CAST-GNY Startup Pitch Competition 2026
Innovate. Pitch. Impact.
Join the CASTGNY Startup Pitch Competition on October 4, 2026, in the heart of Manhattan! This event brings together aspiring founders, entrepreneurs, investors, and industry professionals for a morning of pitching, feedback, networking, and practical insights into building and growing a startup.
This is an opportunity to showcase your idea, learn from experienced professionals, and connect with the Greater New York innovation community.
🏆 Grand Prizes
A Mac Mini M6 for the winning team!
📅 Tentative Agenda
9:30 – 9:45 AM Check-in & Networking
9:45 – 9:50 AM Welcome Remarks
9:50 – 10:10 AM Lightning Pitch Workshop
10:10 – 10:20 AM Introduction to the Startup Pitch Competition — Rules, format & judging criteria
10:20 – 11:30 AM Startup Pitch Competition — Startup pitches & judges’ Q&A
11:30 – 11:40 AM Judges’ Deliberation
11:40 AM – 12:25 PM Entrepreneurship & Innovation Discussion— Insights from founders, investors, scientists & technology leaders
12:25 – 12:30 PM Award Ceremony & Grand Prize Presentation 🏆
(Agenda is subject to change.)
🚀 Want to Pitch?
Register on Luma to attend the event.
You will receive a link to submit your full application. You will be asked to submit:
Project Name
Elevator Pitch
About the Project (what inspired you, what you learned, how you built your project, and the challenges you faced)
Built with (what tools, what models, what languages, ...)
"Try it out" Links (links to your prototype, business, ...)
Image Gallery (up to 15 images)
Video Demo Link
Current Stage:
Prototype / MVP
Early users / Pilot
Revenue-generating
Other
Industry / Category:
AI / Software
Healthcare / Biotech
FinTech
Education
Consumer
Sustainability / Climate
Hardware
Other
Supplementary Materials
The following is the introduction to lightning workshop and bios of judges and panelists.
The Lightning Workshop
The Perfect Pitch to Raise Venture Capital by Atul Prashar
A great idea doesn’t raise capital. A great pitch makes investors believe in what that idea can become.
In this fast-paced session, venture investor and Fordham professor Atul Prashar breaks down how to build and deliver a pitch that answers what investors really want to know: Why this problem? Why this market? Why this team? Why now?
Learn how to turn your story, traction and vision into a compelling investment case that gets investors leaning in and asking, “What happens next?”
Here's a teaser video: Effective Pitch for Venture Capital. Please come on time to join the lightning workshop.
Startup Panel:
Panelists will discuss funding, legal issues and go to market strategies and resources that startups can leverage.
Judges and Startup Panelist bio:
Atul Prashar (Judge/Panelist), Investor / Advisor, Adjunct Professor, GSB
With a “profit with purpose” focus, Atul Prashar invests in disruptive, tech-first opportunities across media, sports, and film through Sava360 Ventures, the Prashar Family Foundation, and global education initiatives. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Venture Capital at Fordham GSB.
Atul is a Principal Investor in RASA Film Group, backing films featuring strong South Asian female protagonists, and the Sports Ventures Platform, co-founded with retired NFL athletes to back athlete tech founders.
Earlier in his career, Atul was a software developer and music producer for Emmy and Grammy Winning Artists across Hollywood and Bollywood. He now hosts The Whiskey Hue podcast, exploring business, investing, tech, and culture with a healthy dose of sarcasm. One Cube. Real Whiskey. Real Talk.
Julio Marquez (Judge/Panelist)
CO-FOUNDER. New York Bay Capital.
Julio is co-founder of New York Bay Capital, a cross-border advisory and investment firm with direct presence in over 20 cities around the globe. He has 30+ years of experience in principal investments and M&A, having previously worked at institutions such as Wasserstein Perella, Citibank and Morgan Stanley. He has developed particular expertise in structuring foreign investments in Latin America in industries as diverse as media/telecom, manufacturing, retailing, energy, oil & gas, plastics and steel.
Julio holds an MBA from Harvard Business School (1990), a master's degree with honors in systems engineering from the University of Pennsylvania (1985) and a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1984).
Bonnie Cao (Judge)
CEO & CO-FOUNDER, Lindr
Bonnie is the CEO and co-founder of Lindr, an AI-powered clinical trial navigation platform that helps physicians identify the most relevant trials for their patients in minutes, not hours. Prior to founding Lindr, she worked in life sciences consulting at Trinity Life Sciences and Acsel Health, advising pharmaceutical companies on market access, commercialization, and competitive strategy. She has also held roles at GSK, Pfizer, and Harvard Medical School spanning medical affairs, pharmaceutical research, and neuroscience research. Bonnie brings a founder’s perspective combined with experience evaluating healthcare technologies, markets, and commercialization strategies. She holds a Master of Biotechnology with an Engineering Entrepreneurship Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania and a bachelor's degree in behavioral neuroscience from Northeastern University, where she graduated summa cum laude.
