DisSolves, a Pittsburgh startup that has developed an edible, water-soluble packaging material for food products, has won the 2021-2022 Duquesne New Venture Challenge, which comes with a $15,000 award and other perks.
It's the second competition that the startup — founded in 2017 by CEO Jared Raszewski — has won funding from this year following its January 2022 placement in the Richard King Mellon Foundation's inaugural startup pitch competition, an endeavor that came as part of the foundation's new Social-Impact Investment Program. For that competition, DisSolves ranked among 13 other startups that earned between $100,000 and $200,000 in funding.
DisSolves is vying to serve as a solution for food and beverage companies that are looking to eliminate single-use plastics for the containment of their products. These companies are able to package their products — think powdered goods like protein powder — in DisSolves' natural and tasteless water-soluble pods that disappear upon submission into a liquid and following a light stir, all without having a residual trace or flavor effect on the end product.
"With DisSolves packaging, the consumer just drops the package in water and stirs," Raszewski said during the startup's pitch video for the New Venture Challenge. "Everything dissolves, so there's no measuring, no mess and no waste … DisSolves is special because our packaging is made with only vegan, natural ingredients that have no impact on flavor so people can feel safe eating it."
As part of its first-place finish in the competition, DisSolves also scored legal services from the Duquesne University School of Law, consulting services from the Duquesne's Small Business Development Center and meetings with Duquesne's business school faculty to discuss future funding and strategy plans for the startup.
The DisSolves team was one of 17 entrants in this year's competition to advance to the semi-final round and one of five teams to make it to the finals. In total, Duquesne's New Venture Challenge awarded prizes valued at more than $100,000 across the winning teams.
"Unequivocally, I found that the 2021-2022 Duquesne New Venture Challenge entrants were the best yet and the finalists were the strongest and most impressive group we have seen since the competition launched in 2019," Bill Generett, senior vice president of civic engagement and external relations at Duquesne and one of the judges for the challenge, said in a prepared statement. "This bodes well for the future of the Challenge, and I look forward to seeing what next year brings."
The other finalists in this year's competition included second-place finisher and medical smart sensor designer and manufacturer Advanced Optronics LLC; third-place finisher and catheter insertion assisting device maker InnovatiVe; fourth-place finisher and cerebral aneurysm diagnostic test maker CAT-7; and fifth-place finisher and physician-focused and continuing education subscription box maker SimBOX.
