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The latest StartUp Texas Innovation Competition winners have been announced, and they’ll each receive a share of $70,000 in seed funding prize money.
The three Brownsville entrepreneurs were among six contestants who pitched their business ideas in front of a panel of judges on Sept. 12 at the eBridge Center for Business & Commercialization. Each contestant had completed a 10-week business development course based on AdvanceUp Accelerator curriculum offered through the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Center.
The StartUp Texas competition is a collaboration between the university’s ECC, the Brownsville Community Improvement Corporation (BCIC) and Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station.
Taking first place on Sept. 12 was Ethan Atlan, founder and CEO of AccuCell Biotechnology, who will receive $40,000 in seed funding. Taking second was Javier J. Pazos, president of Heroixa Technologies, who was awarded $20,000. In third place was Douglas Best, founder and CEO of the Partnership Institute, who won $10,000.
The judges were Jesus “Jesse” Cano, an instructor with the UTRGV Texas Manufacturing Assistance Center with nearly two decades of engineering experience in fields such as aerospace and oil and gas; Ruben Cantu, a social entrepreneur and educator who founded the Office of Inclusive Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas-Austin in 2018 and now runs LMNTS, an education technology company serving underserved communities; and Eduardo Cerda, with more than 30 years experience implementing technology solutions for IBM, Microsoft and other companies.
Atlan expressed satisfaction at winning first place in the competition.
“After spending months working toward this goal, everything came together perfectly at the end,” he said. “This win means so much to me, and I’m incredibly grateful for the support of my friends, family, and the opportunity provided by UTRGV, Startup Texas, BCIC and Anahuac Mayab University.”
Atlan said the StartUp Texas event “offered the community a glimpse into the future of entrepreneurship in Brownsville,” while Pazos said the competition “allowed us to see possibilities with our technology that we hadn’t previously considered. It pushed us to think beyond the technical aspects of the business.”
Linda Ufland, director of Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Commercialization at UTRGV ECC, said all the entrepreneurs showed a passion and creativity that exemplified the Brownsville start-up community’s growing strength.
“We are building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem, and (the Sept. 12) competition proves that we are headed in the right direction,” she said.
