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IntuiTap Medical, a Houston-based medical device company was awarded $50,000 as the winner of the 2017 Texas A&M New Ventures Competition (TNVC) hosted by the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Thursday on the Texas A&M University campus.

Intuitap is developing a medical device that helps physicians more accurately and efficiently place spinal needles for epidurals and spinal taps. They provide physicians with real-time imaging of the vertebrae along with needle guidance to help them successfully place the needle on the first try.

“The competition this year was extremely hard. Coming into it I was saying that it was probably the hardest competition that I’ve been in,” Jessica Traver, CEO and co-founder of IntuiTap said. “But our product is very relatable. Every woman in the audience who’s ever had a child knows how terrible epidurals are, every husband who’s ever watched their wife have a child knows how terrible they are, so it’s a very relatable device.”

According to the judges, three teams stood out from the rest, but separating the three from each other was a difficult task.

“This was tough,” said judge Mike Wilkinson of Paragon Innovations. “We rotated them a lot, and if we were here another hour we might have had a different winner, but Intuitap had a really cool medical device, they have a clear path to market and their presentation today was really good.”

As proof of how close the top group of teams were, there was actually a tie for second place between Houston-based Otricath, which is developing a novel catheter, and Austin-based Shower Stream, an internet of things smart shower aimed at saving hotels money.

According to M. Katherine Banks, vice chancellor and dean of Texas A&M Engineering and director of TEES, the event was another good example of the emphasis on entrepreneurship at Texas A&M.

“Entrepreneurism is the cornerstone of the Texas A&M Engineering program,” said Banks. “We support this competition to help our faculty, students and researchers take great ideas and move them into the marketplace.”

The competition was open to Texas-based companies seeking to bring new or enhanced technology to the marketplace, and required the companies in the pre-seed/seed, start-up or early growth stages to pitch their ideas to judges that included angel investors and venture capitalists, experienced entrepreneurs, non-profit founders, legal professionals, patent experts and banking/investment professionals.

The companies were previously selected from a larger pool of applicants prior to the event. As part of the competition, participants received personal coaching and access to mentor strategists as they developed their competition business plans and presentation pitches.

“This year’s group of finalists are our most diverse and complex group of technologies to date,” said Dimitris Lagoudas, deputy director of TEES. “The fact that this competition continues to grow and have real impact is a testament to the innovative and entrepreneurial ecosystem we are building at Texas A&M for the benefit of the state of Texas.”

Mays Business School was also instrumental is putting together the competition.

“Mays Business School takes very seriously its sustained commitment to support entrepreneurial excellence fueling innovation and collaboration across local, state, national and global economies,” said Blake Petty, director of the Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship at the Mays Business School. “In that respect, we are proud to partner in and support the Texas A&M New Ventures Competition, the distinction this program bestows on its participants and its celebration of entrepreneurial success for societal benefit.”

With more than $250,000 in total prizes, the pool for the competition was the largest in the three-year history of the TNVC. In the first two years, the TNVC awarded more than $400,000 combined. In 2016, a $50,000 top prize went to REEcycle, a Houston-based company reclaiming rare earth elements from recycled electronics. In 2015, $50,000 cash and $50,000 in investment from the Texas Emerging Technologies Fund went to Noninvasix, which is using patented optoacoustic technology to develop a solution for the safe, accurate and noninvasive monitoring of fetal welfare during labor and delivery.

“The Division of Research is extremely proud to be a sponsor of this year’s Texas A&M New Ventures Competition,” said Vice President for Research Glen A. Laine. “Emerging technologies and innovations enhance the quality of life for the state of Texas and its citizens, as well as for people across the nation and around the world.”

The 2017 TNVC was made possible by Texas A&M University, TEES, the Texas A&M Division of Research, Mays Business School, the Texas A&M Health Science Center, Texas A&M Technology Commercialization, the TEES Clean Energy Incubator and the Texas A&M College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences. Sponsors for the event included the 80/20 Foundation, Fluor, Pioneer Natural Resources, Winstead Attorneys, Wells Fargo Innovation Incubator and Fujifilm Diosynth Technologies. In-kind sponsors included TMC Innovation, Innovate CXO Services, BioTex, Aggie Angel Network, Pioneer Natural Resources and Winstead Attorneys, AM Innovation Center and Ramey & Schwaller.

Full list of winners:

1st – $50,000 – IntuiTap Medical

2nd – $35,000 – NHC, Inc. (Otricath)

2nd – $35,000 – Shower Stream

4th – $15,000 – Clear River Enviro, Inc.

5th – $10,000 – Thermascape Technologies

6th – $5,000 – Fortis Biosciences

Elevator pitch competition:

1st – $5,000 – GuidaBot, LLC

2nd – $3,000 – Sensytec

3rd – $2,000 – Resthetics

Additional prizes:

TMCX investment prize + accelerator admission – Resthetics

TMCX Accelerator admission – GuidaBot

InnovateX/RVF Prize – Shower Stream

Cleantech Prize – Wells Fargo/TEES Clean Energy Incubator – Claridge-Culp

Ramey & Schwaller IP Legal Services Prize – Fortis Bioscience

Biotex Investment Prize – IntuiTap Medical

Amerra Visualization Services Prize – Thermascape

AM Innovation Center Prize – Thermascape

At over $250,000, the 2017 Texas A&M New Ventures Competition will have the largest prize pool in the three-year history of the event.

