‘A Dream Come True’ for the B.E.T.A. Challenge Grand-Prize Winners
For many Babson College startups, winning the B.E.T.A. (Babson Entrepreneurial Thought & Action®) Challenge represents more than just validation and financial support. It’s the culmination of their hopes and dreams and the start of something bigger.
The winning entrepreneurs this year all shared in the euphoria of their accomplishments as they celebrated with their giant grand-prize checks in Winn Auditorium at Olin Hall.
Anthony Gatti MBA’24 and Nathan Ruff-Williams MBA’23 had applied for their startup, PetPax Co., to compete in Babson’s signature pitch competition twice before. This year, their venture won the alumni track. “This honestly is huge validation,” Ruff-Williams said. “It’s like a dream come true. It’s amazing, and there’s been so much support.”
“I think winning this is the pinnacle of being an entrepreneur at Babson.”
Daniel Berlin ’26 of Dirty Gut, which won the undergraduate track
A year ago, Ily Kynion Coulibaly MSBA’25 was deciding on a graduate school, when she discovered the B.E.T.A. Challenge online and thought, “Oh, I can do that.” Now, her venture, KYN, not only won the graduate track but also earned two special awards. “The B.E.T.A. Challenge is definitely one of the reasons why I’ve decided to come here to Babson College,” Coulibaly said. “I don’t know how to express how happy I am.”
Daniel Berlin ’26 had been planning for the B.E.T.A. Challenge since he founded his company, Dirty Gut, which won the undergraduate track. “You come to Babson to be an entrepreneur, and I think winning this is the pinnacle of being an entrepreneur at Babson,” said Berlin. “So, I almost, in a way, feel like I completed my Babson journey by winning this tonight.”
Growing Interest
Now in its 14th year, the B.E.T.A. Challenge received a record-breaking number of applications. “It is so exciting to see that grow year after year and to see the ecosystem really embrace the competition,” said Alexandra Dunk MBA’22, associate director of entrepreneur programs and engagement at the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, which hosts the competition.
For the second year in a row, Babson’s first-year students attended a live B.E.T.A. Challenge watch party. The students packed the Marla M. Capozzi MBA’96 Conference Room at Olin Hall to watch the pitches and prize presentations, in conjunction with the Foundations of Management and Entrepreneurship (FME) program, Babson’s signature course requirement in which first-year students develop, launch, and manage a startup.
They got to see nine compelling pitches from ventures competing for more than $150,000 in cash plus in-kind prizes in the competition, which was supported by generous donors and sponsored by the Blank Center, as well as the C. Dean Metropoulos Institute for Technology and Entrepreneurship, the Frank & Eileen™ Center for Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership (F&E CWEL), and the Institute for Social Innovation. In addition to the grand-prize awards, the other two undergraduate finalists were awarded $3,500, and the two finalist ventures in the alumni and graduate tracks were awarded $2,500.
Donna Levin, the CEO of the Arthur M. Blank School for Entrepreneurial Leadership, announced the winners and presented them with their grand-prize checks. “It was absolutely amazing to witness all of the progress that you’ve made tonight,” she said.
Alumni Winner: PetPax Co.
The PetPax Co. co-founders originally met in their New Venture Creation course. Gatti, a part-time MBA student, and Ruff-Williams, a full-time MBA student, bonded over their love of dogs. They eventually created PetPax, a vet-backed pet wellness brand that specializes in fast-acting supplements delivered on oral film that help reduce dogs’ anxiety and bad breath.
In addition to applying to the B.E.T.A. Challenge previously, PetPax has participated in Rocket Pitch and the Summer Venture Program, and earned first place in the Babson Acceleration Club Pitch Competition, which they credit for putting the company on its path. “If there’s a Babson bucket list, we checked it all off,” Gatti said. “From that two years ago to this today, it’s just an incredible journey.”
Gatti said the company has been wrestling with how to fund reorders, so the prize winnings are a huge boost for the next steps. “It literally is life and death for our business,” he said. “Getting this kind of validation from Babson, the number one school for entrepreneurship is going to be huge. We’re fundraising right now, so we’re really excited for what this opens up in terms of other conversations.”
The other alumni finalists were Eduardo Alarcon MBA’24 and H2Fusion Technologies, which is developing a clean, scalable backup power solution with its semi-solid hydrogen slurry; and Justin McAfee MBA’21 and Wright One, which produces a modular CPU cooling fan solution with a plan to create an electric turbine system for flying cars.
