That is a WRAP on Winter ‘26! And just like that, another school year is in the books. It’s been a long haul, but V1 finished the term on a high just two weeks ago, with our favorite (and your favorite) event of the semester: Demo Day.

We host many events every semester, but Demo Day is the event. It’s the purest form of what we try to foster: student builders, testing the limits of what can be done with little more than just an idea and a laptop. We have a lot of things that make us good, but Demo Day is what makes us great.

The night itself also wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our friends: Veronica Orellana (General Partner, CRV) and Mike Vichich (CEO of Pursuit, Angel Investor), who came out to judge the event.

Veronica gave the opening keynote speech of the night, and she spoke at length about the current state and potential of startups, and it was a pleasure to hear from someone who’s been at both the operational and investing levels of the ecosystem.

We’d like to extend our thanks to Veronica and Mike for coming out to offer their time and expertise to our builders.

Without further ado…

🏆 The Winners

🙌 People’s Choice: Astrai

Taking the People’s Choice award was Astrai, an agentic scholarship matchmaker for high school students. It was built by Sanjith Sambath and Jainam Patel to narrow down the search for college scholarships into a list of attainable, highly specific opportunities based on a student’s demographics. If you’re a high schooler, forget spam applying to broad, out-of-reach opportunities. Use Astrai and find those that are most applicable to you.

Check it out at tryastrai.com!

🥉 3rd Place: Anilla

In third place was Anilla, by Lillian Cui and Anna Kislenkova.

Anilla is a conversational intake platform for medical practices. Patients answer detailed questions before their appointment, so doctors walk in already knowing what they're dealing with, and how much time they need. The result is a smarter, leaner appointment pipeline that benefits everyone: less wasted time for doctors, and faster, more attentive care for patients.

🥈2nd Place : Horizon Net

Taking second place was Horizon Net, built by Nicholas (Nico) Pietronuto, an autonomous, LiDAR-equipped robot that maps hazardous environments for police and military. Nico designed the frame in CAD, 3D-printed it, and built the whole system around a Raspberry Pi 4. The idea came from a conversation with a 20-year SWAT veteran, and the result is a functional reconnaissance system built to keep people out of harm's way.

🏅 1st Place : Reagent

The top prize of the night went to Reagent, built by Vedant Behadur.

Vedant came to Michigan from Singapore, where he worked in computational research at A*STAR and the National University of Singapore. He noticed that colleagues had no good way to track work across scattered tools — run logs, results, errors — and when he arrived at Michigan and heard researchers say the same thing, he decided to fix it.

Reagent connects your lab’s scattered data and makes it searchable in natural language. It surfaces errors before they compound and lets teams share context across departments. Less time hunting through files, and more time doing science.

We were blown away by what Vedant shipped; early tests showed Reagent as 4x faster and 10x cheaper than Claude Code on open-ended queries, and over 10x faster on factual ones. It’s safe to say the judges felt the same.

One Last Goodbye 🎉

It is at this time of the year that we have to say goodbye to our graduating seniors; our latest graduating class of V1!

Among these incredible builders are many people who worked hard within the organization to make V1 what it is today, including…

• Head of Operations (F24 - F25), Amulya Gundlapally

• Head of Strategy (W24), Zain Zai

• Head of Community (W25), Anay Modi (not pictured)

• Co-Head of Strategy (F24), Head of Strategy (W25), Lance Fuchia

• Head of Startup Week (W25 - F25), Anant Garg

• Head of Startup Week (F24), Co-Executive Director (F24), Product Studio Lead Mentor (F25), Mihir Vador

• Product Studio Lead Mentor (W26), Cooper Saye

• Head of Growth (W25), Co-Executive Director (F25), Sri MK

• Director of Product Studio (F23 - F24), Co-Executive Director (F25), Pranay Gupta (not pictured)

• Co-Head of Strategy (F24), Executive Director (W25), Leo Liu

You are the people who put in the late nights and the long hours to serve our members and our community. You made us think bigger about what we could do as an organization. For as much as your absence will be felt, we know you all have many more mountains to climb.

And we can’t wait to see it happen.

Looking Ahead… 🔭

Another semester in the books. Another cohort of builders who proved that a laptop and an idea is more than enough. We’ll see you in the Fall. And trust us, you don’t want to miss what’s coming.¡

If you’d like to get involved in helping V1 become the premier university startup and entrepreneurship community across the Midwest, we encourage you to keep your eyes out for our team applications. They’ll be open on May 19th…

Connect with us on our socials to receive the latest updates:

• Instagram — @v1michigan

• X — @V1Michigan

• LinkedIn — V1 Michigan

• Slack Community — v1michigan.com/community

Spring is upon us! We are finally out of another Michigan Winter. And it’s almost time for our main event!

But first, a quick recap.

🍎 NYC Trek

On Thursday, March 19, V1 members took a quick trip to Manhattan to visit some of the most exciting consumer startups and VC firms in town. Ramp, Clay, Tandem, Ambrook, HOF Capital, Thrive Capital, Dirac, Starsuit, Siro.ai, Allium, Maximor AI, Shade, TextQL, Stripe (if you’d call a $160B company a startup :)).

