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The Dartmouth
March 29, 2024 | Latest Issue
The Dartmouth

DALI and DEN partner to host The Pitch event every term this year

Students sit outside the Paganucci Lounge in the Class of 1953 Commons to raise awareness and funds for Nepal.
Students sit outside the Paganucci Lounge in the Class of 1953 Commons to raise awareness and funds for Nepal.

The Digital Arts Leadership and Innovation Lab and Dartmouth Entrepreneurial Network are currently accepting applicants for The Pitch for the spring term. This year marks the first during which the event will be held each term.

The Pitch gives students, faculty and staff the opportunity to present their ideas for start-up concepts in two-minute presentations before an audience and a panel of judges for the chance to win up to $3,000, DALI Lab executive director Lorie Loeb said.

“Anyone in the Dartmouth community can pitch their ideas -— any idea big or small, whatever stage it’s in,” she said.

Loeb said that now that the DALI Lab is partnering with DEN to co-sponsor the event, they can hold The Pitch every term.

“We wanted to try it to see how it went, and we’ll see and then reassess how that’s gone and whether it makes sense to have three,” she added.

New venture incubator programs director Jamie Coughlin said that the program has proven to be successful so far, adding that the program has afforded students the time to prepare their ideas for presentation. DALI and DEN will continue to hold The Pitch every term, excluding the summer term, and build it as a core program of the DEN Innovation Center, he added.

Loeb said that they wanted to give students on off-terms the opportunity to apply and compete as well.

She added that she thinks it has been a successful event so far, citing the fact that some winners from last term are still working on their projects in the DALI Lab and others have received additional funding. For example, ArtxChange founder Katherine Crane ’16, who was one of The Pitch’s first winners, went on to receive an inaugural Stamps Scholarship for her project.

Some projects, such as the BusMe project from fall 2014, are not as successful as anticipated, Loeb said. She added that experimentation and development are parts of the process for students and that ideas that are less successful provide the opportunity to take their pitches to the next level.

Loeb said that she hopes that people will apply for The Pitch regardless of where they are in the process of developing their idea, because she believes that having to pitch their project in a two-minute presentation forces participants to understand what their goals and needs truly are.

“The people who pitch, whether they win or not, always tell us what a great experience it was,” she said.

She said that the quality of the pitches has improved over the course of the last three sessions, and past judges have been impressed by the diversity and quality of pitches.

Marina Plesons ’15 and Amanda Zieselman ’15 were winners of The Pitch last term for their project PeDDTB, which aims to address inaccuracies in pediatric tuberculosis treatments and on which they have been working since last spring.

Zieselman said that they reached a position where they wanted to present their idea in a more public forum.

“It was a really great exercise with speaking and preparing a short pitch about such a complicated project,” Plesons said.

Zieselman said that she thought it was a valuable experience as it provided an accurate idea of what a pitch presentation would be like in a real-world setting.

Plesons said that it was a great opportunity to hear about other projects from students.

“You rarely get to have avenues of hearing about individual projects outside of classes, and we thought that was one of the most special parts about participating in the pitch,” she said.

They said they felt The Pitch has impacted their progress and has helped them on the fundraising path.

Zieselman said that they plan to incorporate as a non-profit and hope to pursue their project full-time after graduation.

Shannon Carman ’17, another former winner of The Pitch, received $2,500 to build water filters to remove arsenic from groundwater.

She said that the money has been helpful in building prototypes and added that taking part in the competition was rewarding simply because her team had the opportunity to practice delivering their pitch.

She said that holding The Pitch every term would give more people the opportunity to participate and learn to present their ideas to an audience.