A year ago, Georgia Tech student Kolby Hanley, 20, was selling water bottles at a national archery championship in Ohio for $1 to undercut his competitors at the competition selling them for $4.
Since then, he's developed new archery-aiming products with his business UltraView and was named the official winner at Wednesday night's 2018 InVenture Prize at Georgia Tech for his latest archery scope invention, StarLight.
In addition to receiving assistance from the school to obtain patents, Hanley also won $20,000 to dedicate to UltraView's business model and immediate acceptance into Georgia Tech's Flashpoint Accelerator Program.
UltraView marks the 10th victor to win the InVenture Prize since the start of the annual invention contest in 2008.
"It’s really only happened in less than a year," Hanley said, after accepting the InVenture Prize. "I transferred to Georgia Tech last year and all of this has happened in a year."
Runner-up team PedalCreator will also receive patent help and $10,000 in aid from the school for their business that makes customizable guitar pedals. Team pHAM won the People's Choice Award and $5,000 for their invention of coffee filters that lower the acidity of coffee, tea and other drinks.
Hanley, the four-time national archery champion, was able to eliminate common inefficiencies with archery scopes, such as bulkiness, visual obstructions, wired battery packs and heaviness with StarLight.
"None of this technology has changed for 30 years," Hanley told the InVenture judges.
StarLight is a light-weight lighting kit and scope integrated into one. Free of obstructions and made from a 3D printer, the device comes with a magnetic battery pack an archer can simply throw on the scope.
"I have been using one competitively since December," Hanley said. "It's worked great."
The business, crafted out of Hanley's dorm room, has produced six archery products and nearly $15,000 a month in revenue. All UltraView products are sold online in a market where $150,000 in archery bows alone were sold last year. The StarLight scope is sold for $199.99 with a manufacturing cost of less than $20.
The weekend before the InVenture Prize competition, Hanley said he had returned to the archery championship in Ohio with his own booth selling his UltraView products to the same people who bought his water bottles.
"Those same people were standing in front of my booth...telling me how proud they were of me and how far I'd come in just one short year," he said.
