<p><span class="p-body"><b>Date: </b>Tuesday, April 21, 2026</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body"><b>Location:</b> NYU SPS Tisch Center of Hospitality HI HUB Incubator (7 East 12th Street, Conference Room 321)</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body">On Tuesday, April 21st, the HI HUB Incubator hosted its highly anticipated "Pitch Your Passion & Seal the Deal" contest. The event challenged our latest cohort of entrepreneurs to deliver an extremely concise presentation outlining their idea, business model, marketing strategy, competitive analysis, and financial plan to potential investors for the chance to win $20,000.</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body">The premise was high-stakes and fast-paced: founders had to operate as if they had just spotted a potential investor on an elevator and only had ten minutes to pitch their idea. To evaluate these rapid-fire presentations, an esteemed panel of industry experts and investors joined us in a hybrid format, with judges participating both in-person and virtually via Zoom.</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body"><span class="p-body-large-bold">Meet the Pitching Companies</span></span></p>
<p><span class="p-body">The room was buzzing with innovation as the Fall 2025 cohort took the floor to share their visions:</span></p>
<ul class='p-list'>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>Altura Lacrosse Series (Amanda Beckwith): </b>Altura Lacrosse Series goes beyond the traditional tournament by blending elite lacrosse competition with empowerment, education, and leadership development to help athletes grow both on and off the field. This series not only offers high-level competition but also hands-on training workshops, product demos, and inspiring panel discussions with collegiate and professional athletes.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>Breadcrumb (Marcus Ellison): </b>Breadcrumb is an agentic business-to-business reporting platform that empowers hospitality and travel businesses to scale personalized reporting to every customer, partner, and stakeholder without needing a data team. Through an intuitive, conversational interface, business users can combine, explore, visualize, and share data - while AI agents handle the manual work.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>CareMetric Hub (Akash Yengde): </b>Fueled by the daily reality of administrative burden and data blindness, this platform is a unified environment built to help primary care physicians. It automatically highlights care gaps, forecasts a practice's standing in its shared savings programs, and facilitates meaningful patient follow-up.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>Clairdoc (Bakhtawer Baloch):</b> Clairdoc is building the future of medical billing with AI. Our judges were incredibly impressed by how the platform acts as a denial-prevention copilot for outpatient clinics, automatically scanning claims to catch and correct issues before submission. By transforming complex billing data into clear, actionable insights, Clairdoc helps clinics reduce denials, recover revenue, and focus on what truly matters: delivering care.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>Reachhh (Soham Poddar): </b>REACHHH creates a new-age hyperlocal ad network powered by real, trusted people. The platform organizes "invisible" local professionals and firms into a scalable, trackable, and verifiable network, turning them into "America's New Billboards,” a new advertising channel that is more authentic and targeted.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>We.Tour LLC (Jerry Da): </b>We.Tour LLC is a New York-based tour company that employs local college students as licensed tour guides. The company's goal is to offer more affordable tours compared to standard market prices by utilizing students as guides.</span></li>
<li><span class="p-body"><b>Yasha’s Breakfast Sandwiches (Jacob Gorovoy): </b>Yasha’s Breakfast Sandwiches is an elevated breakfast restaurant concept that blends creativity and innovation with genuine and personalized hospitality. The aim at Yasha's is to combine the familiarity and comfort of a classic breakfast sandwich with bold flavors, elevated culinary techniques, and thoughtful presentation - all served quickly for those on the go.</span></li>
</ul>
<p><span class="p-body"><span class="p-body-large-bold">The Winner: Clairdoc </span></span></p>
<p><span class="p-body">After careful deliberation from our panel of judges, <b>Bakhtawer Baloch</b> took home the victory for Clairdoc!</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body">Following the presentations and the awards announcement, the room transformed into a lively celebration. Attendees, student founders, and the judges transitioned into a dynamic networking session to end the afternoon. It was a fantastic opportunity for the cohort to gather extended feedback, exchange contact information with potential backers, and celebrate the incredible entrepreneurial spirit fostered here at the HI HUB Incubator.</span></p>
<p><span class="p-body"><i>Congratulations again to Clairdoc and to all of the founders who put their passion on the line!</i></span></p>
<p> </p>