A team of two University of California, Davis, MBA students and a senior computer science major received the $20,000 first prize for the best innovation in the 23rd annual Big Bang! Business Competition on May 23. The award's lead sponsor is business leader Lorin Johnson; DLA Piper is co-sponsor.
The 23rd annual UC Davis business competition drew students and alumni from across campus, as well as from colleges and universities throughout California.
The 2023 Big Bang Business Competition's 17 finalist teams all have a co-founder affiliated with an institution of higher education in California. This year UC Davis, UCLA, Cal Poly–San Luis Obispo and the University of Southern California are represented.
The UC Davis campus is always full of fresh ideas, but innovation was at an especially high pitch last Thursday during the 22nd annual Big Bang! Business Competition awards ceremony. Held in person for the first time since 2019, the ceremony presented over $100,000 in prize money and in-kind awards to early-stage startups in the food and agriculture, health, energy/sustainability, and social enterprise sectors.
Business Partner
David Richardson
Helping innovations become companies
DLA Piper US LLP has supported the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition since its earliest days, and was a Gold-level sponsor in 2020/21. We talked with David Richardson about DLA Piper’s and his long-time involvement.
New ventures in energy, human and animal health, food and agriculture, and education receive seed money to move forward.
A team of executive MBA students attending UCLA's Anderson School of Business captured the $20,000 first prize for the top innovation in the 21st annual Big Bang! Business Competition on May 27. The prize is sponsored by Lorin Johnson and Marrone Bio Innovations.
Congratulations, 2021 Big Bang! Finalists
Forty-five teams—representing 135 aspiring and early-stage entrepreneurs—entered the 21st annual UC Davis business competition.
The competition drew students and alumni from across UC Davis, as well as from colleges and universities throughout California. Together, the Big Bang! and Little Bang!
Inventopia, a Davis startup incubator launched by 2008 Big Bang! winner Tim Keller, recently landed a $100K loan from the City of Davis to add specialized space needed by local entrepreneurs and new ventures. Its newest tenant, Peakb, develops naturally derived blue food coloring and was founded by UC Davis Professor Justin Siegel. Read the article>
Benjamin Wang, 2014 Big Bang! Business Competition winner and founder/chief medical officer of NeVap Inc., shares how winning the competition helped launch his entrepreneurial journey, notes his successes since then—and explains how the Big Bang! helps innovators go from concept to company. Watch video >
Medical Innovations Win Big in 20th Annual UC Davis Business Competition
by Marianne Skoczek
A team of UC Davis graduate students captured both the $20,000 first prize, sponsored by Lorin Johnson and Marrone Bio Innovations and the $10,000 Health Sector Award, sponsored by Bayer Crop Science in the 20th annual Big Bang! Business Competition on May 20.
113 teams—representing 315 aspiring entrepreneurs—entered the 20th annual UC Davis business competition, the greatest number in Big Bang! history.
The competition drew teams from across UC Davis, as well as from the Sacramento region and throughout California, the U.S. and the world.
Sacramento MBA student Samantha Contreras shares how she caught the entrepreneurial bug and joined a winning team in the UC Davis Big Bang! Business Competition. Read the article >
On a podcast hosted by by Frank Zaccari, Professor Andrew Hargadon shares about our lab-to-market academies and the 20th annual Big Bang! Business Competition. Listen to the podcast >
