PitchMI 2026: From Quarterfinals to Championship with Pete Martin

In this episode, David Washburn talks with Pete Martin, Director of Portfolio Management at the MSU Research Foundation, about the PitchMI competition—from the quarterfinal events held across Michigan to the championship in Lansing, where Adrenaline Interactive received a $1 million investment.

Pete reflects on the scale of the competition, which drew 375 startup applications from more than 100 communities across Michigan, and discusses the four finalist companies, the role of venture and ecosystem partners, and how the competition helped connect founders with investors, customers, and new opportunities for growth.

The conversation also looks ahead to the next PitchMI, including new quarterfinal events planned for fall 2026 and the MSU Research Foundation’s broader efforts to support startup growth across Michigan.

Host: David Washburn and Jeff Wesley
Guests: Pete Martin, Director of Portfolio Management, MSU Research Foundation
Producers: Jenna McNamara and Doug Snitgen
Music: "Devil on Your Shoulder" by Will Harrison, licensed via Epidemic Sound

Stay connected with the MSU Research Foundation by following us on LinkedIn or subscribing to our email newsletters.

Transcript

Introduction and PitchMI Overview

David Washburn 0:04

Our episode today is with Pete Martin, Director of Portfolio Management here at the MSU Research Foundation. Pete led all of our efforts uh with our team to put on the PitchMI competition. And so this episode is a uh kind of a recap, uh a summary of of what happened with PitchMI from the quarterfinals to the finals in Lansing, and what lies ahead uh for next fall and next spring. So I hope you enjoy this. Welcome to the MSU Research Foundation podcast. My guest today is our friend Pete Martin, Pete orchestrated the PitchMI competition. I thought it would be a great activity today to just do a little recap.

Pete Martin 0:57

Hi, Dave. How are you?

David Washburn 0:59

I'm doing great. How are you?

Pete Martin 1:00

It's a good day. Yeah.

The Scale of PitchMI

Pete Martin 1:02 David Washburn 1:02

Well, on um Tuesday, April 7th, we held uh one of the largest pitch competitions in the United States, certainly in the state of Michigan. Um, and one team walked away with a million dollar investment. How exciting was that?

Pete Martin 1:18

Uh was a heck of an event. Um I mean it's just uh it's just great to think about how we got here. And yeah, it's one one of one of the largest in the country, the largest in Michigan's history, right? Two two million dollars in prizes that we've been able to invest in in companies ended up being more than that. We had gosh, almost almost two point, a little over 2.7 million dollars in investment and uh and and credits from the folks at Google Cloud. Nice. Uh just phenomenal that we that we were able to put on an event of this magnitude and see uh see a lot of founders in Michigan uh be attracted to this. We saw 375 companies apply from a hundred cities and towns across the across the state and b on both peninsulas. Right. Uh and it was fun to go to all that we went to four different cities in in in the fall and uh and to see the activity there and the and the strengths that Michigan has across a bunch of different industries. I think that was maybe the coolest thing that came out of PitchMI is that this is you know, Michigan, a lot of people know Michigan for our mobility history. Uh, but Michigan has so much history in entrepreneurship, and and we were really able to showcase that with this

Quarterfinal Winners and Industry Sectors

Pete Martin 2:23

event.

David Washburn 2:23

Yeah, the regional uh competitions had different cities and then also different sectors all at once. Uh uh so Grand Rapids was healthcare and life sciences, as I recall, and um the company that came out of that was Bed Connect.

Pete Martin 2:37

Yep, Lindsay's amazing.

David Washburn 2:40

Yeah, such a cool story. Um Traverse City was Clean Tech and Outdoor Innovation, and that was um the emerging company there was Electric Outdoors. So they were in the finals, and then in Detroit we had mobility, defense, and advanced manufacturing, and that was General Orbit who emerged there. And then um in Ann Arbor we did AI and software, and that's where Adrenaline Interactive came from. And so those four teams were the finalists, um

Pete Martin 3:10

And four really, really great companies, very deserving companies to come out of those four competitions.

David Washburn 3:16

Yeah, I thought all the pitches were fantastic, and um, it was really if I were judging, and and I'm glad I'm not and wasn't, um, it would have been a hard decision. I think it would have been a hard decision.

