A team of five juniors at Marist High School in Chicago will receive up to $10,000 toward developing the product they pitched recently in their Innovative Design for Entrepreneurial Applications honors course.
The young men came up with OmniShake – a leak-proof container designed to smoothly mix drinks, such as those that use protein powder. And they’ve already discussed how to use the prize money.
“We plan to spend the $10K on our first order, which will be about 1,500,” said team member Colin Vucko. “That’s going to leave us with some change to play around with. We might spend some on targeted ads, website development, but the first thing is getting some cups.”
The money is provided by Marist, but it comes with stipulations, explained Tim Mulcahey, a 1993 Marist alum who has taught the IDEA class for two years after a 25-year career in software startups.
“We don’t just give the kids a check for $10,000. They communicate any legitimate business expenses up to $10,000, and Marist will pay. So these guys are working with a supplier and an attorney,” he said. “We give them full license – we don’t guide them. They will make their own decisions, but they have to be legitimate business expenses.”
Second-place team VitaBomb, which provides a fizzy way for children to take daily vitamins, received $5,000. They are seniors Eva Dawczak, Kate Donegan, Maddie Berry, Michael Fortner and Rorey Donnelly.
Rise Button is a smart wake-up device that aims to get users to move before they hit the snooze button. Juniors Joey Hughes, Ryan Lawlor, Jacklyn Pigatto and Sara Winters and senior Lily Yocum received a third-place prize of $2,500.
OmniShake team member Sean Carroll was surprised after the final pitch night presentations.
“They put Rise Button at third and it made me nervous because I thought the best ones were us and Vita Bomb. It made me kind of nervous,” he shared. “They said Vita Bomb was second and OmniShake was first, so I was low-key shocked.”
All 10 teams in the yearlong IDEAS class made pitches to a panel of four judges, who chose five teams for the finals. On the final pitch night, the judges were Footsteps2Brilliance founder and CEO Eugene Narciso, Bank of America Senior Vice President Alex Belan and Marist alum Kevin O’Finn, founder of Headphones+, who won the inaugural pitch night when he was a senior.
O’Finn won in 2017 “and within 13 months of winning and taking first place at pitch night, he had his product for sale on Amazon and Walmart,” Mulcahey said. “He won and then went on to Marquette (University). As a freshman, he was a guest speaker for the MBA program.”
The judges made an impression on the students. “I thought it was really cool we had actual CEOs and CFOs for our final judges,” shared Sameer Tadros of OmniShake. “They all gave us really good advice at the end of it, and their words of encouragement really helped us see as a team what could make us grow as a business into something major instead of starting small.”
OmniShake member Devin Feliciano said his favorite part about pitch night was being on stage with his team. “We were able to communicate well up there and make our slides flow pretty well,” he said, despite a malfunctioning clicker and the mic cutting out. “We sounded more confident because we had to talk loudly. I think it benefited our presentation.”
Each has a favorite aspect of the product, with Carroll appreciating it being leakproof, so it keeps everything in a backpack dry. Feliciano explained that the bottle has a funnel inside the cap that’s made of rubber, which helps prevent leaking. “It goes around the mouthpiece and it goes around the inside.”
Colin Vucko likes the measurement markings laser-engraved inside. “I like to know how much liquid I’m putting into my drink,” he said.
Tadros praised its stainless steel. “It’s more bio-friendly and safe for someone to drink out of,” he said. “There’s no microplastics from the stainless steel container.”
Danny Kelly said the best thing is its removable sifter. “Once you put the sifter in and put whatever powdered supplement and shake it, there’s no clumps and a smooth drink.”
Winning pitch night is not the end of the line for the team. “In the future, we’d like to try and partner with a CFS Gym because they’re local and only in Illinois. We also want to use TikTok and Instagram to market our company,” Kelly shared. “We also recently made a Shopify account so people can buy online.”
Preorders will be taken soon on the website, http://omnishake.myshopify.com, as the team works to create enough product to sell.
Students in the class are helped by mentors such as Jason Berta, who began teaching math at Marist four years ago after practicing patent, trademark and copyright law for 12 years.
“When most people hear the word ‘patents,’ they think that if they come up with a new idea that it’s theirs and it can be patented. It’s not that simple. Patents don’t protect ideas but rather new and useful inventions, and there’s a lot of details that go into whether, and to what extent, an invention can be patented,” Berta said.
“Also, patents are only one area of intellectual property that might impact our students’ innovations. I introduced them to trademarks, which cover branding issues, copyrights, which might apply to artistic, musical, and written works, and trade secrets.”
Other mentors also made an impression. “We had the (CFO) of Tuthill, Anthony Belmonte, come in and teach us about finance,” Kelly shared. “He helped us guide our (company). We also had Mr. Berta. … He told us the different patents we could use and how to start a patent.”
“It’s neat to have that subject matter expert in the building,” Mulcahey said.
“I use the framework of starting a business to help (students) develop soft skills,” he said of the IDEAS class, such as teamwork being persuasive, public speaking and “the ability to receive criticism, the ability to offer feedback.”
Mulcahey said he was proud of OmniShake and all the teams. “I asked them at the beginning of the year to treat this class not as a class but as if they were going to work. I thought everyone did a great job with that.”
He added that “Omnishake (the judges) thought was the team that would be the fastest team to get revenue,” and “two of the three judges asked if they could purchase or help fund OmniShake.”
Mulcahey provides judges with a rubric, “but ultimately what I ask the final judges to evaluate is the validity of the business idea and the effectiveness of the presentation,” he shared. “All five that presented on final pitch night were fabulous. … Last year, eight out of 10 teams (presented) an app, and this year only one team was an app.”
He explained that when the new class starts, he asks students to think of a problem to solve instead of trying to think of an amazing product. “I think the things the teams found bugged them had more to do with the physical work than an app. That is my guess.”
The course is one students will remember. “The overall experience of the class was amazing,” Vucko said. “I’m beyond grateful for the opportunity itself, and thank you to Mr. Mulcahey – he’s a great mentor.”
Melinda Moore is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
