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Washington State University Entrepreneurship

Business Plan Competition

Develop ideas, build a team, write a business plan, pitch your idea for real money.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 20 WSU COLLEGIATE TEAMS ADVANCING TO THE ZOOM PRESENTATION ROUND OF THE 2026 BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

Amplifi – We are building a personal finance platform that evaluates financial behavior—not just outcomes—to show users whether they are truly on track to build long-term wealth. By analyzing real financial activity across accounts, the product translates complex data into clear, plain-language insights about decision quality, risk balance, and progress over time. Acting as the missing judgment layer in personal finance—the equivalent of a credit score for wealth-building behavior—it replaces guesswork with clarity, confidence, and intentional action, so users understand not just what their money is doing, but whether they are making good decisions and what to change next.

Arvella Our AI – guided craft kits help millennial women who want to grow their creative skills by eliminating overwhelm and guesswork and enabling step-by-step progression with real-time feedback, unlike YouTube tutorials and standard craft subscription boxes that lack personalization, support, and skill development.

Dorato AI – AI-powered solutions for landscapers

DuraTread Roofing – provides moss-resistant, recycled rubber roofing for the Pacific Northwest that roughly doubles the durability of traditional asphalt shingles.

FliterFlight Tech – is enhancing how airports deliver clean, temperature-controlled air to airplanes on the ground. Pre-Conditioned Air (PCA) units, also called ground air units or carts, supply cooled or heated air to aircraft cabins before takeoff. This ensures passenger comfort, supporting crew operations, and reducing fuel use and emissions. Current PCA systems are often inefficient, hard to operate, and sometimes fail to maintain air quality or temperature. Our goal is to make PCA systems easier to use, more reliable, and safer for passengers and airport staff.

Meat & Potatoes – In fine dining, every detail matters; and so does every team member. Meat & Potatoes is dedicated to elevating training processes and strengthening communication within fine-dining operations to ensure service runs as seamlessly as the experience feels.

Miata Fitment – is an interactive 3D web app that lets Mazda Miata owners visualize and dial in their ideal wheel, tire, and alignment setup before they buy

Nadie’s Lab – a company that designs and sells Board and Video games. The launch game is a Western Strategy Board game that is both educational and fun, it features hand-drawn art and hundreds of hours of play testing.

Now We’re Cookin’ – Cannabis Infused Cooking Oil

Opulence AI – AI first solutions for residential contractors to run more efficient jobsites

RECOVR – is a clinical intelligence platform that gives addiction treatment providers continuous, objective insight into each patient’s recovery journey. By synthesizing physiological, behavioral, and self-reported data into transparent clinical intelligence, RECOVR helps physicians and counselors identify emerging risk, tailor interventions to individual patient needs, aiming to minimize dropout and relapse. As a SaaS platform, RECOVR shifts addiction treatment from systematic, visit-based monitoring to continuous, patient-centered care.

Sip N’ Roll – is a tech-enabled sushi bar that flips the script on traditional dining, combining build-your-own rolls, intelligent drink pairings, and late-night energy in one social space.

SoBar – is a non-alcoholic (NA) bar dedicated to creating an inclusive, all-ages social space where everyone can enjoy a high-quality, thoughtfully crafted beverage regardless of their drinking preferences

SORVY – turns invasive starfish using its porous structures into pH moderating cartridges for aquariums.

The Chila-Cup – Our concept reimagines chilaquiles which is a beloved traditional Mexican dish for the modern, on-the-go consumer. While chilaquiles have long been a staple of Mexican home cooking and sit-down dining, they have never been packaged and marketed as a fast-casual, portable meal option. We are pioneering that category. Customers can choose their base (red or green salsa), their protein (egg, chicken, or chorizo), and their toppings (crema (sour cream), cheese, avocado, and more) — all served fresh in a convenient to-go container designed to preserve the dish’s signature texture and heat. Think Chipotle’s customization model, but built around an entirely new dish that mainstream audiences are only beginning to discover. With the growing consumer appetite for authentic, culturally rich food experiences and the explosion of Mexican cuisine in the U.S. market, chilaquiles-to-go is positioned to become the next major fast-casual food trend.

The Flight Room – a restaurant-bar that offers drink flights of hand-crafted cocktails, as well as offering small food flights and brunch service.

The Hot Spot Cafe & Resto – the Hot Spot Cafe is a multi-functional cafe opening in Pullman, Washington! Students and members of the community can enjoy a hot latte in the morning, then in the evening, enjoy a craft cocktail and play games.

Unseen – is a decision-support app that helps people navigate major, unexpected life choices by making the emotional, financial, and lifestyle trade-offs visible so they can move forward with clarity and confidence.