Pete Martin 3:27

So yeah, I I think we're we're uh fortunate that we don't have to be the ones in in the room. I think um lots of people were saying that was the hardest job that day and like truly, true, like really, really was. We had it's uh I think it's a good sign that I had uh people come up. So so Max Albert at Adrenaline Interactive wins the million dollar prize and had people come up to me that were very excited for Max. I had people come up to me that were uh very upset that other companies, that the other three companies didn't win. So they that like different people saying that oh Bed Connect should have won, General Orbit should have won, Electric Outdoors should have won. I legitimately have had people say that all four of these companies should have won. Yeah, and I think that's great. Like I I also agree all four of those companies could like easily deserving of a million dollar prize, of a million-dollar investment. Yeah, I think it goes to show the quality of companies uh that are being built here in Michigan. It's not just those four that we had 20 companies participate uh and and hundreds of companies apply for for this pitch competition. There are many great companies being built here.

Follow-On Investment and Venture Partners

David Washburn 4:24

Yeah, and as a reminder, the even the the sort of quarter finalists got a $250,000 investment. And then many of uh the VC partners from around the state sort of jumped in at those regional competitions and and some of them walked away with a lot more than the 250, as I recall.

Pete Martin 4:40

Yeah, yeah. In in particular, uh shout out to the folks at Assembly Ventures. Uh they came in uh first in in Detroit and and committed to co-investing with us in whoever won, right? In whoever won in Detroit. Uh and uh eLAB in uh Ann Arbor did the same thing. Whoever wins this AI and software pitch competition in Ann Arbor, we we will co-invest with you and Corewell Health Ventures in Grand Rapids. It's amazing to see that we have other private venture capital firms across the state of Michigan that are willing to back the founders of Michigan like we are.

Adrenaline Interactive and In-Game Advertising

David Washburn 5:14

So Adrenaline wins, remind us what they do and what's next for them.

Pete Martin 5:18

Yeah, so Adrenaline Interactive is an AI company doing product placement inside of video games. So if you are any brand of which we have like uh Domino's in Michigan, right? Partnered with Fortnite. They built like, I think it was Fortnite, uh, built a virtual pizzeria, and you had to go in and like eat a Domino's piece of pizza and it gave you a speed boost in this video game, right? They they have done that, right? Yeah, we have many great brands, Domino's being based in Michigan. Many great brands uh across the country have been dipping their toes into advertising in video games, but historically it's been really hard and really expensive to do that. Adrenaline Interactive is using AI to make that extremely easy, almost as easy as effectively just upload your logo and they can reskin assets within video games and then also do proper attributions. So you know, as a brand, when someone sees your logo inside of a video game, and then when they you can track that all the way through to purchase. So when they purchase your product, you can you know that it was attributed to oh, they saw our brand multiple times in this video game.

David Washburn 6:16

That's fascinating. So good, really, really fascinating. And so what where what's next in their journey? Uh they so they've got the um so they won 250 um at a regional and then a million uh afterwards.

Pete Martin 6:29

They got 250,000 from us, $125,000 from from eLAB Ventures, $100,000 from Google Cloud. Actually, I think they've gotten total like $400 or $400,000 or more from Google Cloud because of their part of their AI program. Got it. And then another million dollars from winning the PitchMI championship. Uh, and so many great things ahead for them. What we are trying to do is now connect them with as many brands here in Michigan that that are and should be uh advertising within video games as possible. I just made a connection to them uh last week with a CPG brand that's up in up in Traverse City that 10x their revenue last year and is trying to get their their brand out there more. We were up in in Traverse City for Northern Michigan Startup Week. We're holding office hours, met with this founder, made the connection to Max. They're gonna be working together. I just was just talking to Max earlier today. Uh and so that's you know, that that that that's incredible. But the more that that we can do to open the door for them now that they have this this massive momentum behind them, that's our focus. Uh, I know that that's their focus as well. They're bringing on uh, well, they're I would say they're hiring new people, they're bringing on new people to help them scale on on the sales front uh as well. And they have some cool partnerships that they're gonna be announcing this summer.

Supporting Startup Growth Beyond PitchMI

David Washburn 7:36

Yeah, so it's the capital and it's the um connectivity, I think. That's the that's the piece. So um, well, that's exciting, but we're not done with PitchMI, are we?