We take great pride in running this trek because, as a community of student builders and entrepreneurs, we believe that the the best way to learn anything is to go to the source; speak directly with founders, engineers, designers. Learn what it’s actually like to own and operate a company. And for all our members who came on this year’s trek, we’re proud to have shown them a wide variety of startups and help them better understand the industry.

A huge, huge thank-you to all of the startups that were kind enough to host us. We hope you enjoyed our company. We certainly enjoyed yours.

🗝️ What’s this?

Now, for what you’ve all been waiting for (drumroll please)…

DEMO DAY IS BACK, and it’s happening on April 16 from 6:30-9pm at Blau Colloquium.

Once every semester, Michigan’s builders come out of the weeds and show the world what they’ve been working on. This is that night.

The most ambitious students on campus — hackers, designers, researchers, founders, and everyone in between, take the stage to present what they’ve spent the semester creating. From zero-to-one ideas turned into fully shipped products. Real demos. Real projects. One room.

Here’s what’s waiting for you:

• 10+ live demos — AI agents, dev tools, hardware, biotech, and more

• 20+ tablers — student orgs, research institutes, and full-fledged companies

• Keynote from a CRV partner — one of the most storied VC firms in Silicon Valley

• Real VCs and investors looking to discover early-stage talent — that could be you

• ASCII photo booth, interest-matching map, and walking interviews

• Awards for the top 3 demos, People’s Choice, raffle, and merch pop-up

• Bites and networking throughout the night

And three more things to know:

• Register today

• Register today

• Register. Today.

Spots are limited, and we want to see you there! Click the button below to reserve.

RSVP here!

And… if you’ve been working on something and want to present it at Demo Day, fill out the form here!

Apply to Demo

⏰ We can’t wait!

We’re so ready to showcase Michigan’s best builders next Thursday night, and we hope you are too. Follow us on the usual socials for any and all updates as we get closer to the date. Until then…

Keep building.

The Winter ‘26 semester is already halfway through, and the momentum in Ann Arbor is reaching a fever pitch. From hosting industry titans to seeing our own members close multi-million dollar rounds, V1 continues to serve as the primary gravity well for startup talent at Michigan.

Here’s the rundown of where we’ve been and who’s stopped by.

🧡 Y Combinator @ UMich

We were thrilled to welcome Y Combinator back to Ann Arbor for a second time. Having already seen seen more than six startups from our community accepted into YC batches, our partnership with YC has become a core pillar of our ecosystem.

Speaking of community, the headline speaker of the night, alongside partners Jared Friedman, Ankit Gupta, and Harshita Arora, was our very own Haakam Aujla! Just last April, presented AgentMail alongside his fellow cofounder Michael Kim at our Demo Day W25.

AgentMail, an email inbox API for AI agents, was later accepted into YC’s S25 batch. Fast-forward to 2026, and as OpenClaw has taken the world by storm, people have started to wake up to the idea that those three caught onto a year ago: agents should have their own identities.

Haakam and the partners spoke at length about OpenClaw mania, the ever-lowering technical barrier to building a startup, and what the future of AI may hold for the industry.

We’d like to thank Jared, Ankit, and Harshita for making the trip out east to speak with our audience of over 600 students(!). Thank you for your time and your insights, as always.

We’d also like to congratulate Haakam, Michael, and Adi on AgentMail’s $6 million seed round! Read more about their story here. We can’t wait to see what comes next, guys.

💡 Khosla Ventures

On February 11, Sarah Altabet, Talent Partner at Khosla Ventures, came to speak with members of of the community. In a high-signal evening for our aspiring founders and investors, Sarah pulled back the curtain on:

• The KV Framework: What the firm looks for in founders.

• Early-Stage Mechanics: A deep dive into the VC thought process when evaluating early-stage ventures.

• Breaking In: Tactical advice for students looking to enter the venture industry. (spoilers: you can do it!)

♞ Zo Computer

The future of the personal computer is being built with a “hardware-first” mindset. On February 1, Jamie Park joined us for a live demo of the Zo Computer, followed by a virtual Q&A with co-founder Ben Guo.

🛰️ Air Space Intelligence (ASI)

In February, the team from Air Space Intelligence (ASI) visited for an exclusive, invite-only recruiting event. ASI is tackling some of the most complex problems in aerospace software, and they came looking for Michigan’s top technical talent.

Unlike your typical recruiting event, ASI hosted a high-stakes paper airplane contest for custom merch, proving that hsigh-level engineering and a bit of play aren’t mutually exclusive. The attendees certainly thought so.

Also, we are thrilled to report that ASI hired 2 interns directly from the event, further cementing V1 as a premier talent scout for high-growth tech firms.

👤 Ship-It Sunday X Tavus

Our latest Ship-It Sunday featured Quinn Favret (UMich Alum & YC S21), co-founder of Tavus.