VeriBreath – a completely accurate, noninvasive and privacy safe breathalyzer that can detect psychoactive drugs on site within minutes.

Viridian – house is a nature-inspired assisted living community that blends holistic care and wellness-focused design to create a healthier, more engaging experience — the senior living experience of the future.

ALTERNATE TEAMS:

Crateivity – subscription based “hobby of the month” delivery box with craft materials and instructions with a website that lets you share what you have made with other subscribers.

WasteLess – alternate an app/site that allows users to catalog their groceries/perishable items. The app will stay on top of upcoming expiry dates, suggest recipes/ways to utilize perishables before expiry, help formulate grocery lists based on user habits, and more. Uses a subscription model.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 4 FOSTER GARVEY OPEN LEAGUE TEAMS ADVANCING TO THE FINAL PRESENTATION ROUND OF THE 2026 BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

BioLegacy (Seattle University) – is redefining the future of organ transplantation by extending donor organ viability from 24 hours to years through a breakthrough in cryopreservation and rewarming technology. Our innovation, the Single-Mode Electromagnetic Resonance (SMER) system – patent-pending and developed by Dr. Shen Ren – delivers rapid, uniform, and non-invasive rewarming of vitrified organs, achieving up to five times higher post-thaw viability compared to the water bath, the current gold standard rewarming method in clinical settings. By enabling long-term organ banking, BioLegacy directly addresses one of the most critical challenges in transplantation: the loss of nearly 60% of donor organs due to limited preservation time. Our platform has the potential to reduce procurement and transplantation costs by up to 70%, vastly expand access to life-saving organs, and create a sustainable, efficient, and equitable transplant ecosystem.

BioStrive (The University of California, Los Angeles) – Emporia is an agentic AI platform that helps life sciences companies rapidly transform scientific evidence into traceable, compliant product claims matrices and commercial collateral, reducing manual effort, regulatory risk, and time to market.

OrbitPutt (University of Idaho) – To optimize golf performance via helping with high frequency training. Our key product, the Orbitputt, is an intelligent ball-returning device designed to fit comfortably in a standard golf hole. The device features a custom winged guard to help capture every golf putt, then automatically launch the ball back to the golfer’s putting position the moment it lands in the cup.

PlasmaX (University of Washington Seattle) – Ensuring food safety while meeting sustainability demands is a critical challenge that the global agricultural fresh-produce industry faces. Current chlorine-based washing systems raise serious environmental and health concerns due to chemical residue formation and disinfection byproducts. The industry needs sustainable alternatives that can achieve equivalent or superior microbial reduction without these drawbacks. However, despite nearly two decades of research demonstrating the antimicrobial efficacy of cold plasma technologies in laboratory settings, a significant gap exists between laboratory demonstrations and industrial implementation. Most existing plasma systems remain confined to batch processing, requiring expensive equipment or complex gas handling systems, and demand extensive modifications to existing production lines, making them economically prohibitive for small-to-medium enterprises. This gap prevents widespread adoption of plasma technology and leaves the industry without sustainable solutions that can integrate into existing workflows while maintaining cost-effectiveness and meeting food safety standards. PlasmaX has developed the world’s first industrial-scale continuous Plasma Activated Water (PAW) disinfection system specifically designed for fresh post-harvest produce processing. Our patented technology ionizes ambient air using a novel non-uniform electrode design in compact plasma reactors, generating reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS) including ozone, peroxide, peroxynitrite, and nitrates. These ionized gases are introduced into water through custom-designed venturi bubble generators that use pressure differentials to create self aspiration and microbubble formation, eliminating the need for external gas pumps or cylinders. The activated water, rich in antimicrobial RONS, is continuously produced and applied to fresh produce via an integrated conveyor system with adjustable residence times for different produce types. Our lab trials show substantial microbial reduction of upto 99.7%, while operating at remarkably low costs (less than $0.50 per ton of treated produce). Its modular architecture enables facilities to scale capacity by adding or removing plasma reactor modules without major infrastructure changes, making the technology accessible from small enterprises to larger industrial facilities. By eliminating chemical disinfectants entirely, PlasmaX aligns with global sustainability goals while delivering superior or equivalent food safety outcomes. The system has been validated through three peer-reviewed research papers published in leading food science journals, two provisional patents and two international food innovation conferences demonstrating scientific rigor and commercial viability. PlasmaX represents the future of sustainable food processing, ensuring food safety for the world.

Alternate team:

Credex (University of Idaho) – Up to 20% of gift cards go unused in the United States. In the United States 220 billion dollars of gift cards are sold every year that is a 44 billion year unused gift card market. We are building a platform that allow people to liquidate these unused assets.

