Last week, eight startups founded by Georgetown students and alum pitched for $150,000 worth of prizes in a spirited competition, with a grand prize of $30,000 for the top dog.
The Georgetown Entrepreneurship Program hosted the annual Leonsis Family Entrepreneurship Prize “Bark Tank” Pitch Competition on Jan. 22 in Lohrfink Auditorium. Georgetown alum Ted Leonsis (CAS ’77) sponsors the competition, which aims to give Georgetown entrepreneurs resources for further production and development of their ideas.
Each startup was allotted three minutes for their pitch and five minutes for a question and answer session with the judges, who mostly consisted of business professionals. The judges then ranked the finalists to determine who won the grand prize of $30,000. The audience also participates, voting by phone to determine the winner of the $5,000 People’s Choice Award.
This year’s first-place winner, Andres Brillembourg (SFS ’17, MBA ’24), earned both the $30,000 prize and the $5,000 People’s Choice Award for his AI caregiver recruiting tool, Hilda. Hilda is designed to streamline the interviewing process for the home care industry, scheduling interviews for potential candidates within the day compared to the usual multi-week process.
The Voice sat down with Brillembourg to discuss his pitch, preparation, and what it takes to find startup success.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Voice: Tell us a bit about your startup journey.
Brillembourg: First I worked in management consulting. Then I worked for a few different startups and helped one of those startups get to a billion plus in valuation from scratch—we started with basically zero revenue. We grew it to over a hundred million in growth sales in less than three years. So that was a really formative experience for me. That was my introduction into the startup world. It confirmed I kind of wanted to build my own thing.
The Voice: So how did Hilda come about?
Brillembourg: I graduated from the SFS in 2017. That’s also where I met my wife. Eventually we came back to D.C. I started my MBA at Georgetown. During the MBA, I decided to start Hilda. The original motivation came from my family’s own experience in home care. My wife’s grandpa has been receiving home care for many years. It was through my family I’ve really seen the challenges of finding reliable home care, of finding an agency that has enough caregivers. So that got me thinking, ‘This is a big problem.’ So that’s how I decided to focus on the recruiting problem, and I came up with the idea of Hilda’s first product, which is an AI recruiting assistant for the home care industry.
The Voice: How was the Bark Tank process and experience like for you? How did you prepare for it?
Brillembourg: I prepared a ton. It’s a three-minute pitch. Three minutes on paper comes out to about 400 words. I spent probably more than two months crafting 400 words and crafting the slides. I wanted to make sure that everything was airtight. So it was really a challenge, but I knew that it was an amazing opportunity to get exposure, to get initial funding to invest in the product, so I made it my number one priority for the last two months. Stage one was to write the script, and that will really bring out the human story behind my wife’s grandpa and his caregiver, Hilda, who’s now been with him for over seven years. Then, I put in weeks and weeks of effort into crafting the slides. I took a lot of inspiration from TED Talks. I started memorizing the script, practicing and practicing and practicing until I had it down so naturally that I could deliver it. That last stage was just practice, practice, practice.
The Voice: What was your relationship like with your mentors? How do you think the relationship ended up guiding your pitch?
Brillembourg: I had two amazing coaches, Dave Terzian [CAS ’76] and Rose Carter. I mean, I couldn’t have done it without them. They spent hours and hours with me crafting this, and they gave me a lot of the brilliant ideas that I ended up embedding into the pitch. They both have a lot of experience doing this, watching pitches, and also mentoring startup founders. There were many moments where they either pushed back on some of my ideas or they offered new ideas and new perspectives I hadn’t thought about. I can’t tell you how valuable it is to have that springboard to bounce ideas off of and to have someone else’s perspective. Professor Shye Gilad, Professor Andrew Ting, Jacob Stiglitz, Jeff Reid, and Ben Zimmerman have also been incredibly helpful. The entire program has been really supportive over the last six months to a year. This whole process really started long before the Bark Tank preparation, and I couldn’t have done it without all the mentorship and support.
The Voice: How did the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Program impact you?
Brillembourg: I think what’s meaningful to me is how much emphasis Georgetown is placing on entrepreneurship. The ecosystem it’s building and the support system it’s building to enable students to become entrepreneurs, I think that’s just amazing. Entrepreneurship is a very scary journey. It takes a lot of courage and you really need that support system. So the fact that Georgetown is developing it, I’m incredibly grateful and excited to see where it goes next and how it continues to grow and evolve.
The Voice: A lot of your roots, like meeting your wife and the story, and the MBA, are centered on Georgetown. As a Georgetown double Hoya and Georgetown alumni, what does earning this reward mean to you?
Brillembourg: It’s quite amazing to see this hard work pay off. When I got the opportunity to be a finalist for Bark Tank, I told myself that I would leave nothing up to chance, that there would be no chance I could not nail my pitch. So that’s number one, but it’s also a culmination of my entire Georgetown experience. My entrepreneurial dream started at Georgetown as an undergrad, and so it’s really nice to see things culminate in this way. Still feels kind of surreal to be honest.
The Voice: Any future plans with this new prize money?
Brillembourg: We’re just getting started. I just finished my MBA. Winning Bark Tank was an amazing thing. The money will allow us to invest in product development, launch our MVP, and start getting our first paying customers.
The Voice: What would you say to other entrepreneurs hoping to find their footing, especially ones who are attending Georgetown?
Brillembourg: I know what it’s like to be an undergrad. When you get into Georgetown, it’s a big deal, and so a lot is expected from you. You feel pressure as an undergrad to continue putting brands on your resume, to continue collecting these sort of achievements that others place value on, so I think a lot of the time that can drive students down the wrong path. I would advise undergrads to do things for the right reason. Don’t chase a job or a profession or a career path because you want to make the most money, or because it’s what you think will impress your friends or family the most, because that’s not going to get you anywhere. What I would encourage undergrads to do is really think about where their passions lie, and have the courage to pursue them, even if, you know, even if there’s people that doubt you. And that’s kind of what entrepreneurship is about.
The Voice: Any final messages from you?
Brillembourg: If there’s any undergrad or anyone on campus who reads this article, and has an idea and they want to start something, I’m happy to chat with them, happy to give them mentorship, happy to give back. I’m more than happy to be a resource for them.
