My roommate Melina and I formed a team to compete in the Anchor & Accelerate Venture Pitch Competition, where we had to pitch for a company case under 3 minutes as if we were the company founders. We chose HeatHalo as our case, a company that sells wearable biomonitors and pairs them with a mobile app with an optional subscription to keep track of athletes' heat stress signals.
The competition has two rounds: the preliminary and the finals round. There are 30 teams in the preliminary round and down to 8 teams in the finals round, while the top three teams could earn prizes in cash. After our preliminary round, the judges gave us some positive feedback, and we thought we did great.
The finals schedule was supposed to be announced through emails, but we didn't receive any information. We even checked the competition website, but there wasn't any sign that we got into the finals. It was when Melina talked with her friend who also went to the competition that her friend showed her that we were on the list of finalists. We had to run to the competition as it had already started.
The run was terrible since I took my backpack that has almost everything, including my laptop, iPad, and books for next class. It resonated so much with our own pitch. "Encouraged to push through the pain", and "Doesn't feel the heat's impact until we feel sick", even though we didn't faint or anything; who knows if it had an effect on us.
It was a relief that we arrived on time while no one had started to present. Until we were called on stage, I was still unsure if we were supposed to be here since I still couldn't find any evidence of where we got in. We performed the pitch and took on the Q&A, and we were not on the list of the top 3.
The following are our slides and our pitch:
My name is Jin Tsai, and my name is Melina Kyroudis
Together, we are HeatHalo.
Heat kills more Americans than floods, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined.
For athletes, heat stroke is a major factor in each of the top three causes of death in student athletes. Yet it’s entirely preventable. Athletes rarely rely on how they feel - encouraged to push through the pain - and by the time they feel overheated, it’s already an emergency. This blind spot is where HeatHalo comes in, making the invisible visible with our seamless biosensors.
HeatHalo is a wearable biomonitor that continuously tracks the body’s heat-stress signals, which are early indicators that show up long before an athlete feels sick. Paired with a mobile app for players and an AI-driven dashboard for coaches, staff can monitor the entire team’s heat status in real time at a glance. By incorporating a scalable subscription-tiered model, organizations can add on sport-specific metrics based on their needs. With HeatHalo, all coaches can protect their athletes– before a heat emergency ever happens.
The timing has never been more urgent. 2024 recorded the hottest day in history. In 2023, daily ER visits for heat-related illness were at record highs. Now is the moment.
At HeatHalo, we serve every athlete. Sports in the US are growing rapidly. As of right now, we have over 8 million student athletes. That's over 420 thousand teams spanning U.S. high schools and colleges; that doesn't even take into account club teams, the military, and marching bands.
We make money two ways: on an organizational scale, teams enter contracts with us and buy the wearable devices for their athletes. This is our primary revenue. We also incorporate, however, our tiered model as Jin described before. We take the baseline features and deepen the insights using a combination of sensors and AI-powered data on specific sports. For Heathalo, athletics is just the start — the same technology that can protect athletes can expand into workplace safety and heat-vulnerable patients, opening doors to new possibilities and shedding light on one of the most invisible killers.
Why us. Our CEO, Dr. Naomi Patel, is an ER physician who’s treated heat illness firsthand; that’s clinical credibility. Our CTO, Elena Ruiz, is a biomedical engineer specializing in wearable sensors. And our COO, Jennifer Crawford, has launched consumer health products; she takes them to market and helps us soar.
We’re raising $1.5 million in pre-seed funding to finalize the product, run pilots with our first athletic organizations, and prepare our first manufacturing run. In 18 months, that's 1,000 devices deployed, $300,000 in revenue, validated data showing fewer heat incidents, and our premium subscription live.
Heat isn’t slowing down, and neither are we. Join us in making the invisible visible.
Overall, it was a great experience preparing. I loved the process of making the slides and practicing the speech to sound convincing and confident. The process of market and problem research to support the company's solution was the more difficult part, yet I still managed to find some sources that helped us. Melina was sick during fall break and was busy when she came back, so it was two days before the competition that we finalized our script and communicated our thoughts. We didn't have the time to practice the whole process of the pitch together before competition day, so we only practiced individually, but it was surprising that our pitch went really well.
If I could improve next time, I would like to start working on the pitch together earlier, so there wouldn't be that much stress before the competition.
For my personal skills, I feel like presentation has not been too much of a problem, and I could perform fairly well. However, my weak spot is definitely the Q&A session and talking with investors (judges) in a casual mindset, and speaking while I think.
For my personal skills, I feel like presentation has not been too much of a problem, and I could perform fairly well. However, my weak spot is definitely the Q&A session and talking with investors (judges) in a casual mindset, and speaking while I think.
Every time the judges ask a question, it doesn't always come clearly to mind what exactly they are asking for, and I need time to react and think before I respond. Maybe it is because I am not prepared enough to know what questions to expect from them; perhaps it would be better to prepare some responses beforehand. Compared to my robotics interviews and questions, I could handle them really well because I know what I am doing and am really confident in my work; maybe that's the difference because I don't have a comprehensive enough understanding of the company I am pitching for.
After the competition, the judges are really just normal people; my roommate and other contestants had really natural conversations with them, as if talking to a friend without a barrier. It was surprising to me because I had put them a level above me, and maybe that is why I wasn't able to speak as freely because I am afraid of making mistakes. I would like to start trying to talk to people as if they were my age and easy to approach; this may also help me navigate the future career fairs better.
Another thing I have learned is to shake the investor's hand before making the pitch, introducing myself to every single listener. Additionally, after hearing a question from the investor, it would be nice to reframe it like, "So the question is about if...?" That way, I would also have time to process the question while making sure I understood what they are asking. After responding to each question, it's also a good practice to ask if that answered their questions. "Thank you for the question" may also be a good response before starting to answer.
I am still not used to business-like environments like this pitch competition and career fairs. I really did learn a lot from this competition, and I am looking forward to putting myself in more uncomfortable situations to get used to these conversations. By doing so, I feel like it would open up many opportunities through conversations.
Overall, it was a great experience from preparation to competition. I don't know if I would want to do it again, but it would be nice to try.
