Reaching a fever pitch

A good idea rarely arrives fully formed. More often, it shows up as a spark — a half-answer to a problem or a “what if.” It lingers in the back of your mind, maybe resurfaces in conversation. And for some people, that spark is where it ends.

But for several UD students and UD-affiliated local entrepreneurs, it’s where everything begins.

The University of Dayton’s Flyer Pitch Competition has been the launchpad for hundreds of ideas and in 2026, it’s celebrating 20 years. Flyer Pitch is one of the largest collegiate-level business pitch competitions in the country, awarding more than $100,000 in cash and in-kind prizes annually to support start-up businesses and nonprofit projects.

Sponsored by UD's L. William Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the Greater West Dayton Incubator in partnership with PNC Bank and the Entrepreneurs’Center, the Flyer Pitch funding round is open to UD students, faculty, staff, alumni and UD-connected members of the local community.

This spring, the most recent Flyer Pitch winner, Soterix, won $20,000 in cash and $25,000 in technology services. Developed by senior Ashton Kooken — and teammates Camille Walch, Charlie Gloor and Nubia Medrano — Soterix is a noninvasive in-ear wearable that detects medical emergencies and fatigue before a truck driver falls asleep at the wheel.

For Kooken, the win was personal. His sister and two of her friends were killed in a car accident several years ago.

“Anything I can do to make the roads a safer place is helping me honor her memory,” he said.

Vincent Lewis, associate vice president of entrepreneurial initiatives, said Soterix stood out for the urgency of the problem it aims to solve and its strong business plan.

“This team demonstrated a clear understanding of the problem, a promising path to market and a strong sense of why this solution matters,” Lewis said.

Over the years, more than 100 new businesses and nonprofit organizations have been launched with more than $25 million in follow-on capital raised.

“Flyer Pitch is one of the key pieces of our entrepreneurial ecosystem in this region,” Lewis said. “We’ve helped support a lot of companies on their journey — helping them raise a little money and giving them advice as they come up with their ideas.”

Some of the most successful winners have gone on to see significant profit and sizable growth.
Here are a few:

Saturn Sports: 2026

Co-founders Hank Veeneman ’25 and Brayden Shepard ’25 first brought their company, Saturn Sports, to Flyer Pitch with a dream of making a difference for athletes. As lifelong athletes themselves, they understood the realities of head injuries.

The duo hard-launched their invention: a smart chin strap system that enhances helmet safety in contact sports like football. The young men developed their concept in Flyer Nest, a class that debuted in fall 2025 providing students with mentorship and resources while encouraging post-graduation ownership of their ventures.

Veeneman did much of the research himself; watching NFL games over a few weekends, he counted nearly 300 instances of loose chin straps or helmets flying off.

Veeneman and Shepard claimed Flyer Pitch’s largest-ever prize — $76,000 in spring 2026. Since then, they’ve secured a $200,000 grant from Ohio’s Technology Validation and Start-up Fund to further develop their connected chin strap monitoring system for football helmets. The technology will give coaches real-time visibility into every player’s helmet fit from a single screen.

Unlisted: 2023

Unlisted (UnlistedHomes.com) was the second Flyer Pitch win for CEO Katie Hill, who secured a win for CommuterAds in 2010, a digital transit media company she co-founded.

Unlisted unlocks the potential in homes that aren’t for sale — yet. With more than 120 million home profiles that homeowners can control, the platform leverages AI and machine learning to see beyond the 2% of homes listed for sale each year. It is designed to give buyers and homeowners more clarity, better information and easier ways to communicate so both sides understand their options.

In March 2023, Unlisted earned the largest prize of Flyer Pitch to that point, $60,000 cash and in-kind services for the startup track of the competition.

Hill is reshaping relationships with homeowners, similar to how she helped shape the minds of UD business students as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at UD’s Entrepreneurs’ Center in The Hub and as an adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at UD’s Crotty Center, until jumping to Unlisted full time in 2024.

Since Flyer Pitch, Unlisted has raised more than $3 million in funding led by HearstLab, with support from VC414 and StageNext, and recently surpassed 1 million users. The company also launched its patent-pending waitlist feature, which allows buyers to express interest in homes they love that are not yet for sale. It’s a success Hill said couldn’t be possible without UD and Flyer Pitch.

“Flyer Pitch is a powerful program that enables entrepreneurs to crystallize their vision and build their plan to bring that vision to life,” she said.

Lunnie: 2022

In 2021, while Sarah Kallile was breastfeeding her baby, she got tired of her nursing bra constantly leaking and hated how it looked. So, Kallile decided to reinvent it. Her new business venture, Lunnie, was born.

Lunnie was accepted into UD’s Entrepreneur Center as a portfolio client and worked with UD engineering students to lab-test Lunnie’s product, a leak-proof nursing bra for breastfeeding moms with more than six times the absorption power of other nursing bras.

Lunnie took home a $50,000 prize from the competition in 2022. In the years following the win, Lunnie received both utility and design patents for its leakproof sewn-in cups and has partnered with hospitals nationwide to distribute Lunnie bras to new moms.

“Winning UD Flyer Pitch was a major milestone for my business,” Kallile said. “The eight-month competition coincided with building and launching Lunnie, while deepening my connections in the Dayton community, including the University of Dayton and The Entrepreneurs' Center.”

Kallile has hired several interns from UD and worked closely with students through UD’s Stitt Scholars program.

“It’s been a joy to collaborate with these bright individuals,” she said.

Advanced and Innovative Multifunctional Materials (AIMM): 2022

AIMM was founded in 2019 by Luis Estevez, at the time a researcher at University of Dayton Research Institute. AIMM developed a water filter that’s powered by gravity. The filter kills bacteria and viruses, producing clean water, an essential tool, said Estevez, to combat water pollution.

In 2022, the World Health Organization estimated that as many as 2 billion people worldwide drink water contaminated with feces, leading to more than 500,000 deaths annually.

“Clean water is not just a research project — it’s a moral imperative,” said Estevez to UD Magazine in 2021.

Flyer Pitch awarded Estevez and his team $35,000 in 2022. Since then, AIMM has focused on how its technology can impact polyfluoroalkyl substances, or “forever chemicals,” in water. The company has received several research grants, including a $170,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health for PFAS water treatment (the process of removing "forever chemicals").

As of 2026, AIMM’s total non-dilutive funding has surpassed $650,000.

While Lewis said the future of Flyer Pitch can take on many forms — dependent on the state of higher education, sponsorships, donors, budget, etc. — he said the competition will remain a regional staple, and plans to expand in its next 20 years.

“I see, over the next few years, more and more students leveraging the Flyer Nest course and Flyer Pitch as opportunities to launch a venture when they graduate,” he said. “[Because] when a student participates in something like Flyer Pitch, they’re operating in something that’s almost a professional work environment. They’re developing soft skills around teamwork, collaboration, critical thinking and self-efficacy — the types of transferable skills employers are looking for.”

Lewis said the students who took to create their own ventures as undergraduates develop more confidence — not just in their ideas, but in their ability to solve problems, take risks and lead. And after 20 years, Flyer Pitch continues to prove that sometimes the smallest spark of an idea can ignite to change lives, industries and communities.

And after 20 years, Flyer Pitch continues to prove that sometimes the smallest spark of an idea can ignite to change lives, industries and communities.

Photographs courtesy of UD's Crotty Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership. 

A version of this article appears in print in the Summer 2026 University of Dayton Magazine, Page 8. EXPLORE THE ISSUE — MORE ONLINE