THE STARTUP COMPETITION
Hosted by Office of Innovation
The best way to describe the Startup Competition to a passerby is as Biola’s version of Shark Tank. On Friday, April 25, 2025, 16 teams of student entrepreneurs, faculty, friends, staff and judges gathered in Moats (business 109) for the competition finals. These student teams have been working all semester with mentors and Biola Entrepreneurship Society (BES) in workshops to put together business plans and final pitch presentations to bring their entrepreneurial ventures before a panel of judges for a prize of $10,000.
The afternoon began with a welcome from MC’s freshman English major Asha Joseph and senior business major David Livingston and wisdom from the keynote speaker Loren Franklin, the CEO of Dutch Bros in West Valley, about what it truly means to succeed.
“My journey started with a lot of failure,” Franklin shared. “Young employees at Dutch Bros often assume that my path was just success after success after success, and that is just not realistic in life. I failed [in many ways]. If I had sat there and said ‘this is what my journey is,’ I do not think I would be here.”
After Franklin’s encouragement for young entrepreneurs to continue on through trials and triumphs, the teams were moved to three breakout rooms to pitch for a small panel of judges, who marked scores and narrowed it down to the top 10 teams. All 16 teams pitched at the semifinal rounds on Friday afternoon in the business building, including Learning Curve (Lucas Brown & Jaehee Koo), Vallz Edit (Sara Valladarez), Odyssey (Luke Pearson), SetSync (Caleb Wenz), Padago (Andy Hong) and Small World Co. (Gillian Doplemore & Izah Defigh). Afterwards the teams and audience returned to Moats to hear who made it to the finals.
These are the teams who made it to the top 10:
- Remembrance, by Josh Yoder & Andreas Johnson, a multimedia life documentary company
- PrankFamily, by Pierce Barrett, selling family prank kits such as fake DNA tests
- Eventure, by Joseph Hartono, Amadeo Margo and Emma Lee, a college campus app
- Sage, Sabrina Grace Obnamia, a Christian mobile game
- Misbehave, by Brahms Mulyawan, Ethan Arredondo and Violet Vanderkooi, a Creative Agency
- Barter, by Rachel Carlyle, a college campus trading app
- Forerunner by Mark Boudreau and Sam Ahn, a Christian Clothing Brand
- Mediscan, by Kierstin Havens, a multilingual medication care app
- Rebooked, by Micah Woodring, a campus marketplace app
- BamTech by Brant Kappes, sustainable bamboo apparel
Each of the finalists gave their five minute business pitch to a panel of five judges: Sylvia Kim (OSEA Angels, Founder and CEO of Rebel for Good), Loren Franklin (the CEO of Dutch Bros in West Valley), Bernie Mapili (Owner & CFO, Envy Labs), Mark Grunden (VP, Community & Church Partnerships, Faith Driven Investor) and John Russel (Investor). While the judges deliberated the top three, junior Audrey Seputra interviewed alumni Benjamin Chi about running a boba shop that is part of the Nobibi franchise with locations in Santa Ana and a recently opened location in Buena Park.
The finals concluded with the announcement of the top three winners of this year’s Startup.
In third place, receiving $4,000, was college campus app Eventure by Joseph Hartono, Amadeo Margo and Emma Lee. In second place, with a prize receiving $6,000, was life story documentary company Remembrance by Josh Yoder and Andreas Johnson. In first place, receiving the $10,000 prize along with an additional $5,000 as a STEM major was Mediscan by Kierstin Havens.
Judge Silvia Kim said of the contestants, “the judges were so impressed with all the different pitches and presentations, but to us, MediScan really stood out in terms of its startup viability [and] the way that you [Havens] want to disrupt the healthcare industry through the pharmaceutical channels but also your heart, in terms of integrating your vision with different languages and lived experience of what it is like to help people navigate the healthcare system. We found that it was disruptive, scalable, with a lot of potential. We’re excited to see a bright future for MediScan.”
The night ended in thanks and celebration, with snacks and a photobooth in the AI Venture studio with competitors and investors to wrap up student’s hard work and effort, investment and dreams put into action through creation, collaboration and community.
