The ballroom at the Skirvin Hilton Hotel in Oklahoma City crackled with competitive energy last month as the brightest collegiate entrepreneurs from across Oklahoma gathered for the 2025 Entrepreneur’s Cup, presented by Love’s.
Among them stood a freshman from Oral Roberts University, the only solo competitor in his division.
Daniel Kringel, confident and composed, held a SparkBand — a smart bracelet that connects to smartphones with a simple tap, designed to transform how events engage their audiences.
As the night built toward its climax, Kringel listened intently, heart pounding, as the announcer approached the microphone.
When the winner was announced — “First Place, High Growth Undergraduate Division: SparkMotion, Oral Roberts University” — applause erupted. Kringel, just 19 years old, had won.
An entrepreneurship freshman at Oral Roberts University, Kringel captured first place in the 2025 Entrepreneur’s Cup, Oklahoma’s most prestigious collegiate business competition.
His startup, SparkMotion, beat teams from other universities by addressing a critical gap in the events industry: post-event engagement.
The SparkMotion journey started when Kringel was 17, launching a clothing brand that gained traction with major figures like Stephen Curry and Maverick City Music.
Yet, during his rapid rise, he noticed a deeper problem — event organizers invested thousands to create unforgettable experiences but lacked any strategy to maintain engagement after the event ended.
“Almost no one focuses on what happens afterward,” Kringel said. “That gap was too big to ignore.”
Research suggests 90% of engagement is lost within 48 hours after an event, and 65% of events have no follow-up plan, according Cvent and the FreemanXP & EMI EventTrack.
SparkMotion’s solution?
When attendees arrive at an event, they receive a SparkBand — a smart bracelet that lets them instantly tap their phone to access a live-updating event dashboard with maps, schedules, merchandise and real-time alerts.
After the event ends, SparkMode activates, turning the experience into a series of challenges, games and rewards that can keep participants engaged for days or weeks.
Kringel spent hundreds of hours building and refining the idea. In early test events, he manually created pages linked to each bracelet, proving the concept without running a single advertising campaign.
Building on the early success, he expanded the idea: buzz-enabled real-time alerts, SparkMode post-event challenges, analytics dashboards and app-free user access.
Competing alone, Kringel submitted a detailed business plan to demonstrate, SparkMotion could stand on its own.
“As a freshman competing solo, it was definitely surreal,” Kringel said. “But I knew SparkMotion was solving a real problem, and that gave me confidence.”
After presenting his pitch live to a panel of investors and business leaders, Kringel returned to campus to face a long, anxious two-week wait while judges deliberated.
“I just kept praying and trusting that God would open the right doors,” Kringel said. “Winning was surreal — I wasn’t even expecting it.”
Kringel is the first solo freshman to win the High Growth Undergraduate Division at the Entrepreneur’s Cup in its 21-year history. High-growth competition finalists receive $1,000, and the first-place team receives $21,000.
With a winning concept in place, Kringel’s next step will be to identify pre-seed investors and launch pilot events to expand the tech product’s reach.
