The second annual IYA Venture Showcase took place on April 19, 2024 marking a momentous culmination in USC Iovine and Young Academy’s ‘23-’24 annual Innovation Quest experience. Venture Showcase creates a platform for budding founders building their companies at IYA to present their products, services, and technologies to industry investors and leaders for funding and a lightning round of feedback. Not only did participating teams gain valuable exposure and constructive insight, they had the chance to secure prizes in Social Impact, Innovation and Alumni Venture tracks to set their entrepreneurial journeys into motion. Four teams walked away with prizes at this year’s showcase.

“We bring you inside to show you what we’re building at the Academy,” explains Tina Sharkey, Lecturer, Business of Innovation and Director of the Innovation Quest and Venture Showcase at IYA. “We had over seventeen teams spanning Social Impact, Innovation, and Alumni Ventures who competed for prizes and were able to showcase their ideas and ventures, built to reshape and disrupt their industries.”

In the category of Social Impact, ventures BioFlare and Vrse.AI were the winners. BioFlare offers a sustainable alternative by transforming household food waste into clean cooking gas, reducing reliance on traditional fuels, lowering costs, and mitigating health risks associated with indoor air pollution. Vrse gives students note assistance in real time through generative AI and user specific prompting. AirDiligence, which offers enterprise-grade AI solutions for commercial real estate investors to analyze legal documentation better, nabbed the Innovation Prize. 

And the event became even more exhilarating due to an unexpected curveball. David Krane, CEO and Managing Partner of Google Ventures offered up the last-minute Challenge Prize to Sier, a company providing enhanced spatial feedback for those with visual impairment so they can live more independent and enriching lives. Krane invited the room to match his contribution and the judging team and others stepped up. It was an electrifying cap to a dynamic day of knowledge, originality, and community collaboration.   

From the first XR language app for Apple Vision Pro to maneuverable cameras for zero-gravity environments, a diverse roster of ideas were represented across three unique tracks. The judges included co-founder of VSC Ventures Vijay Chattha, managing partner of memBrain Ventures Liz Heller, president of Global E-Commerce and Business Development at Universal Music Group (UMG) Richelle Parham, and president of the Goldhirsh Foundation, Tara Roth. IYA co-founder, legendary music figure, and forward-thinking visionary and entrepreneur Jimmy Iovine opened the showcase with a fireside chat sharing founder insights from his own journey leading up to the co-founding of IYA.

“If you learn how to walk through the light you'll realize that most of your fear is just a ghost. It’s make-believe. And once you do that enough times you build a muscle to where you don't mind doing it,” Iovine said, dispensing uplifting words of encouragement and vital founder wisdom

“You guys are using your fear of fuel. You're grabbing very big ideas, and you're not afraid to iterate and get better. And the innovation capacity you're going to build for that is just amazing,” IYA’s Dean Thanassis Rikakis added, echoing Jimmy’s musings on founder trepidation when addressing the participants. 

Venture Showcase emerged for the first time in the spring of 2023, and this year’s edition was part of the inaugural Innovation Quest, a series of experiences that aim to accelerate, cultivate, and support qualified student-led ventures at the intersection of business, technology, and creative practice. The year kicked off with the Founder’s Bootcamp in October, an immersive one-day bootcamp equipping student founders  with wisdom, networking and lessons from the frontline to enhance their founders' toolkits and networks. Ignite Grants with the goals to accelerate teams Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) and match up industry mentors was the next step in the pipeline. Venture Showcase may be the culmination of year’s worth of #FightOnFounders experiences, but the best is yet to come. Allow Tina Sharkey to provide a sneak peek... She gave a glimpse at the future of what to expect for the Innovation Quest when the cycle restarts in the fall of 2024. 

“In addition to this, we're introducing a Generative AI and society track where we're going to have a Fall hack-a-Thon to help incubate student-led ventures in this area.  We're inviting industry to come and cultivate new Gen. AI and society solutions. We're convening industry. We're convening founders,” she shared. 

Of course, this is just the beginning for the evolving and flourishing Quest and its impact.

“Like the Dean said, this is our alpha,” Sharkey noted. “We're going to Beta, and we're just going to  stay iterating in our prototype.”  

#FightOnFounders! Check out highlights from this year’s showcase at the video below:

The IYA Venture Showcase hosted by IYA, spotlights emerging ideas from the next generation of purpose-driven innovators and entrepreneurs at the Academy. Our dynamic program focuses on cultivating innovation at the potent intersection of technology, design, business, culture and community,
giving student and alumni companies the opportunity to present their products, services, and technologies to industry investors and leaders for funding and a lightning round of feedback.

Innovation Quest Fuels Founder Journeys: Highlights From 2024 Venture Showcase

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