By Clare McKinley, Staff Writer

Junior chemistry major Lance Kuo-Esser represented Xavier in the Big East Startup Challenge and took home the grand prize of $1,500 for his innovative STD testing solution, TestU, on Feb. 29. 

While most people got ready to watch a Big East showdown in Madison Square Garden, another competition had already taken place: the 2024 Big East Startup Challenge. The fourth annual meeting of the Startup Challenge hosted student entrepreneurs representing all 11 schools in the Big East conference. Students presented their pitches to a panel of judges who assessed  competitors on ideas, market needs, value proposition, feasibility, and passion and presentation.

The day of the event was a bit hectic for Kuo-Esser, but he made sure he was prepared for his five minute presentation, followed by three minutes of questions from the judges.

“It was midterm season so I was running around because I had three exams. But after I went and got dressed and went over to the Center for Innovation and they set me up in my own room. And then they had a watch party going on in the other room, so it was nice to have their support,” he said.

Kuo-Esser made a similar pitch last year but failed to make it past Xavier’s rounds of selections to advance to the Big East competition, but he was encouraged to stick with it by his faculty mentor, Mike Halloran. The most challenging part for him this year was overcoming that failure and being able to grow from last year.

“I didn’t even place last year because I think I was being too much of a science-y person and I emphasized too much on the science, so this year I tried to pivot and make it more about marketing and distribution,” he said. “I had business majors help me make my slide decks and you know I had other people who were good at marketing give me ideas. And it was a lot of ideas that came together into one and I’m very happy with the way it turned out because I wouldn’t have been able to do it on my own,” Kuo-Esser continued.

Kuo-Esser first came up with the idea for TestU his freshman year of college after he had the opportunity to get hands-on research experience at University of California San Francisco. After learning about HIV clinical trials and the spread of diseases, Kuo-Esser was inspired to tackle the growing problem of STDs for college age students. TestU uses lateral flow technology, similar to the technology used in COVID-19 at-home tests.

“It’s by no means ground breaking science. It’s been done before, and so I figured, well, why haven’t they done that for STDs,” he shared. “But I don’t think that just the technology itself is going to solve the problem. I think it goes a little bit deeper than that. Right now marketing and distribution and finding different ways of getting students to hear about it is really important to me.”

The distribution methods Kuo-Esser has been researching range from door to door delivery services and vending machines, to regular mail delivery with discreet packaging. Kuo-Esser believes that there is not going to be one blanket solution. 

“I think it’s going to be a bunch of different ways. Just because every place is so unique,” he said.

 Kuo-Esser has been in conversation with larger schools in the greater Cincinnati area about seeing which delivery method would have the most impact for them.

Kuo-Esser plans to use his prize money to implement these delivery options. If he can get up to $10,000, he’ll work on bringing out distribution methods in the fall. Just about two thousand dollars shy of his goal, Kuo-Esser is seeking out more funding through other research pitch competitions and other funding sources but is also looking forward to the future.

“Right now, we’re in a really good spot with just kind of being able to either sit or kind of move. And we’re not just sitting around,” he concluded.