Efficient Battery Startup Natrion Wins Cozad New Venture Challenge 2021

5/5/2021

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The Technology Entrepreneur Center in The Grainger College of Engineering is pleased to announce the winners of 2021 Cozad New Venture Challenge. Natrion is the Grand Prize winner in the annual business venture creation competition. The clean energy startup won $35,000 in funding, including $20,000 as the first place winner. Additionally, the startup won $10,000 Dr. Paul Magelli Innovation Prize from Illinois Ventures and $5,000 V. Dale Cozad Best Pitch Award from Cozad Asset Management.  Natrion is developing next-generation solid-state battery technologies that will make renewable energy sources and hybrid power systems safer and affordable for mainstream markets.

The Cozad New Venture Challenge is an educational experience for the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign student entrepreneurs and innovators to develop and advance their ideas. This program provides mentoring to teams through the phases of venture creation, and resources in idea validation, pitching skills, and customer development. 

This year nearly $200,000 was awarded in funding and sponsored prizes to 70 teams to help launch business ventures. During this challenging year more than 100 alumni, judges, mentors, coaches, sponsors, and partners of the thriving entrepreneurship ecosystem in Illinois were involved in making 2021 Cozad New Venture Challenge a grand success. 

Nearly $2 million has been awarded in cash and in-kind prizes to student innovators through Cozad since 2000. Past participants of the program include several successful startups including Lightform, Trala, Cast21, Serionix, and Psyonic

Jed Taylor, Executive Director at the Technology Entrepreneur Center, says, “The University of Illinois is renowned for producing world-class entrepreneurs and innovators. Crunchbase recently ranked the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign among the top 5 leading public schools in the country graduating the highest number of funded founders. The Cozad New Venture Challenge program is dedicated to providing opportunities and resources to student entrepreneurs to develop an entrepreneurial mindset and make an impact. We congratulate the winning team and all the teams that participated, and look forward to working with them in the future." 

Founded in 2018, Natrion is developing a proprietary solid-state battery technology called LISIC, or Lithium Solid Ionic Conductor that battery manufacturers will be able to implement on their assembly lines soon. 

Alex Kosyakov, Materials Science & Engineering major and co-founder of Natrion says, “Cozad New Venture Challenge put many of the customer discovery and product-market fit skills that we have been building at Illinois iVenture Accelerator to the test. Through Cozad we got the opportunity to be mentored by Prof. Sanjay Patel of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and he was instrumental in helping us fine tune our pitch to effectively convey our complex problem statement and solution. Our grand prize will help us build our new lab at the EnterpriseWorks at the University of Illinois Research Park, and fund our upcoming pilots.

"We were unsure of how Cozad would work during COVID, but the Technology Entrepreneur Center did an amazing job of putting together a smooth, effective, and highly educational virtual program. We are incredibly grateful for this opportunity,” he added.

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This story was published May 5, 2021.