The prizes for the overall pitch competition are as follows:

1^st – $50,000

2^nd – $35,000

3^rd – $25,000

4^th – $15,000

5^th – $10,000

6^th – $5,000

An additional $10,000 will be given out during the elevator pitch competition, with $5,000 going to the winner, and $3,000 and $2,000 going to second and third place, respectively.

An additional prize pool, totaling more than $100,000 including valuable prizes for clean technology and healthcare companies, will be distributed based on specific criteria as decided by event sponsors.

The 2017 Texas A&M New Ventures Competition finalists will be pitching their companies to an impressive lineup of judges. The judges will decide the winner of the overall pitch competition, with the winner receiving $50,000. More details on the total prize distribution, the largest in the three-year history of the event, will be announced next week.

The 2017 finalist judges are:

William E. Cohn, M.D.

Dr. William E. Cohn is a vice president of medical devices at Johnson & Johnson and the director for the Johnson & Johnson Center for Device Innovation at the Texas Medical Center. He is also a professor of surgery at Baylor College of Medicine and an adjunct professor of bioengineering at Rice University and the University of Houston. Prior to joining Johnson & Johnson, Cohn was the director of the Cullen Cardiovascular Research Lab at the famed Texas Heart Institute (THI) and the director of Minimally Invasive Cardiothoracic Surgery at THI. A native of Houston, Cohn received his medical school education, general surgical training and cardiothoracic surgical training at Baylor College of Medicine, where he served as the last chief resident of the legendary heart surgeon Michael E. DeBakey. After graduation, Cohn spent 11 years on the faculty of Harvard Medical School and as an attending cardiothoracic surgeon at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

Ashok Gowda, Ph.D.

Dr. Ashok Gowda is a founder and CEO of a Houston-based medical technology developer and manufacturer, BioTex Inc. Under his direction, the company has raised over $20 million to date in non-dilutive funding, successfully licensed numerous early-stage technologies, spun out two separate commercial stage companies, both of which successfully raised private capital. At BioTex, Gowda oversees internal development programs as well as partnering activities, where the company works with other entrepreneurs and startups to develop and bring novel medical technologies to market. Previously, Gowda co-founded and served as chief operating officer at Visualase Inc., which was acquired by Medtronic in late 2014. He is an active investor, advisor and board member for a number of early-stage medical technology companies. Gowda has served as principal investigator on more than 15 National Institutes of Health grants, authored more than 50 peer-reviewed publications and abstracts, and is an inventor on more than 20 issued patents.

Casey McNeil (2016 Texas A&M New Ventures Competition Winner)

Casey McNeil is the CEO and founder of REEcycle, a rare earth recycling company utilizing intellectual property developed at the University of Houston. McNeil has spent the past five years focused on maximizing the useful life of the electronics we use, including the materials within them. In 2010, he left Houston to become the third member of iCracked, a Y-Combinator backed, Silicon Valley based startup. After a stint with iCracked, McNeil decided to begin his own venture, Vendera Mobile, focused on managing the lifecycle of large mobile device deployments for enterprise clients. It was his background in both companies that led to his founding of REEcycle in 2013. To date, REEcycle has received $1.15 million in funding from awards and grants, and is currently in the process of building the pilot facility that will set the foundation for a commercial production facility in late 2018.

Robert Shaddox

Robert Shaddox is the chair of Winstead’s Intellectual Property Group, and co-chair of the firm’s University Industry Group. Shaddox has litigation experience in a wide range of substantive areas and forums, with a focus on intellectual property (patent, trademark, copyright, trade secret and unfair competition). His experience further includes infringement and validity analyses and prosecution of patents in nanotechnology, the mechanical, electro-mechanical, electronic, chemical composition, medical device and software arts, and trademark, copyright and foreign patent applications and prosecution, as well as technology transfer and transactional licensing of patents, copyrights and trademarks. Shaddox has also served as an expert witness on patent prosecution and validity, and on reasonableness and necessity of attorney fees for intellectual property matters.

Graham Weston

Graham Weston is an acclaimed technology entrepreneur, real estate developer, philanthropist and civic activist based in San Antonio. He co-founded Rackspace, a leading cloud computing company, which recently sold for $4.3 billion. His family owns the Weston Centre, the premier office building in downtown San Antonio. He is working to make the urban core of the city more attractive to startups and to the educated young, including through his real estate firm, Weston Urban, which is building the new Frost Bank tower downtown, and a new residential and commercial corridor along San Pedro Creek. Weston also founded Geekdom, a co-working space for startups in downtown San Antonio, and the 80/20 Foundation, which supports STEM education and entrepreneurship. 

Michael R. Wilkinson

Michael R. Wilkinson leads Paragon Innovations’ business strategy and vision, product design and development, and customer relations. Since its inception in 1990, Wilkinson and his team have grown Paragon into one of the nation’s leading providers of product development and engineering services. Customers include 3M, B.Braun Medical, Hitachi, Matsushita, Motorola and Siemens, among others. Wilkinson is founder and chief executive officer of Kewl Innovations Inc. With more than 25 years of hardware and software experience in embedded systems design and development, he created the vision for Kewl Innovations and has led the design and development of the prototype Kewl products. He is a member of the advisory council of Texas A&M Center for New Ventures and Entrepreneurship and serves on the industrial advisory board for Texas A&M’s engineering technology and industrial distribution department.