WashU Olin BIG IdeaBounce Winner: A Sophomore Who Collects Ideas On His iPhone

A biomedical major at the University of Virginia, Miles Lanham had made a habit of collecting ideas in his iPhone from his high school years in Alexandria, VA. Whenever he saw something that intrigued or engaged him, Lanham would pull out his phone and add it to a list of thoughts numbering in the hundreds.

When he witnessed a friend on UVA’s track team collapse from an asthma attack during a workout, he was aghast because no one had an inhaler at hand to help the boy, who was struggling to breathe. The team’s trainer, he recalls, had to race back to TK to get one as his teammate was carried away on a stretcher.

“He fell to the ground,” recalls Lanham. “They put him on a cart and took him off the track and rushed him to the trainer who had an inhaler. But the inhaler was 500 meters away.”

AT 19, THE UVA SOPHOMORE IS THE YOUNGEST BIG IDEABOUNCE WINNER

The incident made Lanham’s iPhone list. It would also become his ah-ha moment to work on a startup for a wearable multi-pack inhaler that would always be available to a person coping with respiratory challenges. He and his partner and collaborator, a recent MBA graduate from the Darden School of Business, entered their idea in the fourth annual WashU Olin BIG IdeaBounce pitch contest. They competed with 81 other teams from 43 universities in 14 countries, from Algeria to Vietnam.

Lanham traveled to St. Louis as one of three finalists to pitch the idea of a wearable, multi-pack inhaler before judges yesterday (April 11) and emerged the winner of the $50,000 top prize. The 19-year-old sophomore is the youngest founder to win the BIG IdeaBounce crown. He competed against an Olin Business School MBA who is working on an AI-driven mental performance app for college athletes and a trio of founders, two of whom recently graduated from UVA Darden’s Executive MBA program (see These Three Finalists Will Vie For The $50K Prize In WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce Pitch Contest).

The People’s Choice award, given on the basis of votes from Poets&Quants‘ readers, was given to Patient Led Health, a startup that is developing an app called Coalesce for people who want greater control over their medical records. Patient Led Health is led by Darden Executive MBA students Caroline Holt and Justin Ryan, with former OpFocus CEO Astrid Domenico, a long-time friend of Holt’s.

Sergiu Celebidachi, a former NCAA tennis player and current MBA student at Olin,  won second place and $5,000 for SPARC Sports. a mental performance app for college athletes to help them deal with the psychological challenges of competition.

While this was the fourth iteration of the competition, this year it was exclusively devoted to the business of health, a new Olin Business School initiative by Dean Mike Mazzeo, who wants to make Washington University’s Olin the leading business school in the field. In the past year, Olin has partnered with the university’s School of Medicine and the launch of a new School of Public Health, developed a set of seven elective courses in the field, and introduced a major in its business undergraduate program and a concentration in its MBA. “We want to be a place where we train the next generation of business leaders in this field,” says Mazzeo.

‘I HAVE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE AN ENTREPRENEUR’

Lanham’s product, dubbed the Portahaler, is designed to attach seamlessly to a phone, wrist, or keychain, ensuring they always have access to rescue medication. Each inhaler contains 40 doses, allowing for a novel multi-pack prescription system of up to five units. What’s more, it would cost no more than $60, well below the cost of current inhalers on the market.

It was not his first win. Lanham won two rounds of pitch contests at the University of Virginia’s E-Cup, making it into the school’s i-lab, an incubator run by the Batten Institute to guide young entrepreneurs through a journey from idea to market. But creating a company from scratch has long been a dream for Lanham.

“I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur,” says Lanham, who began his idea list in high school. “Every time I experienced a problem,” I wrote it down on the phone. I have hundreds of ideas.”

FOUND HIS CO-FOUNDER ON LINKEDIN

It was at Annandale High School in Fairfax County, Virginia, that Lanham launched his first startup. As the co-founder of SorboStrap, he created a novel, invisible backpack waist belt, an invention meant to decrease back pain caused by heavy backpacks. He developed the product from the ideation stage to the prototyping stage. In the process, Lanham racked up 3,000 social media followers and more than half a million views.

“From launching my backpack company, I learned that consistency is key,” says Lanham. “Our marketing strategy back then relied entirely on social media — it was a numbers game, and the same principle applies now. If you apply to a hundred pitch competitions or reach out to enough investors, you’re bound to get a hit.”