PitchMI 2026 and New Regional Events

Pete Martin 7:45

No, no, not at all. It is uh uh I'm like super excited that we get to do this again, right? So we'll be coming back this fall. Uh and so gosh, the first date is September 15th. That Tuesday will be in Grand Rapids uh for our event. Um putting something oh yeah, so our event on uh defense and aerospace uh will be held in Grand Rapids, and then the next week, September 22nd, uh we'll be doing AI and software in Kalamazoo. Okay, uh and September 24th, that Thursday, super exciting. Our event on advanced manufacturing materials and outdoor innovation is going to be held up in Marquette in the UP. Okay. Uh that's awesome because this will be the largest pitch competition prize ever held in the UP. So we get to make a little bit more history with with this event. Uh and our final uh fall uh competition will be on October 1st, uh healthcare and life sciences in Detroit.

David Washburn 8:36

Okay. And then there'll be another finals after there will be. Okay.

Pete Martin 8:40

Yeah. Uh date and location to be announced there. But um, you know, we held this one in April in Lansing, and we'll we'll see where we do the next one.

Building Around Michigan Startup Events

David Washburn 8:48

Yeah. Good. Well, and there's so much uh there is some exciting things going on in Marquette and in the UP already.

Pete Martin 8:55

Yeah, tons, tons of great events there. And I think the cool thing for us is all of these events that we are planning are stacking around other events that our partners across the state are also holding. Yeah. So when we are in Kalamazoo or Grand Rapids or Marquette or Detroit, it's not just our event, right? Like this, it will be a great event that's happening and we'll have a great prize, and you'll see some great companies and investors in in attendance there, but there will be other events to attend in each of those areas. The same thing with the the championship that we held for PitchMI in April was here with in Lansing during 517 E&IiWeek. Yeah, and so there's a bunch of other things happening around these events. And so if you're you know, if you're if you're listening to this saying, hey, maybe maybe you know, do I want to attend this event or not? Attend it. And there are other ones that you can go to as well, so you can get really plugged in to the the whole startup ecosystem that that is growing really fast in Michigan.

David Washburn 9:46

Yeah. How many do you think were at the finals in um in Lansing?

Pete Martin 9:51

I know, I know that we hit uh we set a limit of 500 people that could register for that event, and we hit that limit. Oh wow. And so we I know we had we had hundreds of people there. It was standing room only. Yeah. Um, yeah, it was it was a

National Judges and Investor Perspectives

Pete Martin 10:04

lot.

David Washburn 10:04

And we had some interesting judges too. We we plucked judges out of the coasts. Can you speak to that?

Pete Martin 10:12

Yeah, it was it we were really intentional about that. So for the fall events, we pulled in our ecosystem partners and judges from from across Michigan. Yeah, and that was really great to do. Really great to pull in all of Michigan to say, hey, we're supporting our our regions. We tried to pull local people in in each of those regions. Uh, but by the time we got to the championship, uh we we all knew these people uh already. They were already portfolio companies of ours at at that point. Yeah. And so we we really wanted to pull uh people from outside of Michigan in as judges. And there were multiple reasons. One, we wanted folks that didn't know these these founders. Uh, and second, uh, yeah, we thought it would be great to pull in coastal investors uh that that have been doing this a long time with from very successful uh backgrounds and very successful funds to so that they could see the quality of founders that are being built, that that are building great companies here in Michigan. And they told us after the fact, like, man, goodness, like that was an incredible event. Those were incredible companies, right? So I think I think that worked.

David Washburn 11:11

Yeah. They were they were great judges, and I I too uh heard similar responses that that this was a pretty incredible competition with the quarterfinals and then the finals, and they they all love the team, and I too think they uh they struggled on choosing who should who should win this.

Startup Growth Between Events

David Washburn 11:28

So yeah.