Dr. Eric Fang (Judge)
Professor Fang is a Professor of Marketing and the Iacocca Chair of Marketing at Lehigh University. Prior to joining Lehigh in August 2020, he spent twelve years at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he served as Assistant Professor (2008–2012), Associate Professor (2012–2016), and Professor of Marketing and James Tower Fellow (2016–2020). His research focuses on marketing strategy in the digital and AI era, with substantive contributions to understanding online communities, user-generated content, digital advertising, personalization, and platform strategy. He has published more than 30 articles in leading marketing, management, and information systems journals, including Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Organization Science, and Journal of International Business Studies, and is ranked top 30 worldwide in publications in top marketing journals such as Journal of Marketing and Journal of Marketing Research from 2021-2025. From 2020 to 2025, Professor Fang has been recognized in Stanford University and Elsevier’s Top 2% Scientist Rankings, which identify the most highly cited scholars worldwide based on Scopus data. His work has been supported by and conducted in collaboration with leading digital firms including Alibaba, Tencent, JD.com, and NetEase. His research has received multiple honors, including the Journal of Marketing Best Paper Award, Journal of Retailing Best Paper Award, and the AMA Service Research Award, and has been featured in outlets such as The Economist and Advertising Age. He was named a Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar in 2011 and received the AMA Varadarajan Award for Early Career Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research in 2015.
Dr. Nick (Yu) Gu (Judge)
ADJUNCT PROFESSOR. Columbia University.
Nick is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where he teaches the course Agentic Engineering (Fall 2026). He serves on the board of Pioneering Minds AI, a New York-based AI education nonprofit with 8,000 members. He is the Global Lead of the Chinese Googler Network at Google, an employee community of more than 20,000 members worldwide. He has worked at Google since 2018, building software and AI systems, and his current focus is AI agents.
Nick holds a Ph.D. in computational neuroscience from Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2024), a master's degree in computer science from Columbia University (2017), a bachelor's degree in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology (2015) and a bachelor's degree in intelligent science and technology from Peking University (2014).
Dr. Sabrina Hsueh (Judge)
Dr. Sabrina Hsueh is Founder and Head of AI at ForEvidence.ai and a recipient of the 2025 IFIP IP3 David O'Leary Award and the 2026 AI150 Most Influential Award for her contributions to AI transformation and adoption. Over two decades, she has built AI verification layers and centers of excellence at Fortune 100 companies including Pfizer and IBM, and held leadership roles at startups backed by a16z and Khosla Ventures. She serves as Vice President of CIE-USA Greater New York, Co-Chair of the Asian American Engineer of the Year (AAEOY) Executive Committee, and on the UN AI for Impact technology advisory committee. An elected Fellow of AMIA and the IBM Academy of Technology, she holds 16 patents, teaches executive programs, and earned her PhD in Informatics from the University of Edinburgh, a master's from UC Berkeley, and a bachelor's degree in Computer Science from National Taiwan University. She is excited to serve as a judge for the CAST Competition and to see how the next generation is putting technology to work on problems that matter to them.
Halah M. Joseph (Judge)
Go-to-Market Manager, PyMC Labs
Halah is a go-to-market and AI commercialization Manager at PyMC Labs, a Bayesian AI consultancy helping organizations apply advanced statistical modeling and AI to real-world business challenges. She leads positioning, partnerships, and commercialization initiatives across the company's AI and open-source portfolio, including agentic data science and synthetic consumer solutions for enterprise clients.
Her background spans data engineering, consulting, and international business development. She previously led a data engineering team at Tupperware across three continents and eleven countries, and helped establish an Australian data science consultancy's presence in Southeast Asia, building its regional client base from the ground up.
Halah is also a Regional Host for Women Applying AI, leading New York programming and partnerships to expand opportunities for women in AI.
Dr. Bin Ni(Judge)
Software Engineer at Google
* 10+ years of industry software development experience, actively taking ownership and participating in the full life cycle of software development, including requirements, architecture, multi-layer design, assignment, implementation, unit test, integration test, deployment, optimization, and maintenance.
* 20+ years of computer science expertise with an in-depth understanding of data structures, algorithms, operating systems, coding, and system design.
* Demonstrated strong leadership in enlisting all stakeholders’ support in aligning with the project and team goals. Outstanding analytical and problem-solving skills, verbal and written communication skills with traceable records.
