houston-based arovia creators of the spontaneous pop-up display was awarded $50 000 as the winner of the 2018 texas a&m new ventures competition (tnvc) hosted by the texas a&m engineering experiment station (tees) arovia co-founder president and ceo alexander wesley said he was excited that judges liked their pitch im definitely not a natural pitcher but i love our product i love our team and the state of texas has been really great for us as well wesley said i definitely dont view myself as being a stellar pitch man so i had no expectation at all but im glad the enthusiasm i have for our product and our team and what were doing for our customers comes through wesley added that the experience of competing with other companies that are in similar stages to his was a great experience its really cool to see all the different things that people are doing you can really get stuck in your own world so its fun when you get to hang out with other startups jessica travers one of the finals judges and winner of the 2017 tnvc with intuitap medical said that multiple aspects of arovia impressed the judges we really liked their ability to demonstrate the traction theyve had its very fast " she said "obviously theres a demand their intellectual property strategy is very strong which is great and will definitely come in handy in the future theyre meeting a need that nobody else has been able to meet yet so were excited to see where they go and how theyre going to scale and the revenue theyre going to be able to pull in with a total of $380 000 in total prizes the pool for the competition was the largest in the four-year history of the tnvc in the first three years the tnvc awarded more than $670 000 combined the 2018 tnvc was made possible by the mcferrin center for entrepreneurship texas a&m university college of science texas a&m health science center tees clean energy incubator texas a&m engineering extension service texas a&m college of veterinary medicine and biomedical sciences texas a&m school of innovation texas a&m division of research 80/20 foundation tmc innovation goose society aggie angel network research valley partnership amerra biotex paragon pioneer natural resources thomas horstemeyer ramey & schwaller law firm chevron technology ventures winstead pc and ota compression/kimark systems full list of winners: (for more information on these companies click here) 1st – $50 000 – arovia 2nd – $35 000 – admetsys 3rd – $25 000 – m&s biotics 4th – $15 000 – vastbiome 5th – $10 000 – advanced scanners 6th – $5 000 – atmospark elevator pitch competition: 1st - $5 000 – responderx 2nd - $3 000 – yotta solar 3rd - $2 000 – polar panel additional prizes: ramey/schwaller ip legal services prize – advanced scanners research valley launch prize – responderx thomas | horstemeyer ip legal services prizes – venostent and alleviant medical paragon innovation prize – vitls biotex investment prize – m&s biotics amerra visualization services prize – arovia tees cleantech prize – yotta solar aggie angel network investment prize – arovia goose society of texas investment prizes – arovia and m&s biotics tmc innovation investment and accelerator admission prize – vitls tmc innovation accelerator admission prize – venostent