At the October 24th 2011 MassChallenge Awards Ceremony, Massachusetts Govenor Deval Patrick and leaders from across the startup ecosystem gathered to announce the 26 winning startups in the 2011 MassChallenge Startup Competition and Accelerator, including three $100K Diamond Prize Winners and fourteen $50K Gold Prize Winners. 

 

The $100K Diamond Prize winners include Sanergy, a company started by 2011 MIT Sloan graduates David Auerbach, Ani Vallabhaneni, and Lindsay Stradley. Sanergy is leading an effort to bring proper sanitation to the slums of Nairobi, Kenya and turn human waste into biogas. You can see a video of MIT E-Center Managing Director Bill Aulet talking to Sanergy's founding team on our website.

 

$100K Diamond Prize winners also include Tinfoil Security, a startup that offers automated web security for small online businesses, founded by Ainsley Braun (SB 2010) and Michael Borohovswki (SB 2009), and Alkeus Pharmeceuticals, Inc, a biotechnology company developing novel treatments for blindness, lead by Leonide Saad, (PhD 06, SM 02) and Iilyas Washington. 

 

The second annual $1M competition launched on March 7 and attracted 733 applications from 24 countries and 34 states. The 125 highest-impact, highest-potential startups were invited as competition finalists to participate in a 3-month accelerator providing intensive mentoring and access to free resources including office space, legal support and targeted introductions to customers and funding sources.

 

A full list of the winning companies can be found at masschallenge.org.

 

Sanergy photo courtesy saner.gy