On May 6th, 2022, our top semifinalists across the East Bay Area competed at the 2022 FulPitch Challenge, presented by Eden Area ROP and Chabot College. The challenge asks youth to come up with innovative and impactful solutions to solve near-and-dear challenges present in their local communities and the world.
This year, hundreds of students collectively formed 128 teams across the East Bay Area to compete in the FulPitch Challenge. There were a wide spectrum of ideas consisting of the following sectors.
Majority of solutions (32%) targeted the sustainability sector (e.g. clean water, energy, etc.), followed by innovative solutions advocating for career-readiness and workforce development (16%) and Finance/FinTech (16%). Other popular sectors included food & beverage (12%) and health and wellness (8%), followed by automotive (4%), lifestyle (4%), and women’s empowerment (4%).
Of these teams, 26 teams advanced to the semifinals. Over two rounds of intensive screening, industry experts, educators, and also top former entrepreneurship students from competing schools evaluated student ventures on their impact, innovation, efficacy, and more. From these top 26 teams, our judges selected 7 finalists:
- Once Upon A Curl (Ariana Jackson, Niyah Harvey; San Leandro High School)
- Dear Cupid (Lizbeth Garibay; Arroyo High School)
- Dream It Achieve It (Alexia Arca-Boyadijan; Hayward High School)
- Roll ‘n Roll out (Jaxon Bashaw; Hayward High School)
- Leafs (Jonathan Martin, Kassie Manasan; San Leandro High School)
- H2Woah (Joshua Ponce; San Leandro High School)
- Tennyson’s Coffee Shop (Leonel Molina Romero; Tennyson High School)
And the finalists are…
Seven top teams emerged to compete in the final round, and among them, Once Upon A Curl won the Chabot Eden Area Innovation Award, and Dear Cupid won the Fulphil Social Impact Award.
Once Upon A Curl
Once Upon A Curl was founded by Ariana Jackson and Niyah Harvey as a solution to created to solve the problem that many Black girls have with insecurity and low confidence in their natural hair because of toxicity and texturism in the curly hair community. The founders set out to create Once Upon a Curl as an answer to provide all people with naturally curly hair with hair care products that are healthy and allow them to wear their natural hair and feel confident in it.
As the founders stated in their pitch, “We not only want to create hair products but we also want to create a community and unapologetic generation of girls with curly hair who are proud and happy with who they are.”
Once Upon A Curl also has the chance to participate in Chabot College’s business plan competition.
Dear Cupid
Meanwhile, Lizbeth Garibay from Arroyo High School won the Fulphil Social Impact Award. Dear Cupid was one of the top honorable mentions from the competition leading up to this, the Fulphil-Chabot Idea Challenge. The Fulphil-Chabot Idea Challenge was meant to serve as an onramp to help students flesh out their ideas and receive initial feedback to iterate their business ideas in preparation of this final Chabot FulPitch Challenge.
Dear Cupid is a company that aims to solve the problem of anxiety. It is estimated that 17.9 million people have diffuculty using their voices and 42% cite shyness or introversion as the root cause. Dear Cupid is bringing back a safe “pen pal” letter writing system to help individuals overcome shyness and introversion.
Other top semifinalists from the competition included the following:
- Herencia Jewelry (Naneth Gileta, Andrea Morones; San Leadro High School)
- Delicious Sweets (Matthew Perez; Tennyson High School)
- G&J Feminine Products (Jazmine Casillas; Tennyson High School)
- Conflicks Photography (Connor Tuloch; Arroyo High School)
- The Boba Lab (Alden Chi; Arroyo High School)
- Animals for Sustainable Societies (Shuai Zhang; Arroyo High School)
- Jeilene’s Dessert Store (Jeilene Cedeno; Mount Eden High School)
- Starsweeper Stuffies (Madison Torbik; Arroyo High School)
- ThinkWrite (Noah Sicat; Hayward High School)
- Decide Your Career (Danna Beltran; Tennyson High School)
- WICK (Naiomi Alba; Hayward High School)
- Monit-us (Ryan Mani; Tennyson High School)
- Turtle Shell (Turtle Shell; San Leandro High School)
- Incognito (Alex Huang, Chianne Wong; Castro Valley High School)
- Falk Financial (Nick Falk; Hayward High School)
- Uva (Noah Monterroza-Sanchez; Hayward High School)
- League Anatomy (Jose Ocon; San Leandro High School)
- Tartarus Trades (Brian Lin; Arroyo High School)
- Electric Solar Panels (Gervin Quip Sep; Tennyson High School)