The alumni track judges were Sarah Ginand MBA’00, owner, Strategic Marketing Consulting; Cheryl Kiser, Babson College Executive Fellow in Social Innovation, and the founding executive director of the Institute for Social Innovation at Babson; and Jeetu Mahtani, chief revenue officer, ShipBob, and Babson College Entrepreneur in Residence.
Graduate Winner: KYN
Growing up near cocoa farms in the Cote d’Ivorie, Coulibaly saw firsthand the amount of cocoa waste in her home country. Inspired to reduce waste and help people, she created KYN, a sustainable skincare brand that transforms cocoa byproducts into natural and effective solutions to treat a variety of skin conditions.
Coulibaly also won two additional special awards. She received $10,000 for the Social Impact Award, co-sponsored by the Blank Center and the Institute for Social Innovation. And she received $7,500 for the High Impact Woman Founder Award, sponsored by F&E CWEL.
“It feels incredible to be here today, not only at a final, but to go home with three incredible prizes,” she said. “I come from a country where not a lot of women are involved in entrepreneurship, so it’s very rewarding to actually receive this award today and receive some sort of recognition for the work that I’m putting in.”
She plans to invest the winning prize money in scaling the production of her business, marketing initiatives, and customer service, including improving and deploying a new AI agent.
The other graduate finalists were Abhiraj Paliwal MSEL’25 and Isabella Wu with EXOGEN, which makes portable, hygienic fitness supplements for athletes; and Alec Leddon MSEL’25 with TaeSun Kit, which is developing an all-in-one fentanyl drug-testing device he co-founded his mother, Dr. Jeanie Chung.
The graduate track judges were Bryanne Leeming MBA’16, founder and CEO, Unruly Studios; Vickrum Nabar ’14, vice president, startup banking, J.P. Morgan; and Justin Real MBA’17, founder and CEO, Realplay Sports.
Undergraduate Winner: Dirty Gut
Berlin has been focused on health and wellness since he lost 40 pounds at a young age. In search of a solution to help the large number of people suffering with digestive issues, Berlin launched Dirty Gut, a gut-friendly chocolate company that focuses on natural ingredients with probiotics and postbiotics.
“Honestly, I’ve been looking forward to pitching this since I started the company,” said Berlin, who is the president of eTower. “To be able to come here and win and have all my friends from eTower and my mom here is so special to me.”
As the undergraduate winner, Berlin also received an additional $10,000 with the Stephen H. Kramer ’92 and Michael London ’92 Award. His venture and its bite-sized products have become so popular that he has sold out his initial production run, meaning the prize money comes at a particularly important time.
“The main thing right now is I just don’t have enough money to scale,” said Berlin, who was delaying a larger production run. “Now that I have this, I can go out and do my production run, get it in all the stores, partner up with distributors. It’s going to exponentially help me grow this business.”
The other undergraduate finalists were Gabby Lopes ’28 and BUDget, a financial literacy mobile game for buyers and investors; and Mawena Tafa ’26 and Pickup Buddi, a tech-enabled childcare platform that connects parents with student caregivers for after-school pickup and supervision.
The undergraduate track judges were Jonathan Epstein MBA’98, founder, Supergl0rious, and early Planet Fitness franchisee, and senior fellow, Fashion Entrepreneurial Initiative at Babson; Tara Foley MBA’13, managing director, Consensus, and founder and former CEO, Follain; and Heidi Neck, the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurship and academic director of Babson Academy.
Special Awards
In addition to the special awards won by KYN and Dirty Gut, two other sponsored awards were presented at the finale:
- Shay Gaafar MBA’19 and TwentyToo.ai, an alumni track semifinalist, won $25,000 for the Lila W. Sahney Endowed Fashion and Textile Innovation Award, sponsored by Gobind Sahney ’83 and his daughter, Sabrina L. Sahney, and presented by Professor of Practice Caroline Daniels.
- Louis (Haotian) Huang ’28 and Eazeye, an undergraduate track semifinalist, won $10,000 for the Tech Innovation Award, co-sponsored by the Metropoulos Institute and Gautam Gupta ’07 and presented by Metropoulos Institute Executive Director Trond Undheim.
Posted in Community, Entrepreneurial Leadership, Outcomes