Pete Martin 11:28

Well, I may maybe it's a consolation for them to know that many people thought many of the companies should should have should have won. You know what I like maybe the most about this entire uh competition? I really I loved that we had the fall events and that we waited six months to have this championship because it gave us a tremendous amount of time to to work with these companies uh and and to see you know see how far they could get in in that time frame. I thought that was really awesome. I'm I'm excited about that for for next year. Uh but even even with this competition, uh we saw some tremendous growth with all four of these companies. General Orbit, maybe in particular, because they came out of stealth in the fall. They they won in Detroit, uh, and they were building in the fall, they were building a company that could uh that would make it cheaper and easier to build satellites. Uh and over time, over a couple of months, with working with us and working with their now co-investors with with Assembly Ventures, uh, working with these organizations, they said, Oh my goodness, and well, and their own discovery. They said, Oh my goodness, this is way bigger than we thought it was. They have a magnetometer that can read the uh the the Earth's magnetic field. Uh, and because it can read that and filter out the rest of the noise, it can tell where you are on the planet. It's like it is GPS without relying on satellites. That's cool. And the the potential, the ceiling for that is unlimited. They can they can build an absolutely incredible company. So to see that growth and how how fast they were able to shift from what they started to where they got to at the championship, that that was awesome, right? And Max obviously had had incredible growth and and was deserving of that million-dollar prize. Lindsay at Bed Connect, incredible company, and wish in what she's gotten to. And she raised a multi-million dollar round, right? After announced a multi-million dollar close after she won in the fall. Fabulous. And Joseph at Electric Outdoors just continues to be an absolutely incredible leader and deploying, they're act they're actively deploying their technology across the country, right? So great, great companies. And because we gave them the time to use that capital and to and to leverage the momentum they got from the fall, uh, I think it showed out really well uh at the championship.

Governor Whitmer and Statewide Partners

David Washburn 13:30

Uh, which sponsors or partners do we want to give a shout out as we wind down this great recap of PitchMI?

Pete Martin 13:35

I'm gonna start with great people that were that were at this event because I don't think we've talked about it yet. Uh so at the championship, the governor showed up, Governor Whitmer showed up, and that was great. She surprised everybody by by being there. Uh, she also, I mean, it was just amazing. She was able to spend 15 or 20 minutes one-on-one with the four finalists backstage. They did not know we kept we managed to keep that a secret from them. I don't know how we did it, but we did it. Uh-huh. Uh, but she showed up and and was just able to talk to them for a little bit. That's incredible. I can't like I can't put a dollar value on on that, you know. Um, so thank you to to Governor Whitmer for showing up and for backing PitchMI from the very beginning. Uh, also thank you to Mayor Andy Shore from Lansing for being present uh and to President Guskowitz, MSU's President Guskowitz as well, who was there for the entire time. And provost Laura Lee McIntyre was there as well, right? And that that was just it's great. It's great to see all of Lansing coming together and and our our partners from across the state coming together to celebrate this event. Um, I mentioned Assembly Ventures, evLAB Ventures, I mentioned Corwell Health Ventures, uh, but we had we had 30, 30 plus organizations from across the state that came together to support this. That includes our fellow, like the Michigan Innovation Fund coalition members that supported this in every region, right? In in Grand Rapids and Traverse City and Detroit and Ann Arbor when we did each of the regional events and supported it throughout. Uh the folks at Midwest House were really helpful as we as we put this event on in the fall. That was that was incredible. Uh we brought in uh celebrity actor Mark Evan Jackson to do a full day of improv with these founders, which was both fun and also really educational and valuable for them because it's all about like thinking on your toes and being able to react to the chaos that comes with being a high growth startup founder. Right. Uh I'm sure there's many that I'm missing, but there are just a ton of great organizations from around Michigan that that came in to support. Oh, the Michigan Venture Capital Association uh as well, right? We we brought these four founders together to meet with them and their members uh throughout this six month period. And I know that those directly led to customer conversations. That was the point was meet with these folks and and figure out how you can be helpful to these four founders. Uh and that directly led to customer conversations. The last one I'll say, uh, because I don't think I've mentioned it yet, is the Michigan Economic Development Corporation. Uh none of this would have happened without them, right? This uh they came in effectively treat them as the title sponsor for this event. Uh and they were incredibly supportive. We were on calls almost every week with them for the last six, seven months, you know, uh going through this entire thing. We're on another call with them this week uh to to recap and talk about what's coming next. That support, the support from their media partners with with FINN Partners was was really helpful and just pushing this out to not just the state but the

Preparing for Future PitchMI Competitions

Pete Martin 16:21

entire country.

David Washburn 16:21

Yeah, that's great. Pete, there's another competition that's gonna start in the fall. If I'm a founder, how do I get myself in position to be um to be one of the teams that competes?