A state champion long-distance jumper and captain of the track team at Annandale, he was recruited to UVA on an athletic scholarship. Lanham knew he wanted to use his undergraduate experience to start something. When an injury kept him off the track team, he had plenty of time to devote to the inhaler idea.

He named his startup Métopi, which can be translated to “frontier” in Greek. Says Lanham: “It feels fitting — and I think it sounds cool!”

When he began working on what would become Métopi, he was told that doing a MedTech startup solo would be difficult, if not impossible. Lanham went on LinkedIn to search for a Darden School of Business MBA with experience in the life sciences. He discovered Rohan Bansal, who graduated from Darden in 2024 and went to work as a senior consultant for Trinity Life Sciences, a Boston-based strategy consulting firm for early-stage biotech products.

MASSIVE MARKET POTENTIAL: 545 MILLION PEOPLE SUFFER FROM RESPIRATORY AILMENTS

Before coming to Darden, Bansal spent five years at ZS, the management consulting and technology firm. As an analyst and then a consultant, he had worked on assignments for top global healthcare companies, spearheaded a 10-member team to create and implement a growth strategy for a breakthrough drug in the U.S. and Europe, and a global leader in injectable aesthetics. Healthcare and biotech are both his passions and fields of expertise.

The pair went to work to move along Lanham’s idea. From his earlier startup, Lanham learned that delegation was crucial. “Rohan and I divide tasks based on our strengths,” he says. “With his MBA and life science consulting background, he’s great at operations. With my engineering background, I focus more on product development.”

They concluded that existing competitors were making products with little innovation since the first inhalers were made available in the 1950s. Even more telling, their products were, in Lanham and Bansal’s view, far too expensive and easily portable. Insurance policies often limit patients to a single inhaler per prescription, leaving many unprotected in critical moments. For those seeking additional inhalers, out-of-pocket costs can reach up to $500 per unit.

The potential market is massive. Some 545 million people worldwide suffer from respiratory diseases. Four in ten of them have had a flare-up without the benefit of a ready inhaler in the past year alone, according to their research. Some 72% want quicker and easier access to inhalers.

INVENTOR AND ENTREPRENEUR EVAN EDWARDS AMONG ADVISORS

Lanham began his BIG IdeaBounce pitch on an emotional level, showing a photo of a 22-year-old man who died after a severe asthma attack led to cardiac arrest.  He then went through a series of slides that showed the evolution of inhalers and how little they have changed since their invention in 1956. the nearly 10,000 tons of plastic waste they produce each year, his strategic partnerships, and his advisory board members. He noted that Métopi already has multiple patents filed along with a working prototype that has been validated and tested by a couple of manufacturers.

Judges were especially impressed by Lanham’s successful recruitment of one key advisor: Evan Edwards, a pharma executive, entrepreneur, and inventor with more than 200 patents to his name. It was Edwards and his brother who created a compact and more easily carried epinephrine rival to EpiPen called Auvi-Q to combat severe allergic reactions. Like Lanham, Edwards had developed the idea while a student at UVA years ago. They licensed the product in a reported $230 million deal to French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi in 2009. Though in a different field, Métopi’s Portahaler is similar to Auvi-Q because it a medical device that is more compact, cheaper, and more portable than competing products.

Throughout his presentation, Lanham displayed no jitters. He was composed and articulate. “I was not super nervous because this was my fourth pitch competition in the span of three weeks, so it felt like another day in the office,” he says. “My thoughts immediately after I won were how can I effectively use these funds and get them into action as soon as possible.”

By winning the $50K award in the BIG IdeaBounce competition, Lanham unleashed another $35,000 pledge contingent on his raising of a match. All told, Métopi now has enough cash to get the tooling done to make his product. He has already lined up two manufacturing partners in the United Kingdom and China.

A LONG ROAD AHEAD BEFORE THE PRODUCT CAN GET TO MARKET

There’s still a long road ahead. Lanham estimates that the product will require an investment between $5 million and $10 million and take two to three years for FDA approval. Because the Portahaler uses the same already approved medication, just the delivery method must gain regulatory approval.

Meantime, he’s out trying to get more money for the business. The day after he walked away with the $50,000 top prize in WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce contest, Lanham was pitching again in Charlottesville at the third and final stage of the University of Virginia’s E-Cup at the Tom Tom Festival.

DON’T MISS: These Three Finalists Will Vie For The $50K Prize In WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce Pitch Contest or WashU Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce: 13 Startups In The Business Of Health Compete For The $50K Top Prize