Sean White
Laser Associated Sciences. Built FlowMet, a continuous optical perfusion monitor. Sold the company to Medtronic in April 2020. LAS is the cleanest exit documented in the archive.
UCI Innovation coverage confirms the acquisition.
People
Founders worth following
A short selection of NVC founders whose post-competition work has a traceable public footprint. All claims here are anchored to public profiles, press coverage or federal records.
Leila Safavi
Purist. Operating in radiopharmaceutical isotope work via puristinc.com. Received over $223,000 in NIH SBIR funding in 2019 per UCI Beall coverage. Named to Oak Ridge National Lab's Innovation Crossroads Cohort 3.
Sources: UCI Beall SBIR coverage (April 2019). Founder LinkedIn.
Mahdi Tehrani and the BRIUS team
Mechanodontics to BRIUS Technologies. Rebranded after the competition. The Brava hidden-braces system launched commercially in June 2022. Closed a $19.5M Series B led by View Ventures in May 2025. Roughly $46.2M total raised per PitchBook.
Sources: bravabraces.com Series B page. PitchBook.
The Wing team
Wing to Wing Assistant. Rebranded as a managed virtual-assistant service. Raised a $2.1M seed in October 2021. Still operating in 2025 and 2026 per UCI Beall Innovation coverage.
Source: UCI Beall Innovation profile.
Zarina Bahadur
123 Baby Box. MIE '20. Raised a $1.2M oversubscribed pre-seed in 2023 (XRC Labs, Sunstone, Salt Lake City Angels, California Crescent, plus angels Mark Friedman and Demos Parneros). Total raised has now grown past $1.3M per OCBJ. The strongest non-medical operating company in the archive.
Sources: Merage 2023-04 announcement. TechCrunch. OCBJ.
Jim Robertson, CJ Oveisi and Jit Malay
No Decaf Allowed to Moongoat. Subscription absorbed into Moongoat Coffee Roasters' programme in December 2022. Asset and subscriber transfer rather than equity. The third documented exit in the archive.
Source: nodecafallowed.com homepage transition note.
Catlin Tran
Nutripair. Business Economics '23. Received a $25,000 Verizon small-business grant in 2025 per UCI Social Sciences coverage. Currently an active member of the UCI Beall Wayfinder Startup cohort. Also placed 2nd at the 2021 Butterworth Product Development Competition.
Sources: UCI Social Sciences (March 2025). Wayfinder Startup directory.
Sayenza Biosciences founders
Derek A. Banyard MD MS MBA, Jered B. Haun, Alan D. Widgerow. Clinical-stage adipose-tissue regenerative-medicine company. Raised approximately $1.16M. Joined the California Life Sciences FAST Spring 2024 cohort. Two peer-reviewed papers on the underlying fluidic platform published in 2025.
Source: UCI Beall (May 2021). sayenza.com.
Jennings Luu and Krzysztof Palczewski
Hyperion Therapeutics. Newport Beach. Seed-stage biopharma developing small-molecule SREDs for AMD, diabetic retinopathy and other retinal diseases. Received a $100,000 Proof-of-Product grant from UCI Beall Applied Innovation in 2023 per Irvine Standard.
Sources: hyperioneye.com. Irvine Standard (2025).
Ricianne "Chi" Rey
PCOSitive Buddy. Hired in October 2025 as the UCI ANTrepreneur Center Program Lead. Continues to be described as a co-founder of the PCOS wellness platform.
Source: UCI ANTrepreneur Center profile (January 2026).
Repeat finalists
Four individuals appear in more than one indexed edition. Two appear twice in adjacent years and one appeared on two teams in the same year.
| Founder | Appearances |
|---|---|
| Simon Loo |
2016 · FunBand · 1st (Consumer Products)
2017 · Element: B2B2C · Track Award (Business Products) 1st |
| Pravin Surana |
2016 · Negocios & Etc. · Blum Center for Poverty Alleviation Award
2017 · APIC Diagnostics · Tech Surge 2nd |
| Daniel Dai |
2017 · Purist · Grand Prize (School of Medicine); Tech Surge 1st
2018 · Graduate Data · Track Award (Consumer Services) 2nd |
| Dylan Riffle |
2023 · Leprendo · Grand Finale Runner-Up; Track Award (Consumer Services) 1st
2024 · Two Cube · Track Award (Life Sciences) 1st |
| Donald "Don" Magnuson | 2017 · Purist (Grand Prize SoM, Tech Surge 1st) · COMPAS (Business Products 2nd) (two teams same year) |