Students Compete in Inaugural Shark Tank–like Pitch Competition
board game that reimagines the classic strategy game Mancala. An app that helps people with common interests find each other and meet up. A blueprint for college students wishing to launch their own in-dorm nail salons. A high-protein ice cream bar for athletes. An app that enables friends to trade restaurant reviews. Another app that helps users get up in the morning. And finally, a freshwater fishing rod that addresses the design flaws found in others on the market.
Those were the products presented to judges at Vassar’s first-ever Entrepreneur Pitch Competition, held on campus Spring Semester in the College Center and hosted by the Vassar Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VIE) Program. The top prize of $2,500 was awarded to Lissus Murataj ’27 for his “RinRod” fishing pole. Cher Mei ’26’s “Cher Studio” beauty salon won the $1,000 second-place prize, and the “Lunch Box” restaurant review app designed by Tanish Pradhan Wong Ah Sui ’26 received the $500 third prize.
The competition had a Shark Tank format: Each participant was given 10 minutes to make a pitch, then fielded questions and comments from the four judges. In addition, those who attended the event were given stacks of fake cash which they “invested” in projects they liked after chatting with the participants. Cher Mei’s project attracted the most “cash,” making her concept the audience choice for the “Most Invested” award.
Murataj drew high praise from judges for “RinRod.” He designed a mechanism for feeding the line from the reel through the hollow fiberglass rod that made it much less likely to become tangled. He prototyped the rod in Vassar’s Innovation Lab and secured a patent earlier this year. “Everything about this product addresses the problems I had fishing as a kid,” he told the judges.
Ellen Rudnick ’72, Senior Advisor on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provided the cash prizes for the event and watched it on Zoom. She was impressed with Murataj’s pitch. “You have to be able to tell your story in order to raise money, and he did a great job,” Rudnick said.