Shurugwi Prime Breeders, a student startup from Ensign College that raises chickens and provides jobs in Zimbabwe, won the $20,000 Tim Draper Grand Prize and first place in the 2026 Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge today at a final awards and showcase event at the University of Utah.
The statewide business-model competition is managed by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, and sponsored by Tim Draper, a renowned venture capitalist. The final event featured the best collegiate entrepreneurs in Utah competing for more than $75,000 in cash and prizes.
The founder of Shurugwi Prime Breeders, Liya Ngabola, explained what she plans to do with the grand prize money.
“Twenty thousand dollars is going to help me invest in 6,000 birds that is going to generate $77,000 by the end of the year,” she said, “and that money will be able to help me set up my own hatchery, so I will be able to employ small-scale farmers to be able to start their own businesses.”
Shurugwi Prime Breeders is a poultry business in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe. They raise birds and sell them for meat and protein consumption, and they create jobs in Zimbabwe through their production process.
“Don’t ever let anyone move away from your idea,” Ngabola said. “People used to laugh at me a lot because I’m doing competitions, and I have won three competitions with chickens. Keep going and do what you love, and the world will give back.”
RevRoom, second-place winner
Other top winners at the Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge final event included: RevRoom, a team from Brigham Young University, won second place and $10,000; and Minor Inconvenience, a team from the Salt Lake Community College, won third place and $7,500. Find a complete listing of prizes and descriptions of all the finalist teams below.
Judges with diverse industry expertise reviewed the student startup teams through multiple rounds. Competing teams impressed judges with their innovative and original ideas. The top teams advanced to the final event, where they pitched their ideas in person at the University of Utah.
“The Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge is a great showcase of the best student entrepreneurs across the state, and we were honored to host them at the University of Utah for the final awards event,” said Logan Bogesvang, a student director for the Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. “We invite everyone to learn about the finalist teams and get involved next year as a participant, mentor or audience member.”
Learn more about the Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge at lassonde.utah.edu/uec. Learn about the high school division of this competition at lassonde.utah.edu/hsuec.
Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge 2026 Results
- Grand Prize Award, $20,000 (award sponsored by Tim Draper) – Shurugwi Prime Breeders
- Second place, $10,000 (Tim Draper) – RevRoom
- Third place, $7,500 (Tim Draper) – Minor Inconveniences
- Josh Hadley E-commerce Award, $5,000 – Stormin
- Actium Bootstrap Award, $2,000 – S.C.O.R.E.
- Judge Awards $16,000 Total (Tim Draper) – Forge Metrics ($2,000); Minor Inconveniences ($2,000); Altruvia ($1,500); Shurugwi Prime Breeders ($1,500); ReVroom ($1,500); Stormin ($1,000); Signal Smith ($1,000); XtractSol ($1,000); Airvata Bioengineering ($750); Clear Paycheck ($750); Thesis ($500); Apex Monitoring Systems ($500); Alpha-RAG ($500); Redwaste Solutions ($500); Scry Tech ($500); Uinta Life ($500)
- People’s Choice Award Speed Pitch, $1,000 (Tim Draper) – Stormin
- People’s Choice Online Vote, $1,000 (Tim Draper) – S.C.O.R.E.
- Top 20 Team Awards, $500 (Tim Draper) – All the top 20 teams
- Master of Business Creation Scholarships, $1,000 (David Eccles School of Business) – All the top 20 teams
Top 20 Teams for 2025-26
Here are the top teams for the Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for 2025-26. These teams advance to the final event (in alphabetical order):
- Airavata Bioengineering (University of Utah) – Airavata Bioengineering develops cutting-edge crisis-zone healthcare technology. Their flagship product, FOCUS, improves field surgical sterilization using patent-pending, UV-C geometry to autonomously sterilize instruments at a fraction of the cost, power and water of traditional autoclaves. Evaluated by U.S. Air Force and Special Operations Command, FOCUS delivers rapid, reliable sterilization in austere environments where conventional systems fail, critical capability when every second counts.
- Alpha-RAG (Southern Utah University) – Alpha-RAG is a business-to-business financial document intelligence platform. It uses retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) to turn dense financial PDFs (like 10-Ks) into immediate, verified answers with exact page-level citations. It helps financial institutions and risk analysts reduce document analysis time by over 50% while maintaining strict auditability and compliance.
- Altruvia (Brigham Young University) – Altruvia is an AI-powered SaaS helping nonprofits measure, maximize and communicate their impact. Nonprofits lose 57% of donors annually – not for lack of mission, but lack of tools. They’re building for organizations that enterprise CRMs ignore. Since their January, 2026 beta, they’ve signed paying customers, are adding new organizations weekly and already power fundraising events with 700+ attendees.
- Apex Monitoring Systems (University of Utah) – Apex Monitoring Systems is a medical-device startup developing NeoPulse, a non-adhesive wearable cardiac monitoring system for neonatal and pediatric patients. Neopulse enables comfortable, extended EKG monitoring in clinical and home settings, using secure cloud connectivity and AI-enhanced data screening to help clinicians detect cardiac arrhythmias in babies and children while reducing patient discomfort, clinical burden and healthcare costs.
- Clear Paycheck (Westminster University) – Clear Paycheck is an intelligence platform that translates complex paystubs into clear, actionable insights. The platform helps employees understand deductions, optimize retirement contributions and adjust tax withholding to maximize take-home value. By transforming payroll data into ongoing financial guidance, Clear Paycheck improves benefit utilization and reduces costly optimization gaps across the workforce.
