Veloci, an innovative shoe company founded by Rice University student-athlete Tyler Strothman, took home the top prize at the annual Napier Rice Launch Challenge (NRLC). The April 22 banner event featured pitches from the final five ventures of the competition to a panel of distinguished judges in front of a live audience.
“Our entrepreneurs are hungry to build the next generation of ventures right here on this campus, take them into the community, and keep growing the next generation of leaders — leaders who will come back and give back, just like so many in the audience here did tonight with their time, expertise and support to keep building that bonfire at Rice,” said Kyle Judah, executive director of the Liu Idea Lab for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (Lilie).
The NRLC is just one of many programs supported by Lilie, which is comprised of experiential courses, cocurricular opportunities, a state-of-the-art on-campus lab space and an array of resources to support student learning. This startup competition is geared toward Rice undergraduate and graduate students, and Lilie supports the ventures with one-on-one pitch coaching. Startups are scored on their five-minute pitch, their understanding of the market, customer and problem, the viability of the solution and the team’s work toward making their venture valuable.
“Our theme tonight is ‘built different,’ and that couldn’t describe our approach to entrepreneurship at Rice any better,” said Yael Hochberg, head of Rice Entrepreneurship Initiatives and the Ralph S. O’Connor Professor of Finance and Entrepreneurship. “We’ve deliberately built a program that fuses together two strands of the university experience. That’s the rigorous academics that Rice has always been known for and hands-on, real-world experimentation. We call it the ‘double helix.’ It’s a tightly wound spiral of scholarship and action. Our students don’t just study entrepreneurship in the classroom. They pitch, they prototype, they pivot, they persevere.”
This year’s judges were alumnus Jonathan Chan ’98, partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati; Monique Knighten, executive director of Portal Innovations; alumnus Lanham Napier ’93, co-founder of Build Group and former CEO of Rackspace; and alumnus Dan Watkins ’84, venture partner and co-founder of Mercury Fund, CEO of Pelagos Pharma and director and co-founder at OmniScience.
“Through these gifts of the Napier family, the Liu family and others, entrepreneurship has helped reshape the university in powerful ways,” said Peter Rodriguez, dean of Rice Business. “I really feel a growing momentum around the idea that this could become a defining part of our identity — one that draws on the incredible strengths of our scientists and engineers. Universities create so much that can give back to the world through new businesses, ideas, materials and services. That’s the heart and soul of what we can do: give back to the world through a commitment to great education.”
The 2025 NRLC Prize Winners:
- First Place and $50,000: Veloci
- Second Place and $25,000: SteerBio
- Third Place and $15,000: Labshare
- Outstanding Undergraduate Award and $2,500: Kinnections
- Audience Choice Award and $2,000: Labshare
- Interdisciplinary Innovation Prize sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research and Inquiry and $1,000: Haast Autonomous
- Frank Liu Jr. Prize for Creative Innovation in Music, Fashion and the Arts and $1,500: Craftroom
- Outstanding Achievement in Artificial Intelligence Prize and $1,000: Kaducia
- Outstanding Achievement in Social Impact Prize and $1,000: Kinnections
- Outstanding Achievement in Consumer Goods Prize and $1,000: Actile Technologies
- Outstanding Achievement in Health Care Innovations Prize and $1,000: Haast Autonomous
Learn more about the top five student ventures of 2025 here and more about Lilie’s programming here.