Carbon emissions tracking app wins $25,000 in Big Idea Competition
GAINESVILLE, Fla. – LiveGreen won first place at the 2019 Big Idea Gator Business Plan Competition.
Led by CEO and Co-Founder Brian De Souza and CTO and Co-Founder Pablo Garces, LiveGreen is a mobile platform that empowers people to reduce their carbon footprint so they can be part of the solution to end climate change in one generation. LiveGreen does so by allowing people to track, reduce and offset their daily emissions. Through LiveGreen’s proprietary database, the platform makes it easy to track daily emissions from food, purchases, and transport; much like MyFitnessPal but for the environment.
“We give people specific ways to improve based on their daily choices,” said De Souza. “And LiveGreen allows people to become carbon neutral by offsetting their emissions by planting trees in reforestation projects worldwide.”
De Souza and Garces are excited to take LiveGreen to the next level thanks to the prize money they won at the Big Idea Competition.
“Since freshman year at UF, we have always followed the Big Idea Competition and always had an interest in competing in it,” said De Souza. “We were really excited to have been selected into the sweet sixteen groups and could not believe we got first place! The $25,000 prize will allow us to start scaling the company quicker and set us up for a pre-seed round in the next few weeks.”
Presented by the UF Entrepreneurship and Innovation Center in the Warrington College of Business, the Big Idea Competition is a four-month event designed to help students grow their business ideas with a chance to win over $40,000 in prizes.
Of the 250 teams that submitted to compete in the Big Idea Competition last December, 16 teams made it to the semi-finals on April 12. The sweet 16 teams were then narrowed down to the final four by a group of distinguished entrepreneurial judges. After the final four presented on Friday, the winners were announced, with LiveGreen taking home the $25,000 top prize. Check out all of the winners from the 2019 Big Idea Competition below.
First place ($25,000): LiveGreen; Brian De Souza and Pablo Garces (Computer Science, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering)
Second place ($10,000): Red Boot Goats; Shelia Austin and Steven Rodgers (Master of Science in Entrepreneurship, Warrington College of Business)
Third place ($5,000): Laundr; Kyle Lampkin (Master of International Business, Warrington College of Business) and Michael Behfar (Advertising and Public Relations, University of Central Florida)
Fourth place ($1,000): Symbionix; Juan Casas (Chemical Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering), Nicholas Friend (History, College of Liberal Arts & Sciences), Brandon Shaffer (Chemical Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering), Marc Fischzang (Industrial and Systems Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering) and Harrison Haines (Finance, Warrington College of Business)
Technology Impact Award: Research Blocks; Justin Kim (Master of Science in Management, Warrington College of Business and M.D., College of Medicine) and Chris Jones (Master of Science in Management, Warrington College of Business)
Social Impact Award: SEB Plastics; Sarah Burns (Master of International Business, Warrington College of Business)
Dreamer and Doer Award: Bl!nk; Ryan Widgeon (Computer Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering and Mathematics, College of Liberal Arts and Sciences)
Entrepreneurial Spirit Award: Restearn; Baran Yalcin (Aerospace Engineering, Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering)