- Controlled-Health (Weber State University) – Controlled-Health is a Utah-based, tech-enabled, practice-enablement platform and two-sided marketplace. It provides the critical infrastructure required for physicians to exit high-burnout corporate systems and transition into sustainable, independent subscription-based practices. Acting as a “business-in-a-box,” the company solves the “small business barrier” by equipping independent providers with the sophisticated economic and operational tools usually reserved for large hospital systems.
- Forge Metrics (University of Utah) – Forge Metrics builds affordable predictive maintenance sensors for small CNC machine shops. Their magnetic-mount sensor monitors spindle vibration and temperature 24/7, detecting bearing wear and mechanical issues 2-4 weeks before failure. A simple cloud dashboard translates complex data into plain-English alerts, helping shop owners avoid costly unplanned downtime. Enterprise solutions cost $15K-$50K+/year and ignore small shops – Forge Metrics serves the 250,000 U.S. shops with 5-50 employees at $200/machine/month.
- KEVA (Utah State University) – KEVA builds Wi-Fi-less smart locks and AI agents that allow a property manager to text digital keys to tenants and vendors. Their locks don’t need Wi-Fi, so they work in rentals where the internet is not managed by the property manager. The property manager will schedule remote showings, send keys, verify lease application documents, manage maintenance requests and answer all the stupid questions that residents/prospects ask.
- Minor Inconveniences (Salt Lake Community College) – Minor Inconveniences is a card game about wishing your friends mildly bad luck. In honor of its creator, Thaydon Block, who passed away in 2024, this organic-prompt-response game is sure to bring smiles and laughter to any gathering and bringing people closer through all the little things in life that hurt.
- Parlay (University of Utah) – Parlay is an AI-powered sales performance platform that delivers real-time coaching after every pitch. Built rep-first, it transforms conversations into measurable training moments – scoring reps against company playbooks and delivering focused improvement priorities. Leaders gain instant visibility without bottlenecks. The result: faster ramp, stronger reps and scalable revenue performance.
- Redwaste Solutions (Utah Valley University) – Redwaste Solutions provides healthcare facilities with safer, greener and more affordable medical waste management through sustainable products and on-site waste remediation that reduces costs, environmental impact and reliance on third-party haulers.
- ReVroom (Brigham Young University) – ReVroom is the place to buy and sell rebuilt cars.
- C.O.R.E. (Snow College) – S.C.O.R.E. (Small Company Operations & Resource Engine) is a SaaS platform purpose-built to automate inventory management for small businesses in rural and underserved markets. The platform delivers real-time stock tracking, automated reorder alerts, and daily restocking reports, operating independently or alongside existing point-of-sale infrastructure. It was developed through direct field research across 20 businesses in rural Utah.
- Scry Technologies (University of Utah) – Scry prevents people from inside your company from leaking data, intentionally or not. Scry provides authentication, detection and data loss prevention using proven research in data science and behavior analysis techniques. Unlike traditional security products that rely heavily on static rules and creating logs after the fact, Scry introduces a dynamic behavior-based approach that adapts over time and identifies and prevents hackers in near real time.
- Shurugwi Prime Breeders (Ensign College) – Shurugwi Premium Breeders is a high-impact poultry venture in Shurugwi, Zimbabwe, tackling chronic chicken shortages while creating jobs and lifting families from poverty. With profitable bird cycles and a win at Ensign College’s Lion’s Den, the company is scaling to 6,000 birds, using solar power, gas brooders, rainwater harvesting and strong biosecurity to supply reliable, affordable broilers and build a regional poultry hub.
- Signal Smith (Utah State University) – Signal Smith is redefining vital-sign monitoring. It developed a contactless radar-camera fusion platform that tracks heart and respiration rates, even during motion. Its proprietary algorithms solve the failures of current sensors by canceling motion artifacts. Starting with veterinary care, its scalable hardware-plus-SaaS model eliminates stressful wires for continuous, accurate recovery monitoring.
- Stormin (University of Utah) – Stormin is developing a sports-card application to centralize how collectors showcase collections, purchase, sell and trade within the hobby. The platform combines transactional tools with social and portfolio functionality in a single environment for collectors.
- Thesis (Utah Tech University) – Thesis is an AI-native research administration platform for universities managing federal grants. Three integrated modules – pre-award proposal management, post-award financial monitoring and compliance – replace fragmented tools with one system. AI automates award setup, scores proposal drafts, flags compliance requirements and generates reports in minutes. Built for underserved research institutions with small teams who need modern tools at an accessible price.
- Uinta Life (Ensign College) – Uinta Life offers a unique, guided fly-fishing experience that’s primarily in the Uinta Mountains. It provides the gear, expertise and instruction to help our clients have a fun and educational experience. The company’s different than other local outfits because it also provides an online community and masterclass that its clients have access to before and after the tour. This allows them to continue learning. On top of that, it sells branded apparel online.
- XtractSol (University of Utah) – XtractSol is a business-to-business company that repurifies chemical waste in semiconductor manufacturers. An on-site purification system allows manufacturing sites to have a reliable supply of high-purity chemicals, eliminating any downtime due to supply chain interruptions. As the semiconductor industry grows, an uninterruptable supply of chemicals will be crucial to determine which companies profit the most.
About the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute
The Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute is a nationally ranked hub for student entrepreneurship and innovation at the University of Utah and an interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business. The first programs were offered in 2001, through the vision and support of Pierre Lassonde, an alumnus of the Eccles School and successful mining entrepreneur. The institute now provides opportunities for thousands of students to learn about entrepreneurship and innovation. Programs include workshops, networking events, business-plan competitions, startup support, graduate and alumni programs, scholarships, community outreach and more. All programs are open to students from any academic major or background. The Lassonde Institute also manages Lassonde Studios, a five-story innovation space and housing facility for all students. Learn more at lassonde.utah.edu.
