i.Lab at UVA Incubator Participants Give It Their Best Pitch

The 10-week 2017 startup incubator program at the i.Lab at UVA recently culminated in its annual final pitch night. Nearly two dozen founders distilled the essence of their ventures into two-minute descriptions and made an “entrepreneurial ask” of nearly 100 members of the University of Virginia and Charlottesville entrepreneurial ecosystem in attendance.

The W.L. Lyons Brown III i.Lab, an initiative of the Darden School of Business Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, houses the incubator each summer, offering entrepreneurs from across UVA and the community the opportunity to engage with a group of entrepreneurs and mentors as they develop a business idea.

In addition to a record number of applicants and ventures in the incubator this year, the program incorporated effectuation, the powerful entrepreneurial thought process pioneered by Darden Professor Saras Sarasvathy, as a curricular platform to enhance the skills of the 2017 cohort.

The cohort included a wide variety of ventures from a variety of sectors, including technology, food services and consumer goods, among others.

Read about the new ventures in the 2017 i.Lab Incubator on the i.Lab at UVA blog.

Watch the 2017 i.Lab final pitch night.