The competition is heating up at Fairfield now that the five student teams have been selected for the annual StartUp Showcase entrepreneurship competition. Four solopreneurs and one team are hard at work, under the guidance of mentors, to refine their business pitches in preparation to face a panel of investors at the Shark-tank style showdown on April 23.

School of Engineering sophomore John Cain is one of the solopreneurs selected to pitch from the group of teams that competed for a spot in the Showcase during the qualifier round in December. A computer science major, Cain has a passion for technology and entrepreneurship, and is skilled in front-end web and mobile development, back-end programming, and database management. Since high school, he has been interested in financial tech, changes in stock prices, and cryptocurrency.

“As concerns around cybersecurity continue to grow,” said Cain, “I’ve become more interested in the topic of fraud. Over the summer, I worked doing web development and spent time designing my payment solution app, continuing some of the work I started in high school.”

Cain describes Estial as a payment app that ensures small transactions between friends — and large transactions between companies — are safe from fraud, offering tighter security while remaining lightning fast. He sees great potential for his product as an option for online merchants who are looking to provide their customers with a superior payment option at check out.

When asked what the Showcase means to him, Cain revealed that one of the reasons he chose Fairfield was the chance to participate in the StartUp Program. “Regardless of how Estial performs in the Showcase, this opportunity allows me to dip my toes into the business world, which is what I’ve always wanted.”

Stay tuned for more StartUp Showcase news and save the date, Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 7 p.m. at the Quick Center for the Arts, to watch John Cain and four other teams pitch their businesses to a panel of investors for seed money.