a great job, and I’d like to applaud the collective effort. Congratulations to our grand prize winner.”

For more information:

Don McCandless /TechCelerator@State College
www.techceleratorstatecollege.org
814-865-2040 /dlm74@psu.edu