Student Startup Places Sixth in Rice Competition
BrewBike, a student-run coffee company, brought home big honors — and funding — in the 2019 Rice Business Plan Competition hosted by Rice University.
The competition is the world’s largest and richest student startup competition, according to Rice University. More than $1.6 million in investment and cash prizes were awarded to the teams competing this year.
BrewBike, founded in 2015 at Northwestern, placed sixth in the competition, earning $3,500. It also received the $100,000 GOOSE Society Investment Prize.
BrewBike is a resident team at The Garage and also has participated in Wildfire, The Garage’s pre-accelerator program for student founders and leaders of startups.
"The Rice Business Plan Competition was a challenge,” said Lucas Philips, BrewBike’s founder and chief growth officer. “Ultimately, we succeeded, winning more than $100,000 and networking with investors who can help us execute our plan at scale.”
Another Northwestern student startup, Rhaeos, placed fourth in the competition, earning $5,000, and was awarded $450,000 more from a variety of funds and prizes, including the Cisco Global Problem Solver Prize, the Texas Medical Center Accelerator Prize, the Southwest Pediatric Medical Device Consortium Prize. Rhaeos, a medical device company, also received investment offers from the GOOSE Society and the Texas Halo Fund.