The Big House and Ford Field may be known as football venues, but this week, they’ll be the proving grounds where a pair of local entrepreneurial ventures compete for tens of thousands of dollars in capital funds.

FirstIgnite and Stocked, both startups based in Traverse City, are headed to Ann Arbor this week for Michigan Tech Week, a conference that touts itself as “the biggest celebration of the state’s tech and entrepreneur ecosystem.” That event includes networking opportunities, keynote presentations, and competitions in “multiple startup pitch tracks.” It’s all going down at the Big House, home to University of Michigan football, and FirstIgnite and Stocked are both in the running for big money.

In addition to Michigan Tech Week, FirstIgnite has also scored an invite to UnDemo Day, which coordinates one-on-one meetings between Michigan startups and venture capital investors from all over the country. That event is scheduled for Wednesday, October 11 at Ford Field – home of the Detroit Lions – and will give FirstIgnite a chance to line up another influx of cash.

FirstIgnite first garnered local attention in 2021 when it clinched a pitch night victory at TCNewTech. Less than a year later, the company won the “Emerging Business” category at Traverse Connect’s 2022 Scale Up Awards. A graduate of the prestigious YCombinator startup accelerator, FirstIgnite originated as a convener that sought to “help companies and universities partner on innovation.” Recently, the business pivoted to the world of artificial intelligence (AI), developing “AI-powered marketing tools for universities.”

“Everything changed for FirstIgnite as of May,” says Chase Bonhag, the company’s CEO and co-founder. That month, the business released a new “AI-powered business development tool for helping universities market their research and their patents.” Specifically, Bonhag explains, the software “helps universities talk about their research in terminology that companies care about and identify which companies would most likely be interested in partnering on that research.” The tool also assists universities in finding contact information for “the right person at any company to reach out to.”

Per Bonhag, FirstIgnite’s new software has “been selling like crazy” – and becoming “the first approved AI tool at almost every university we’ve sold to.” Customers so far include the John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Michigan State University, the University of Chicago, the University of California Davis, and more.

Stocked is also a past TCNewTech victor, having won a pitch night in June of last year. The company is a grocery delivery service that focuses on the vacation rental market. CEO and co-founder Broc Crandall got the idea in 2019 when, on a ski trip with friends in Colorado, he realized that the process of running errands and stocking the vacation rental with groceries and supplies took up half a day. Stocked seeks to have “groceries sitting on the counter and items stocked in the fridge” when travelers arrive at their rentals, thus saving them from “wasting valuable vacation time in the grocery store.”

Since a 2021 launch, Stocked has offered its delivery services throughout six northern Michigan counties, including Grand Traverse, Leelanau, Benzie, Antrim, Kalkaska, and Charlevoix. This year, the company expanded operations to Florida, with plans to commence services there next month.

Both FirstIgnite and Stocked will be at the Big House for Michigan Tech Week, where they’ll compete for their share of the more than $250,000 in prizes up for grabs across various pitch contests.

First, tomorrow (Monday, October 9), FirstIgnite will participate in the eLab AI Launchpad Pitch Competition, aimed at “supporting early-stage AI companies in Michigan.” Contestants will pitch their businesses to a live audience and a panel of judges, with the “two most compelling companies” securing SAFE investments from eLab Ventures, a venture capital fund that supports “businesses where AI is the difference in creating market disruption.” First prize is $50,000, while a runner-up finish is worth $25,000.

Then, on Tuesday, Stocked will compete in the Michigan Founders Fund Venture Competition. That contest follows a “team pitch format,” which Stocked co-founder Zachary Hite says is designed to get startups working together in creative ways. Per the Michigan Tech Week website, startups must collaborate with 2-4 other businesses accepted into the contest, working together to “develop a plan for how they can leverage different facets of their relationships/business/product to support one another in achieving mutual success in growing their business.” The winning team will get $150,000 to roll out their collaborative concept.

Per Hite, Stocked is leveraging “synergy” with other companies in and around the vacation rental sector – including a short-term rental business in Ann Arbor, a startup that does virtual tours for property managers, and an aerial drone photography company – to create a shared vision. The startups plan to proceed with their partnership with or without the $150,000 cash prize.

Finally, on Wednesday, the FirstIgnite team will trade the Big House for Ford Field, where they’ll meet with investors as part of UnDemo Day. For that event, the Ann Arbor-based Renaissance Venture Capital Fund lines up investors from all over the country to meet with Michigan startups on a one-on-one basis. The event is so prestigious, Bonhag says, that “almost every startup in the state of Michigan applies,” but only startups that get interest from three or more attending investors receive the Ford Field invite. This year, FirstIgnite caught the eye of five investors.

“It’s a really impressive event, and it always leads to big deals being done for Michigan startups,” Bonhag says of UnDemo Day. “It’s an amazing opportunity to network with folks that we would otherwise never have a chance to connect with. And it’s amazing knowing that we got invited based on our traction and growth, because it basically means a Traverse City startup is viewed as one of the top startups in the state of Michigan.”