Lucas Gama (CompSci '22, pictured left) & Luiz Pompeo (Bus'22, pictured right) came separately to the U.S. from Brazil to study at CU Boulder, but they banded together on campus to form Zucchini, a B2B food platform. After one year of doing customer discovery research and testing the Zucchini idea with real customers, they've decided to compete for the first time in CU Boulder's New Venture Challenge. Learn more about their startup journey:

Q: What is your startup or business idea? How did you come up with your business idea? What inspired you?​

Lucas Gama (LG): We identified that at most companies, there is a significant difference in employees' food preferences/restrictions. We believe employees want to have a say in what they eat. However, accommodating everyone's dietary needs is a problem that companies face every time when serving food at the office. For this reason, we are developing a platform called Zucchini, which connects companies with local chefs. These chefs take into consideration all employee's dietary restrictions, food preferences and meal recommendations to offer a menu 100 percent customized for each team.

Q: How did you form your team?​

LG: Luiz originally had the idea of creating a B2C food platform when he still lived in Brazil. He and I met, and he invited me to help develop the business project, forming the Zucchini team.

Q: What CU Boulder academic courses and entrepreneurial resources did you take advantage of to help you build your business?

LG: We've participated in Demystifying Entrepreneurship workshops with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Get Seed Funding program, New Venture Challenge, Silicon Flatirons events and working with our professors.

Q: What has been your biggest challenge in running your startup? What about notable wins or successes?

LG: My team and I have been doing customer discovery before the COVID-19 pandemic; we believe that the pandemic should have a big impact on our customers' behavior. We have the challenge to understand what exactly will be the future of our industry. We consider it a win that we have already tested our service with different customers, and they were excited to use our solution.

Q: What do you love about having your own company?

LG: We love the endless amount of learning and execution. We consider ourselves to be a very proactive team; we want to use this synergy to create positive changes in the world.