MOBILE, Ala. — A University of South Alabama sophomore who has spent time behind the counter at fish stores took the top prize Tuesday night in the Launch Lower Alabama pitch competition with a plan to build hardware and software that helps saltwater aquarium owners protect what can be a very expensive hobby.
Bryce Smith was one of several young entrepreneurs who presented business ideas at the university in hopes of landing seed money for their ventures. The competition is the culminating event of Launch Lower Alabama, an entrepreneurial mentoring program hosted by South Alabama’s Melton Center.
An aquarium idea born at the fish store
Smith’s venture is producing hardware and software solutions for saltwater aquariums, aimed at helping hobbyists protect their investments. His pitch grew out of what he saw firsthand while working in fish stores, where he watched customers spend heavily on the animals that fill their tanks.
“Lots of people spend a ton of money on their aquariums,” Smith said. “My experience working at fish stores, people will spend thousands on a single fish. And corals as well, thousands on corals. That’s a lot of money you’re building up in your aquarium and people really want to control that ecosystem.”
Saltwater systems, particularly reef tanks that house living corals, are known among hobbyists for being demanding. Conditions such as water temperature, salinity and chemistry have to stay within fairly narrow ranges, and a problem that goes unnoticed, like a failed heater or a pump that stops running, can put an entire tank’s worth of livestock at risk. That is the gap Smith described: owners who have put thousands of dollars into fish and corals want better control over the environment those animals depend on.
A field of varied pitches
Smith was not the only competitor with a product idea. Other entries in the competition included a pain cream, a medical device and custom perfume, a range that reflected the mix of consumer, health and specialty businesses that participants brought to the program.
Launch Lower Alabama is designed to push participants to develop innovative ideas through a combination of business development, mentorship and seed funding. Rather than simply judging business plans on a single night, the program works with would-be founders over time so that the ideas they bring to the stage have been tested and refined.
What Launch Lower Alabama is
The program is an expansion of Launch USA, an entrepreneurship initiative the Melton Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation built for the University of South Alabama community. The Melton Center is housed in the university’s Mitchell College of Business and is led by executive director Dr. Don Mosley.
Earlier this year, the Melton Center announced a $225,000 grant from Innovate Alabama to scale up the Launch USA model and extend it beyond the university. The regional version, Launch Lower Alabama, was built as a collaborative network across Alabama’s Gulf Coast with four partner institutions:
- University of South Alabama
- Spring Hill College
- Bishop State Community College
- Coastal Alabama Community College
Each of the partner schools was to receive a portion of the grant money. The program also enlisted two community partners, The Hatch in Fairhope and the Innovation Portal in Mobile, to provide mentorship and business development support.
When the grant was announced, the Melton Center said the effort would culminate in an inaugural Launch Lower Alabama Pitch Competition in the fall of 2026, bringing together top participants from all four colleges to compete for $50,000 in seed capital. The stated goal was to help turn innovative concepts into viable, impactful businesses.
How the Launch model works
The Launch USA program that served as the template for the regional competition has run in phases. Participants are selected through an application process, go through an intensive boot camp, receive mentorship through the Innovation Portal in downtown Mobile and finish with a pitch competition.
The boot camp portion has covered topics that trip up many first-time founders, including intellectual property, business formation, digital marketing, market research and analytics, and nonprofit formation. Mentors have included experienced professors and established entrepreneurs. Under the Launch USA structure, teams could receive a $5,000 stipend tied to hitting program milestones, and the program has listed a total prize purse of $50,000 available through its pitch competition.
The pitch competition format has produced results before. In August 2025, nine teams made up of South Alabama students, faculty, staff and alumni competed in the Launch USA pitch competition for $10,000 in seed money. ManuLabs, led by engineering student Braxton Daw, took first place and $7,500 for its work on designing and manufacturing complex components for the aerospace and healthcare industries. UroBacT, a team developing a diagnostic tool for urinary tract infections, took second place and $2,500. That competition was judged by Mike Eckert, chairman of Gulf South Angels; Brent Barkin, a strategic advisor with Stoic Equity Partners; and Angela Dunn, a senior vice president with Pinnacle Financial Partners.
Why it matters for the region
Programs like Launch Lower Alabama are part of a broader push in Alabama to grow homegrown startups rather than relying solely on recruiting large companies from elsewhere. Innovate Alabama, the state-backed organization that funded the expansion, was created to support that kind of entrepreneurship and innovation around the state.
By pulling in a private liberal arts college and two community colleges alongside the region’s public research university, the Launch Lower Alabama model aims to widen the pool of people on the Gulf Coast who have access to structured training, mentors and early-stage money. Community college students, in particular, may have strong practical ideas rooted in the jobs they already hold, but few places to test them.
Smith’s winning idea is a good example of that kind of practical insight. It did not come from a lab or a market report, but from watching customers at a fish store spend thousands of dollars on a single animal and wanting a better way to keep it alive.
The Melton Center also supports an undergraduate entrepreneurship major at South Alabama and runs programs for high school students and community members across the central Gulf Coast.