Quinn shared the journey of Tavus, from its Michigan roots to its $40M Series B last November. Tavus is currently redefining the frontier of human-AI interaction through real-time video agents. Following the talk, Quinn stayed for an extended Q&A, discussing the future of generative video.

👉 Looking Ahead

As we move into the second half of the semester, our focus shifts toward Demo Day W26. If you are an alum or a partner interested in mentoring, recruiting, or investing in the next wave of Michigan founders, we’d love to have you involved.

Y Combinator is coming back to Ann Arbor, and they’re running an exclusive event with V1.

RSVP here!

For those unfamiliar: Y Combinator (YC) is the most successful startup accelerator in the world. They’ve backed Airbnb, Stripe, Coinbase, DoorDash, Instacart, Reddit, and over 5,000 other companies now worth a combined $1T+. Four times a year, they fund early-stage startups, put them through a three-month program, and help them scale.

We hosted YC for the first time last April, and our relationship has only been growing since. We’ve had 6 different startups from our community accepted into YC batches, among them Orange Slice, Claybird, AgentMail, and Embedder.

This visit is a continuation of them funding and advising the next generation of billion-dollar companies.

We’d love for you to join us on Thursday February 19, from 5-7pm at the Rogel Ballroom, where we’ll be hosting partners Jared Friedman, Ankit Gupta, and Harshita Arora, in addition to the founders of AgentMail. They’ll be talking about the off-the-record rules of the startup game, what it’s like to start a company fresh out of college, and the latest things happening in AI in Silicon Valley.

RSVP here!

What’s more, they’ll be hosting coffee chats for current and aspiring UMich founders. Spots are limited so sign up today!

If you’re building something, thinking about building something, or trying to figure out what builders at the top of their game actually do differently, this is worth your time. YC partners have seen thousands of pitches, funded hundreds of breakouts, and watched just as many fail. They know what works.

Sign up for coffee chats here!

Stay tuned for any and all updates. We’ll see you on the 19th.

It’s only week 4 of the Winter ‘26 semester, but we’re already off to the races!

In that time, we’ve:

• Brought the founding team from Slash to campus for a fireside chat

• Hosted Cory Levy of Z Fellows

In addition to running Open House, Women in ENTR, Kickoff, and even more recruiting events!

Here’s exactly what went down.

⚡ Slash

We were thrilled to host Albert, Brett, and Jason from Slash on the 16th and 17th. Fintech is a fiercely competitive space, and it was a pleasure to hear from a team that’s right in the middle of it.

They shared their founding story, how Jason went from scaling a sneaker bot to $2.5M ARR in his freshman year at UMich to joining Slash, and what the future looks like for the company.

If you’ve been following the news, you saw Capital One’s $5.1B acquisition of Brex, a Slash competitor. It’s validation that Slash is building in a market ripe for disruption. They emphasized that speed and product differentiation matter now more than ever.

Which is why the team is actively hiring interns and new grads. Reach out if you want in.

Huge thank you to Albert, Brett, and Jason for making the trip.

💡 Cory Levy

On the 19th, we hosted Cory Levy, serial entrepreneur and founder of Z Fellows. His advice? Get close to the right people early. He and the Z Fellows leadership team-Grace and Baylor-walked through stories of texting with Travis Kalanick before Uber scaled, meeting the DoorDash founders at the start, and spotting world-class cofounders before anyone else did.

They also ended the day with office hours for attendees looking to get direct feedback and advice. It was a pleasure to host such a storied entrepreneur, and we’d like to thank Cory and the team for coming out to inspire Michigan’s most ambitious student builders.

🔗 Recruitment

Thank you to everyone who battled the snow and made it to our recruitment events.

We were looking for builders with asymmetric upside—the kind of people who don’t just talk about ideas, but ship them. And the applications this semester didn’t disappoint. We’re thrilled with the founders, operators, and creators joining the community this spring.

Stay on the lookout for what (and who) is next.

One More Thing… 🤖 AI+ Renᴬᴵssance Conference

AI+ is hosting the headline AI conference of the year in San Francisco on March 15th. The AI+ Renᴬᴵssance will bring together 2,000+ founders, builders, researchers, and investors shaping the next decade of intelligence.

The conference is being organized by a former V1 member, so we’re excited to support and spread the word!

What to Expect:

• Main Stage — 10 keynotes and fireside chats with teams at AI’s technical frontier

• Innovation Sessions — Live demos and product launches from the next wave of AI infra, agents, and robotics startups

• Exhibition — 20+ booths showcasing cutting-edge demos and experiences

• VIP Programming — Dedicated investor spaces, deal-making lounges, and an exclusive dinner

• After Hours — Night-time gatherings and partner events across the city

Join AI leaders, top startups, and catch live breakthroughs in multimodal intelligence, agents, AI infrastructure, and embodied robotics.

Sign up with code V1 for 25% off:
👉 https://luma.com/renaissance26?coupon=V1MICHIGAN

In the meantime, you know the drill:

• Instagram — @v1michigan

• X — @V1Michigan

• LinkedIn — V1 Michigan

• Slack Community — v1michigan.com/community

Follow us to stay up-to-date on some very, very exciting things this semester.