The Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge (HSUEC) announced the top 20 teams for 2025-26 this week. They will advance to the final stage of this business-idea competition, which is open to all high school students across Utah, ages 14-18. They are competing for $30,000 in cash and scholarships.
This competition is managed by the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute, a top-10 ranked, interdisciplinary division of the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, and sponsored by Tim Draper, a renowned venture capitalist.
“We are always impressed with the teams competing in this statewide business-idea competition,” said Anne Bastien, program director at the Lassonde Entrepreneur Institute. “The teams have great ideas, and we are very impressed with the students. We look forward to seeing them at the final event at the University of Utah.”
Each team faced the challenge of identifying a problem and proposing a creative solution. The teams submitted a broad variety of ideas. See the list below for details and descriptions of the top 20 teams.
The public is invited to vote online for the best idea in the Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge. Online voting will be open Feb. 10-27. The winner of the public voting will be announced at the final event. Vote online here.
The top 20 teams will advance to the final round, where they will meet for the last judging round. A public showcase and awards ceremony will be held on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2-3:30 p.m. at Lassonde Studios. Everyone is welcome to attend this event.
“Everyone is encouraged to attend the public showcase and awards event for the Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge,” Bastien said. “This is a great opportunity to see up-and-coming entrepreneurs and what sort of ideas and businesses they are creating. It is also a great chance to see campus and everything it offers.”
The Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge is the youth version of the collegiate Tim Draper Utah Entrepreneur Challenge, another annual competition, which awards $75,000 in cash and prizes.
Learn more about the Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge at lassonde.utah.edu/hsuec.
Top 20 Teams for 2025-26
Here are the top teams for the Tim Draper High School Utah Entrepreneur Challenge for 2025-26. These teams advance to the final event (in alphabetical order):
- AIOS (Hillcrest High School)– A shoe that features interchangeable soles, allowing the user to switch between different styles and functions.
- AloeFlex (Hillcrest High School)– An orthopedic brace with cooling aloe-vera fabric, neoprene impact protection and an injury recovery tracker through the form of an app. The app can monitor swelling, tissue damage and provide the user with steps on who to consult or what to do on a daily basis to promote smart recovery.
- Computerpreter (Skyline High School)– Computerpreter targets in-person deaf-hearing conversations by identifying the 26 alphabet handshapes and using a Bi-LSTM to recognize moving ASL signs.
- Crabtree Clinics (Tooele High School)– Holistic mental-health clinics that reimagine mental healthcare access. Each clinic will provide holistic care by addressing all five factors of wellness: biology, psychology, community, lifestyle and meaning, offering an alternative to the fragmented system people currently navigate.
- Daybreak Alarm and Daybreak Sync (Park City High School) – Daybreak Alarm is a light-sensitive alarm, which means its beeping will not conclude until the user gets out of bed and turns on their lights. To function the alarm clock, the user will sync their phone via Daybreak Sync, which allows them to add their personal schedule, set reminders, time zone, alarms, etc.
- Hike Hounds (Bingham High School) – Hike Hounds is a mobile app created for dog owners who enjoy hiking and spending time outdoors with their pets. The app focuses entirely on providing dog-friendly trail information that helps users choose hikes based on their dog’s breed, size and energy level. By combining outdoor navigation with pet-focused features, Hike Hounds offers a unique and enjoyable way for dog owners to explore nature together.
- HydroCap (Karl G. Maeser Preparatory Academy) – HydroCap provides an affordable, DIY smart-irrigation retrofit for existing sprinkler systems to combat Utah’s water waste crisis. It installs directly at the sprinkler head and uses proprietary soil moisture probes and a dual-chamber design to prevent micro-climate waste and “water hammer” pipe damage.
- Kalloo (Park City High School) – A kids’ safety watch designed to help parents and young children when they get lost, wander off or just simply need help. With Kalloo, kids can push a button on the watch, and it will send a signal to parents’ phones, which lets them know their kid’s location, as well as notifying them that their kid might be in danger and in need of help.
- Kensington Apothecary (Olympus High School) – Kensington Apothecary is a premium men’s grooming startup launching organic, small-batch aftershave products with a refined British apothecary aesthetic.
- Lab Safety Assistant (Skyline High School)– Lab Safety Assistant is a safety-first large-language-model (LLM) tool designed to enhance safety in various experiments for K-12 students, universities, professionals and home experimenters. It analyzes short text and images of lab setups to identify hazards and safety measures, retrieving information from the NIOSH Pocket Guide.
- Little Sliders (Other)– Little Sliders is a children’s shoe featuring an integrated slide-lock expansion mechanism at the bottom of the shoe that automatically adjusts when the child’s foot grows.
- LockMate (Park City High School) – LockMate is a home security system with an app to unlock your house with the tap of your phone. It features a full home security system that monitors your security cameras, can lock doors, and check for intruders with an advanced AI technology.
- Luke Clark Films (American Fork High School) – A wedding videography business that creates cinematic, story-driven films for couples who want more than basic event coverage. Instead of simply recording a wedding, a polished, emotional film that captures the feeling, moments and story of the day is created, turning a once-in-a-lifetime event into a timeless keepsake couples can relive and share for years.
- MCAP (Hillcrest High School) – MCAP is an innovative microplastic-targeting product that targets the rapid, incoming issue of the consumption of microplastics.
- Natural Language Compression (Other) – Natural Language Compressor is a text encoder optimized for natural language. It efficiently encodes natural language text into binary. It is most valuable in satellite-based text communication, where the cost of transmission exceeds the cost of computing. Using it, satellite communication companies can significantly reduce their cost of operation by only having to transport a fraction of the bits to convey the same information.
- PathFinder (West High School) – PathFinder is an online job site designed specifically for high school students. To ensure safety, every opportunity is checked by the school’s administration or counseling center before becoming public and students must log in with their student ID to access the job listings. The platform also offers a free mentor program, where verified volunteers host lessons on academic and extracurricular topics for students, and an AI chatbot that helps students improve their resume and career skills.
- Priority Fencing (Other) – Priority Fencing is a company that is focused on innovating Olympic-style fencing equipment. Its first product is a chest protector designed specifically for female fencers.
- REHEAT (Park City High School) – REHEAT is a Tupperware-like container that has a built-in heating system to reheat your food for you. It has a silicon outside layer, so it has plenty of grip, and a stainless-steel layer to trap the heat. The interior consists of glass so that your food stays hot for a long time and is easy to clean. It’s topped by a detachable lid for easy access to food.
- Score It (Rowland Hall-St. Mark’s) – Score It is an AI-based evaluation platform app for gymnastics that will be used for judging, coaching and training. It will use video recognition software, coding and AI technology to create an equitable scoring system, eventually expanding to all subjectively judged sports. By providing more effective resources for gymnasts and coaches in and out of the gym, this app will score videos in real-time, track progress and produce necessary corrections.
- Uptwn Vintage (Spanish Fork High School) – Uptwn Vintage is an online vintage clothing business that provides high-quality vintage apparel at affordable prices for high school and college students.
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.
