Howard University just graduated the third cohort of its incubator program PitchHU, and it’s already looking for its next group of participants.
PitchHU is a 3-year-old virtual program that offers its pitch-winning companies a portion of a $40,000 pool of funding and a chance for further development in its GrowHU program. The incubator is a partnership between Howard, which administrates the program; D.C. venture firm Humble Ventures, which teaches the curriculum; and Wisconsin fintech company Fiserv Inc., which funds the program.
Cohorts range from 10 to 20 participants, who go through an eight-week curriculum to perfect the story of their business and home in on how their companies can make an impact on society or their communities beyond the product an entrepreneur is going to sell. At the end of the program, there's a pitch competition and demo day, where each participant has three minutes and three slides to pitch their company to a panel of judges that include Terry Adams, head of technology transfer at Howard University, who runs PitchHU; Ajit Verghese, founder and general partner at Humble Ventures; and Vivian Greentree, senior vice president and head of Global Corporate Citizenship at Fiserv.
The companies that receive funds at the end of the program are always ones that “are really centered around solving a particular problem or serving a particular community in a way that hasn't really been done before,” said Adams.
There have been between four and five awardees in each PitchHU cohort. The number of awardees and funding going toward a company isn't set in stone. The only mandate is that the prize pool of $40,000 is spent.
The winner of $15,000 in this year’s cohort was Deeper Skin, a full-body self-tanner for people of color dealing with skin conditions like hyperpigmentation, stretch marks or keratosis. It was founded by Howard University alums Chioma Ndubuisi and Chineme Elobuike.
PitchHU helped Ndubuisi and Elobuike workshop their pitch and win another $5,000 from Ascend.Her, a program supporting women entrepreneurs of color in Greater Washington funded by The Washington Area Community Investment Fund.
“We give all the credit to PitchHU. They've helped us redefine and refine our brand story,” Elobuike said.
Ndubuisi and Elobuike plan to run a manufacturing pilot for their self-tanner with the funds as they push toward launching their product in April.
Adams' goal for PitchHU is to spread an entrepreneurial mindset across the Howard community, which makes his job commercializing university research easier. PitchHU initially was planned to be in-person in 2020, but the program pivoted to a virtual setting because of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“We realized this is really the way to go because we can get people from Hawaii or India, which we've had in our cohort,” said Adams.
PitchHU is essentially open to anyone, with a priority for Howard students. Once a core contingent of Howard students fill the cohort, slots open up to any entrepreneur that can be considered a part of the Howard University community. That can mean Howard alumni, staff, faculty, businesses in D.C., or folks from other HBCUs like Southern University or Hampton University.
Applications for the latest cohort are due Oct. 15.
Adams wants PitchHU to continue to grow and be a resource for the community beyond the start and end date of the incubator.
“This is a community,” said Adams. “The folks in our community will or should feel that they will always have someone supporting them no matter where they are in their growth and it's not driven by some artificial end date to a particular program. Our doors are always open.”
