Family Weekend 2020: ‘Cuse Tank Competition

The annual ‘Cuse Tank competition, part of Family Weekend 2020, will feature 20 student teams pitching to successful entrepreneur judges. “Sweet Sixteen” semi-finalists and four “Wild Card” teams will compete in the Syracuse style “Shark Tank” competition over Zoom. The event is sponsored by the Blackstone LaunchPad and Techstars at Syracuse University Libraries.  Judges will award $10,000 in prize funding through a gift to SU Libraries from Todd Dagres, co-founder and General Partner of Spark Capital.

A distinguished panel of judges who are members of the “LaunchPad family” will narrow down the “Sweet Sixteen” field to the “Final Four” who will pitch for the prize package.  A celebrity judge for the “Final Four” round will be Josh Aviv ’15 G’17 who is appearing that same evening at 8 p.m. on the season premiere of ABC’s Shark Tank. Other judges include key members of the LaunchPad innovation ecosystem: AJ Damiano ’18, co-founder and CEO of PowerSpike; Mike Gursha ’10, chairman and CEO of Rookie Road and LaunchPad Entrepreneur in Residence; Corey Lieblein ’93, Founder/CEO of CP8 Capital and LaunchPad Entrepreneur in Residence; Kathi Durdon, executive director of the CNY Biotech Accelerator at Upstate Medical University; Amy Fazackerley, founder and CEO of Lay-n-Go: Victoria Lawson ’20, founder and CEO of Weird &  Woke Design; James Bason, president and CEO of TruFund Financial Services; Mike Smith ’12 G’13, founder of Scrappy Capital and consultant at Venture Fuel; Alec Gillinder ’20 and Quinn King ’20, co-founders of MedUX.

Interested in watching the Zoom event?  E-mail LaunchPad@syr.edu