Meal Mode wins Towson University entrepreneurial competition
By Theresa Pratt, Staff Writer
Towson University held its fourth annual College Cup on Tuesday at the StarTUp at the Armory where Meal Mode, a company that aims to ensure that there are healthy meal options within schools, won the grand prize of $10,000 to put towards its business idea.
The College Cup is Towson’s entrepreneurial competition where students create solutions for real world problems and pitch the idea to a panel of judges. The winners receive money to go towards the business idea they pitched. This year, father and son duo Ahmed Satti and Tamsir Toure were the minds behind the winner Meal Mode.
“It is nice to now have that weight off of our shoulders,” Satti said. “With the 10K, we are also excited to see where it can grow our business.”
Six finalists presented for the grand prize. Some other pitched businesses included the sneaker selling business SneakerSyncLabs, health and wellness herbal tea company Earth’s Groove, and winner of the 2024 Maker Fest, StudyWise, which is a student organizational tool.
Participants could also win $250 for honorary finalists, $600 for quick pitch finalists, and $1,000 for grand prize finalists.
Leari Jones, the business and programming specialist at the StarTUp, said that preparing for the competition involved a lot of tabling on campus to get students to want to participate.
“After students applied, they created business summaries, built their pitch decks and presented them to a panel of judges before the day of the big event to select the final six that competed on the main stage,” Jones said.
The judges needed extra time to come to a decision, but they finally announced Meal Mode as the winner.
Meal Mode decided to participate in the College Cup because it knew that the grand prize money could greatly help the business, especially with expanding the team.
“One of my favorite parts about being in the College Cup was the other start up companies that were involved,” Toure said. “It was just really cool to see different people filling different needs.”