UC Venture Lab’s latest grads include Xavier students

The XU undergraduate tandem of Michael Arens and David Constantine are the first non-UC team to graduate from UC’s Venture Lab pre-accelerator program. Their business concept, the Ocean Rover Cleaning Apparatus (ORCA), is focused on solving the growing problem of oceanic plastic pollution. The ORCA prototype they built, an autonomous, solar-powered 60-by-60-by-20-foot boat with a trash-collecting conveyor belt built into the front, is designed to collect floating plastic debris. 

Last month in a joint release, UC, XU, the University of Dayton, Wright State Community College and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College announced a multi-university partnership in which UC’s Venture Lab would open its doors to teams from its partner institutions. ORCA piloted the partnership in the pre-accelerator’s eighth cohort.

The majority of Venture Lab pre-accelerator graduates are not yet startups, as they are still in need of resources and expertise to reach the phase where they’re ready for the program’s second-phase accelerator. The pre-accelerator’s eighth cohort had one exception among its graduates: Bailout Systems.

Founded by Michael Ragsdale, a U.S. Navy veteran and graduate of the UC College of Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning, Bailout Systems draws inspiration from the 2005 Black Sunday incident in New York City, during which six firefighters were forced to jump from the fourth floor of a burning building. Only four survived, all of whom sustained life-altering injuries.

At about the size of a hockey puck, Ragsdale’s product is billed as “the smallest hands-free vertical descent device ever created.” Other devices take longer to use and require specialized gloves to control descent speed, he explained, describing the Bailout device as “Batman meets James Bond.” 

Ragsdale says he’s already got 4,000 orders for his device, which still must undergo certification testing. He’s confident it will pass, though. And the interest isn’t limited to the firefighting profession — Ragsdale will meet with U.S. Special Operations Command in the near future to discuss Bailout’s military applications.