* Specialty in machine learning and wireless network protocols with 10+ publications being cited 200+ times by 20+ countries. Served as a technical program committee member for three international academic conferences, and as a reviewer for nine international journals and 12 international academic conferences.
* 10+ years of C/C++ developing experience.
Drew Zhu(Judge)
Drew Zhu is Managing Partner of ATP Ventures Partner, a global investment and venture-building platform focused on life sciences, healthcare, AI × Bio, and frontier therapeutic technologies. She has more than 12 years of experience across biopharma, healthcare commercialization, global supply chains, venture investing, and company building, with a particular focus on translating emerging technologies into scalable businesses.
At ATP Ventures Partner, Drew leads investments, corporate development, and strategic partnerships, works closely with founders and scientific teams on financing strategy, business development, licensing, market entry, and commercialization.
Drew is Co-Founder of Flatbird Therapeutics, a women’s health company focused on the vaginal microbiome, HPV-related conditions, and women’s health innovation.
Board of Neurosonix, a neurotechnology company developing ultrasound-based brain-computer interface technologies, and Pablo AI, an agentic AI drug discovery platform integrated with fully automated organoid technologies.
Master in Biotechnology from New York University and MBA CORe at Harvard Business School.
Anna Yoon
Lead/Senior Software Engineer at OpenAI
Anna is focused on driving online experimentation at OpenAI, building scalable A/B testing frameworks for LLM applications. Her work helps companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, x.ai, character.ai, and Atlassian optimize model performance, reduce costs, and improve user engagement.
Prior to OpenAI, she helped build and scale Statsig, which was acquired for $1.1B. Before that, she contributed to core R&D at LG Chem, playing a key role in the technology scale-up that led to LG Energy Solution’s $98B IPO.
She is a frequent speaker at conferences including the IEEE GenAI Summit and KSEA IMPACTs, and is an alumna of the United Nations Millennium Fellowship.
Anna holds degrees from Georgia Tech (BS) and USC(MS), and pursued a PhD at the University of Pennsylvania before moving into industry.
Linda Chen (Panel moderator)
Linda Chen is a tech founder, investor, and former investment banker with experience across AI, emerging technology, private equity, and capital markets. She previously worked in Jefferies’ Technology Investment Banking Group and in private equity at Stonehenge Capital.
Linda has co-founded and led multiple ventures, including Casie AI, a GenAI SaaS company, where she served as COO and CFO; Metaggio, a mixed-reality technology platform, where she served as COO and CSO; and Quantum Growth Ventures, a physical commodities trading venture, where she served as CFO. Across these companies, she has led fundraising, financial strategy, operations, strategic partnerships, and go-to-market initiatives from early-stage development through growth.
Today, Linda is the Founder and CEO of StarLogic AI, an AI spirituality app, and advises startups and growth-stage companies as a fractional CFO.
John Alexander, CWS®, CEPA®, CSRIC® (Panelist)
John Alexander is Co-Founder & Executive Director of Allegiance Pathway, a 501(c)(3) capacity-builder that has spent the past seven years helping underrepresented tech founders across New York City build and scale mission-driven ventures. Since 2021, John has advised and mentored Impact tech entrepreneurs from underserved communities through programs including the NYC Economic Development Corporation's Founder Fellowship and Venture Access Alliance at Newlab in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, alongside partners Company Ventures and Chloe Capital.
John brings this work a foundation of over 30 years in international private banking and wealth management, including senior leadership roles at Bank of America Private Bank, Key Private Bank, Deutsche Bank, and Lloyds Bank Group. He is also Co-Founder & Principal of Allegiance Partners, Inc., a boutique multi-family office. John holds CWS®, CEPA®, and CSRIC® designations from Oxford University's Worcester College.
Yan (Heyi) Niu (Panelist)
CROSS-BORDER CORPORATE & CAPITAL MARKETS LAWYER
Yan is a cross-border corporate and capital markets lawyer advising companies and financial institutions on IPOs, M&A, financings and other strategic transactions. She previously practiced at Clifford Chance and has worked on U.S., Hong Kong and other international capital markets matters involving Citibank, Goldman Sachs, CICC and other leading financial institutions.
Yan also has end-to-end experience advising companies from formation through the public markets. She supported AGii+ Group (NASDAQ: AGII) from its early days as a 13-person startup through corporate structuring, multiple rounds of institutional financing and its eventual Nasdaq listing, giving her experience across the full company lifecycle—from formation and fundraising to IPO execution and post-listing matters.
Yan holds an LL.M. from NYU School of Law, studied at Columbia Law School, and earned an MBA on a full scholarship from Quantic School of Business and Technology. She also holds an LL.M. from East China University of Political Science and Law.