U-M student start-up, Are You a Human, wins $115K in Rice University Business Plan Competition

Wednesday, April 27, 2011 | Source: Concentrate

Are You a Human is feeling a little superhuman these days after the Ann Arbor-based start-up recently won six figures' worth of prize money from the Rice University Business Plan Competition, the world's largest such graduate-level competition.

The nearly 1-year-old start-up specializes in creating software that gives humans the upper hand over computer programs when it comes to ordering things like concert tickets online. The company won $115,000, taking second place overall and winning the Most Promising Start-Up award.

"It's all basically going to go toward development," says Reid Tatoris, co-founder of Are You a Human. "Over the next 3-4 months we're going to take our website, which is at an Alpha stage, and take it to a production release stage."

Are You a Human is the brain child of Tyler Paxton, he and Tatoris are students at the University of Michigan. The duo created a game-based human authentication tool (think Duck Hunt) that replaces the distorted text images known as CAPTCHAs that websites use to authentic a user is actually a person.

Tatoris and Paxton now oversee a team of nine, mostly U-M students who work out of the TechArb. They hope to add 2-3 more developers and coders over the next few months as they prepare to commercialize their product later this year. They hope to grow their team to up to 15 people in a year and have 200-300 websites using their technology.

Source: Reid Tatoris, co-founder of Are You a Human
Writer: Jon Zemke

Read more about Metro Detroit's growing entrepreneurial ecosystem at SEMichiganStartup.com.