Young entrepreneurs competed at the University of Connecticut’s venture competition to fund their innovations. This year’s winner was SeaSol Technologies, a company that hopes to redefine food wrapper manufacturing.
The Wolff New Venture Competition is UConn’s entrepreneurship competition that recognizes and supports student entrepreneurs. It is hosted each year by the Connecticut Center for Entrepreneurship Innovation (CCEI).
The basis of this competition begins in March, where ten startups are selected by an independent panel to participate in CCEI’s Summer Accelerator. Then, over the course of eight weeks, CCEI focuses on strengthening these startups to make them market ready.
During the fall, five finalist teams pitch their ventures to a panel of judges made up of investors and entrepreneurs.
This year, SeaSol Technologies, a startup led by University of Connecticut Ph.D. candidate Yidan Zhang, took first place at this year’s Wolff New Venture Competition. Seasol Technologies uses seaweed to create compostable, food-safe packaging that can reduce plastic waste in the food service industry.
Zhang describes the winning moment as “surreal and amazing.”
“Everyone in the competition was so talented, and their ideas were amazing,” she said. “Any one of us could have won.”
The grand prize, which included a $30,000 check and $5000 in pro-bono services from Wolff Financial Group, is now being used by the company to purchase essential equipment. This competition helped SeaSol progress its manufacturing process.
Zhang, alongside her cofounder, packaging industry expert and advisor Jonathan McGee, and Dr. Mingyu Qiao, a packaging industry expert and advisor, identified seaweed farming in Connecticut as a unique opportunity. What started as an exploration to see how Connecticut aquafarmers were growing seaweed alongside oysters turned into a mission to promote sustainable packaging.
“The idea actually started in a very organic way,” Zhang explained. “We saw so much potential in using seaweed as a natural resource for multiple applications.”
Building SeaSol Technologies as a Ph.D. student is not an easy task. Zhang emphasized how time was one of the biggest challenges.
“As a graduate student, I had to manage my time between coursework and developing the startup,” she said.
Though “there were many late nights,” Zhang emphasized the help and support she received from the UConn community.
“Everyone I reached out to was willing to offer advice or mentorship,” she said. “That support made it possible for me to keep moving forward.”
For SeaSol’s future plans, Zhang hopes to “manufacture a wide range of applications of seaweed across Connecticut, but for that, we still have a long way to go.”