LILIE’s annual venture challenge takes flight

By Hugo Gerbich-Pais     2/18/25 10:31pm

At the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, pipettes and petri dishes are swapped for market research and poster presentations for pitches. The lab’s work this academic year culminates at the Napier Rice Launch Challenge Championship hosted in the RMC Grand Hall on April 22, said executive director Kyle Judah. 

“This is how we end the year with a bang, it ties the whole year together,” Judah said. 

The championship is the third and final round of  LILIE’s annual venture competition for Rice undergraduate and graduate students and offers over $100,000 in prize money. First and second-place winners will receive $50,000 and $25,000 respectively in equity-free funding and several prizes under $5,000 are also available. 

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Judah said pitches will be scored by industry leaders, and LILIE staff are available to help teams review their feedback and results. 

“We try to pick judges who have the personal lived experience to make some of these judgement calls,” Judah said. 

Previous judges for the championship have included the head of product at WhatsApp, vice president of design at Figma and Houston corporate leaders. 

Venture teams must be Rice student-led, have less than five members and have already taken steps to realize their ideas. Any group who meets these conditions can enter the competition and will pitch to a panel of judges on Zoom. 

“We’re not doing any filtering at the front end. If you’re brave enough to apply, then you should get the experience of learning by doing,” Judah said. 

For Pranai Reddy, this low barrier to entry and learning potential is one of the best parts of the competition. Two years ago, Reddy entered the NRLC with a venture focused on improving access to campus events. This year, Reddy is entering with a prosthetic device start-up.

“Just throw yourself in the deep end, and regardless of what happens you’ll come out learning a lot and learning is more valuable than anything else at this stage of life,” said Reddy, a Brown College senior. 

Judah said he specifically recommends that freshman and sophomore students enter the competition. 

"It's almost more valuable for underclassmen because they have more opportunities to keep coming back [and refining their pitch]," Judah said. “I think a lot of the time fear of failure holds people in reserve until senior year, and then they're hoping to throw a bullseye blindfolded on a moonless prairie night, right?"

Like Reddy, Andrew Ondara is also participating in the NRLC for the second time with his music industry software venture Melody.

"We came into it with no formal entrepreneurship experience, no founder background, and we were able to win $1,500," said Ondara, a Jones College senior. "Pitching again, I'm just excited to see how far we have come."

PhD candidates Tianshu Zhai and Chen Yang-Lin won first place in 2024 for their venture HEXASpec, which works to decrease the amount of heat generated by semiconductors. Zhai said that learning from his mistakes in 2023 was vital to his later success.  

"I didn't even pass the first round, and [winning last year] showed me that sometimes, if you want to get something, it takes multiple tries," Zhai said. 

Zhai also said support from LILIE has been an invaluable resource for their venture pursuit. 

"LILIE is like a home," Zhai said. "They really like to see the research coming from Rice students and help it make a bigger impact in society, to make this a better world." 

Lin said that they plan to use the $50,000 to continue to secure patent licenses from Rice and continue prototyping their semiconductor heat material.

Since participating in the NRLC, both Ondara and Reddy have continued to engage in the programming and support that LILIE offers.

"I competed two years ago, and it was my first notion of a pitch competition," Reddy said. "I would say that it was a launchpad for all the other endeavors [in entrepreneurship] I have pursued." 

Judah said the competition is not reserved for future entrepreneurs. He said pitching venture ideas involves skills transferable to several career areas. 

"If you're a consultant or engineer trying to get approval or funding for a project, or you want that fellowship or to get into a graduate program or apply for jobs, guess what? You're pitching, the project is just you," Judah said. 

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