The bane of bicyclists is the flat tire and a thief. AirLock, a combination lock and tire pump both secures the bike and spares the cyclist from getting stuck with a flattened tire. It was this year’s winner of Pitch George, the entrepreneurial competition organized by the GW Center for Entrepreneurial Excellence (CFEE) in the School of Business. The pitch competition is embedded in entrepreneurship classes though open to any student who wants to test their ability to come up with viable business ideas.
First-year student Teddy Jack said he and GW alumnus Joe Edell, J.D. ’09, a patent attorney, decided to enter Pitch George after meeting at a seminar offered by the GW Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, part of GW’s entrepreneurship ecosystem along with GWSB CFEE.
Edell had been working on and testing the handy prototype, a steel cable encased in solid clear plastic tubing that has an air pump attached at the end. A survey of cyclists they conducted in the Washington, D.C., area found that 70% of cyclists carry a lock, and 60% thought a pump would be useful. AirLock saves the costs and weight of having on hand two separate and often heavy items—a standalone pump and a lock.
Jack said they had a clear advantage over other pitches because they had a physical product with an excellent product-problem fit, a low-risk manufacturing process and transparent costs that was basically ready to go. First-place winners carry a $3,000 award.
“If you told me a few months ago, hey you would be winning a pitch competition, I would be like, ‘Are you talking about the same person?’” said Jack, a political science and biotechnology major who wants to become a patent attorney.