The UT Austin student company called Mesh has won the Wells Fargo Clean Technology Award at the spring 2017 Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition (TVLIC) at The University of Texas at Austin on May 5, 2017.

TVLIC featured 24 startup companies started by graduate students from programs at UT such as MBA, Masters of Science and Technology, Electrical and Computer Engineer, Law, Pharmacy and Psychology. TVLIC is a bi-annual competition hosted by Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs (TVL) at the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin. The competition is open to all graduate students at UT Austin seeking funding for new business ventures where the students own 51% or more of the company.

The clean technology award is given to the company that the judges found to be the most potentially commercially viable (fundable) and that also had the greatest potential clean technology impact.

The winner, Mesh, provides a new service to improve networking at live events. The Mesh Band is a low-cost wristband leased to event organizers which can recognize a handshake gesture to log a connection.  By using a natural gesture, Mesh provides a superior solution to event attendees to track who they interact with at live events, and provides the most complete data set to event organizers and sponsors on how attendees interact. The company’s technology can greatly reduce the carbon footprint for an event by eliminating business card and promotional materials paper waste. Mesh is led by Rob Lajeunesse, MBA 2018.

As the Wells Fargo Clean Technology winner, Mesh received a cash prize of $5,000.

“We are thrilled to have been selected as the Wells Fargo Clean Technology Award Winner. This money gives us the ability to purchase our first order of Mesh Bands as we look towards launching pilot events in Summer 2017.  Our team is passionate about revolutionizing the way people connect at live events, and helping to reduce environmental impact of these events.” said Rob Lajeunesse.

Wells Fargo established the award with TVL through a grant to expand the clean technology track at TVLIC by attracting students from various disciplines with a focus on clean tech solutions. The track includes advancing technologies for the conventional oil and gas sector with emphasis on water reuse and conservation as well as enhancing the alternative energy space.