CONGRATULATIONS TO THE 4 BELIEVE IN ME HIGH SCHOOL LEAGUE TEAMS ADVANCING TO THE FINAL PRESENTATION ROUND OF THE 2026 BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION

Backyard Butler (Sammamish High School) – an exterior cleaning business, that does roof cleaning drive ways and a lot more and puts it into one service so it would be one call to get it all done great for people who are about to move and all homeowners.

CS Optics (Mead Senior High school) – Sports Photography

DermaDetect (Bellevue High School) – My business is an innovative one-of-a-kind product named DermaDetect. DermaDetect is a small, wireless patch that monitors how your skin reacts to new skincare or cosmetic products, measuring pH, hydration, temperature, and redness. These are all signs of irritation or barrier disruption which can cause long term damage. The patch connects to a Bluetooth AI powered app that logs the products you use and flags potential irritants. Using the data, the app spots patterns in how your skin reacts, identifies ingredients that may be causing irritation, and recommends alternative products that provide similar benefits without triggering reactions. This way, users who once feared trying new products can confidently experiment with their skincare journey. This is your skin, decoded.

Sandwich Haven (Sammamish High School) is a rotating-menu sandwich shop that showcases global cuisines through seven sandwiches, combining simplicity, cultural exploration, and the excitement of limited weekly drops. The menu includes four permanent sandwiches and three rotating weekly specials. Over time, the permanent menu will expand based on customer preferences and the popularity of the rotating sandwiches. In addition to sandwiches, the shop also offers sides and beverages.

Alternate teams:

Bin fresh (Mead High School) – Trash can cleaning.

Nailed it – (Eastlake High School and Redmond High School) – is the eco-friendly beach and picnic blanket with built-in ground stakes that pin it in place and a shake-off design that sends sand flying, so your blanket stays put and stays clean.

Welcome to the 2026 WSU Business Plan Competition

Registration opens Wednesday, January 21, 2026!

If you’re a student entrepreneur or aspiring business owner, the Center for Entrepreneurship presents the WSU Business Plan Competition – an unparalleled opportunity to practice entrepreneurship in a real-world setting and receive guidance as you launch a new venture, plus a chance to win thousands of dollars in prize money! Submit your entry by clicking here – Register for BPC – or on the button above.

Deadline is Friday, March 13, 2026, to register. Executive Summaries are due by March 27, 2026.

The Center for Entrepreneurship is running the 2026 WSU Business Plan Competition in a hybrid format. Participating in a business plan competition is rewarding and we are excited to continue to encourage and showcase student innovation.

Learn by Doing

  • Sharpen skills. Working on a business plan team develops innovative thinking, builds leadership, and refines communication skills.
  • Network. If you’re a finalist, you and your team will present your idea to investors, entrepreneurs, and industry professionals at the competition in April. Finalists also have the opportunity to exchange ideas with judges over dinner.
  • Prepare for your future. Take what you’ve learned and apply it in an existing company or new venture.

Launch a New Venture

  • Move from idea to execution. Develop, test, and pitch a startup idea with your own team.
  • Get advice and mentoring. Seasoned entrepreneurs, industry experts, and entrepreneurship faculty mentors devote countless hours to help students navigate the entrepreneurial process.
  • Build momentum. Take your experience in the competition and invest in the growth of your venture.

Congratulations, Past Winners!

Past Winners

Be a Sponsor

Support the BPC

Questions?

Ask about the BPC

Win Cash Prizes

Collegiate League

Grand Prize – $10,000
Second Place Prize – $8,000
Third Place Prize – $7,000
Fourth Place Prize – $4,000
Fifth Place Prize – $2,000

Open Collegiate League

Foster Garvey Grand Prize – $5,000

High School League

Grand Prize – $3,000
Second Place Prize – $2,000
Third Place Prize – $1,000
Fourth Place Prize – $750

Merit Prizes

Best Tech Venture Prize – $2,500
Best Social Impact Venture Prize – $2,500
Best Trade Show – $2,500

Thank you, 2026 Sponsors!

Platinum
Partner

 
Schweitzer Engineering Laboratories.

Crimson
Partner

 
Lee & Hayes.

Dave Divine

Silver
Partner

 
believe in me Foundation for Kids.
Foster Garvey.
Submittable.
  

Jeff and Erika Barrom

Bronze
Partner

 
College Hill.
Gesa Credit Union.
Spokane Angel Alliance.

The Robert and Carolyn Wolfe Family Giving Fund

Mark Wuotila

 

The Business Plan Competition is critically important for helping people to turn ideas into reality. I am excited to volunteer as a judge to support the competition and the Center, now that I am on the other side.— Jonah Friedl , NOMAD founder and WSU alumnus (Carson College of Business, Entrepreneurship – 2016)