GEA/GAIN Alumni Pitch Competition

Participating in the GEA/GAIN Pitch Competition offers Georgetown entrepreneurs a unique set of opportunities to gain financial backing, recognition, and valuable connections within the Georgetown community:

1. Opportunity to Win or Accept the GAIN Investment Prize: The winner of the pitch competition can accept an investment prize consisting of individual contributions from GAIN members (amount will be confirmed by February 2026).
2. Recognition as a Finalist or Winner: Finalists and winners earn the distinction of being selected from among Georgetown’s entrepreneurial community.
3. Subsidized Accommodations at John Carroll Weekend: Finalists receive subsidized hotel accommodations to attend John Carroll Weekend, Georgetown University’s premier alumni event.
4. Become a GAIN Portfolio Company: GAIN portfolio companies are promoted through GAIN’s online channels and receive other opportunities for networking and promotion.
5. Exclusive Access to Top Alumni and Investors: Finalists present their business to Georgetown’s most influential alumni and investors, opening doors to partnerships, investments, and mentorship. Finalists also receive invitations to attend all John Carroll Weekend events, including an exclusive dinner for entrepreneurs and investors, creating additional opportunities to build valuable connections.
6. Guidance from Expert Mentors: Finalists and semi-finalists get the opportunity to work with hand-selected mentors who provide feedback to refine pitches and support business growth.
7. Guaranteed Opportunity to Present to GAIN Investors: All finalists, including the winner, receive a guaranteed spot in a GAIN virtual pitch cycle a few weeks after the competition. Typically, only a select few companies from a large applicant pool are given this opportunity. This allows finalists to present their business to the entire GAIN network, giving investors the chance to consider additional investments beyond the prize amount.
8. GUAA Social Media Promotion: The GUAA will promote your company through its social media channels, creating visibility within Georgetown’s extensive alumni network.

These benefits provide financial support, exposure, mentorship, and connections that can aid your entrepreneurial journey beyond the competition.

We are sector agnostic, but do bear in mind that we will consider industry dynamics when evaluating the return potential of any particular investment. However, we are not a sector specialist network, so it can be more difficult for us to evaluate companies that require expert knowledge.

While it isn’t necessary to excel in each one of the criteria listed below, the closer that your company aligns with these categories, the better chance of being selected to present as a finalist. We are always open to explanations as to how we should think about your application – more information always helps us to make a better evaluation. 

• Traction: Generally, companies that have revenue will be favored, especially recurring revenue that demonstrates there is product/market fit. However, we will certainly consider companies that have an MVP with significant customer data showing a willingness to pay. In addition, we are open to pre-revenue companies that can demonstrate enormous potential in one of our other criteria.
• Market Size & Business Model: Significant market size (minimum c. $100 million for SOM – serviceable obtainable market), attractive unit economics, and a credible ability to scale the business are all desirable.
  • Please make sure to include plausible projections that demonstrate an attractive potential return to investors.
• Common Good: Companies that have an impact on or are solving a problem for the common good will be given special consideration.
• Georgetown Connection: To be eligible, a Georgetown alumnus/a must be a founder, senior executive, board member, or significant investor in the business AND must be willing to be the pitch presenter during the competition in Puerto Rico.

Companies will be evaluated by GAIN prize contributors and a panel of alumni judges. They will review the presentations and vote for the top candidate based on the following criteria: Opportunity, Team, Product/Service, Financials/Terms, and Marketing.

NextMinder builds AI-powered “synthetic populations” that simulate how real consumers behave, allowing companies to test decisions such as pricing, product features, and messaging before launching in the real world. By combining large-scale data, behavioral modeling, and AI agents, NextMinder enables faster, more cost-effective, and more predictive market insights across the U.S. and Latin America.

ChargeMate is the AI reliability platform for distributed energy infrastructure. The company’s software automatically diagnoses and resolves failures across EV charging networks—where 1 in 4 public charging sessions fail today—replacing expensive call centers and manual troubleshooting with AI that resolves over 90% of issues in real time.

ChargeMate is live with 5 customers including Mercedes-Benz High Power Charging and Hypercharge, generating ~$150K ARR with 85-90% gross margins. The company has a $6.3M qualified pipeline that includes names like Francis Energy, ChargePoint, Blink, EVgo, and Walmart, with a clear path to $1.5M ARR from ~20 logos.

The platform’s data network effects—spanning 200+ hardware SKUs, thousands of driver interactions, and cross-network fault resolution data—create compounding advantages that no single operator or software vendor can replicate. ChargeMate is raising a $2M SAFE at a $13M post-money cap to scale the team, deepen integrations, and expand from its EV charging beachhead into adjacent distributed energy assets like solar, batteries, and building systems—a $50B+ software opportunity.

Maka Media is building the first AI-powered system for measuring the developmental quality of children’s content, closing the gap between what children consume digitally and what child development science says is actually good for them. Launching in Spring 2026 as an iOS streaming app for families of children ages 0–6, Maka gives parents access to healthy, developmentally aligned content, backed by research partnerships with the Yale Child Study Center and Harvard. Founded by leaders with deep expertise in children’s media, technology, and child development, the company recently closed an oversubscribed pre-seed round and has built a waitlist of 2,000+ families ahead of launch. Headquartered in the Midwest with an innovation hub in San Francisco, Maka is focused on becoming the infrastructure layer for children’s digital wellbeing: enabling parents, platforms, and creators to evaluate and surface content at scale, based on what kids truly need to thrive.