Pete Martin 16:33

Really, really good question. So applications are not open yet. They will open this summer, uh, you know, date TBD. But if you if you follow the MSU Research Foundation on LinkedIn or if you go to our website and just subscribe for updates, you'll know. Again, we have many partners across the state of Michigan. I I'm hopeful that they will all be pushing this out as well. Uh, but in the meantime, if you're if you're trying to position yourself really well for not just this pitch competition, but for any kind of any kind of event, I would highly recommend that you just get out there and and get involved. Uh so try and go to as many, uh as many events as you can as a founder. There's a lot of places that you can go to network. Uh so you know, for example, there's uh an event called Founders Fridays that that happens. It's like the first Friday of every month. Founders in multiple cities across Michigan, like Detroit and Grand Rapids and Royal Oak and others uh all get together kind of locally. It's a great way for you to just plug in uh and be and get help from other people that are going down this path of building companies that have really high growth potential. Uh, I would highly recommend that. Um, there are other uh pitch competitions that happen across the state too, like TC New Tech up in Traverse City. We just saw that recently. Uh, I'd like to format too. It was like a two-day hackathon. So it was to come with a brand new idea and build a thing in two days with AI tools and see where you get to. Nice. There are also a lot of AI groups um across the state of Michigan. I would look, I would look to plug into them if you're on campus. So if you're an MSU or U of M student, there's an AI club at MSU. There's an AI club at U of M. Like get involved with those folks. Like, oh my goodness, please get involved. Uh, check out the Michigan Venture Capital Association. They have a list of the venture capital firms all across the state of Michigan that would love uh to learn about your companies. There's angel groups across the state of Michigan that are great ways to get plugged in locally. Uh New Enterprise Forum in Ann Arbor is a is a good place to get connected. There's a lot. There's just a ton of a ton of resources. And then our own team, right? Our team is everywhere. We have we have people in Detroit, in Ann Arbor, in Grand Rapids, here in Lansing, in Traverse City, up in the UP. Yeah. We exist like this whole organization exists to help commercialize new technologies all across the state of Michigan. And we put on a lot of events for free every single month. And so again, go to go to msufoundation.org, check out the events that we have coming up, register for one of those. It's a great way to get connected with our team. And by getting connected with our team, we can connect you with everyone else here in the

Where the Investment Funding Comes From

Pete Martin 18:53

state.

David Washburn 18:53

One last question. I should have asked this right away, or we should have clarified this right away. But when the teams get an investment as part of this competition, who's it coming from?

Pete Martin 19:05

This is great. Uh yeah, there's two, there's two things we'll say here. Uh, so when you get an investment, this is coming from a combination of the State of Michigan and the MSU Research Foundation. So this this investment's coming from us. And if we can bring in uh private venture capital partners, we'll would love to do that too. But that's not a guarantee. We got, you know, had a great year last year, and we'll we'll see what's to come. But this investment, this $250,000 and this million-dollar prize, it can it comes from the state of Michigan and it comes from it comes from us here at the MSU Research Foundation through through our subsidiary Michigan Rise. Exactly. Uh, because we believe in the Michigan founder. And by the way, this competition is not a national, it's one of the largest prizes in the country. Yeah. And it's certainly the largest prize in in Michigan's history, but it's not open to every company in the country. This is for Michigan-based companies. You have to be here, right? As long as you're headquartered here, and there's some other stuff, you know, how old the company is and how much you've raised, et cetera. But as long as you're headquartered here in Michigan, this is for you because we know we're the most active investor in the state by far at this point. We know that the quality of founders in Michigan has risen just tremendously, even over the it's it's just it keeps accelerating. We know the companies here are are absolutely incredible, and we know that many unicorn companies have been generated by Michiganders. Many more are coming. We'd love to see more being built here.

Closing Remarks

David Washburn 20:23

Awesome. Well, so uh officially when the uh investment is made, it's made by Michigan Rise, and uh those those investments are held on the books of Michigan Rise, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Foundation. And um this has been awesome. So our guest today has been Pete Martin, director of portfolio management at the MSU Research Foundation, and he's also the lead on the PitchMI competition that we just held uh in mid-April. And stay tuned, this is gonna happen again in the fall. Uh Pete, thanks for being here. Great job. So exciting.

Pete Martin 20:57

Always a pleasure, Dave. Thank you. Looking forward to the next one.