$10K Pitch

Built a startup in three months, pitched a panel of industry vets, won a $10,000 prize.

Org: MCAD Creative Entrepreneurship
Role: Co-founder, Technical Lead
Timeframe: Spring 2025
Tools: Figma, Next.js, Supabase, LiDAR, Blender

Summery

The winning presentation.

The Challenge

Sticky notes were running a four-floor gallery.

floors of exhibit space: 4
students booking them: 700+
paper folder holding it all: 1

MCAD’s gallery hosts hundreds of exhibit spaces where students show work and earn real gallery experience. Booking one meant a staff member writing your name on that day’s printed floor plan and handing you a sticky note. And at the end of each academic year, the folder got recycled, erasing every trace of how the space was used and what the community made.

The Brief

The class: create and develop a startup in three months.

Market research, concept, product design, prototype, and as far toward real as we could push it. Then pitch a panel of entrepreneurs and industry veterans with prize money on the line. My co-founder and I picked the market we knew from the inside: art schools.

The Approach

Bookart.space: a digital twin of the gallery, bookable from your laptop.

My co-founder brought LiDAR experience from a previous climate project; I led the technical build. We scanned the space, modeled it in Blender, and built the platform on Next.js and Supabase. Students log in, browse the actual gallery in 3D, see exactly what their work would hang in, and book it in a click. Admins get their time back, and the school stops losing a year of utilization data every June.

The Outcome

prize awarded by the panel: $10K
months, idea to pitch: 3
furthest-developed startup in the class: #1

The venture didn’t continue past the program, and walking away was the right call. What this page is about is the part I kept: find the problem you know from the inside, build until it’s real, and put it in front of a room that decides with money.