An AI-based timekeeping startup for law firms, LegalTime AI, was chosen as the winner of UC Santa Barbara’s 27th Annual New Venture Competition (NVC) during the finals on Wednesday, May 20th. Earning a total of $10,000 in cash and prizes courtesy of program sponsors, the team consists of Joaquin Del Pego and Quinn Godfrensen, computer science and mathematics majors, respectively, from UCSB. 

The rigorous eight-month entrepreneurship program and competition, part of the Department of Technology Management, sees over sixty mentors from the local tech industry in Santa Barbara advising and coaching over four hundred students throughout the process as the teams bring their startup ideas to life. Over 400 students began in the program in October from which sixty teams formed, with twenty-one teams participating in the New Venture Fair on April 23rd, 2026. Six teams advanced to the finals, including LegalTime AI, DaJent, Yavin Systems, CoListable, MediMRF, and Vimicx. This year’s competition marked the first in which all finalist teams have chosen to continue on with their startup ideas beyond the competition. 

“This was a highly-motivated cohort that made exceptional progress throughout the program on customer discovery and market validation,” said Dave Adornetto, Director of the New Venture & Entrepreneurship programs. “They were able to apply AI and other tools to streamline the development of prototypes to test their concepts in the marketplace and establish a great foundation to launch from.”         

“It’s the first year that we’ve had almost all of the teams that have reached the finals touching multiple programs in [the Department of] Technology Management,” said Paul Leonardi, Chair of the Department of Technology Management. “Whether that’s our certificate program or Master’s program, and that combination of the frameworks that you get in the classroom and the real world skills that you get by doing a program like this is just a killer combo that sets everybody up for success.”

DaJent, a creative suite for DJs, took second place, as well as the $7,500 prize. Yavin Systems, a drone-based aerial mapping intelligence company, earned the $5,000 third place prize, as well as the Impact and People’s Choice Awards, both worth $2,500 in cash prizes.

Honorable mentions worth $2,500 each, went to CoListable, a B2B vertical SaaS tool that automates multi-platform listing management for watch dealers; MediMRF, a modular, AI-enabled waste-sorting system for hospitals, automating the identification and removal of hazardous materials from waste streams; and Vimicx, a hardware and software real-time perception platform that converts live 2D sonar data into real time 3D underwater vision within augmented reality displays. The Pivot Award, a special award for teams with significant improvements in their concepts, was awarded to Jevi and Tan Sugar, who gave special presentations following the main pitch competition.

This year’s panel of judges included Astrid McNellis, Managing Director of MoonStar Partners and Department of Technology Management instructor; Grant Morgan, Co-Founder and Partner at One Dream Ventures, a Santa Barbara-based venture studio building B2B SaaS and AI startups for the global real estate and construction industries; Charlie Rothstein, Founder and Senior Managing Director of Beringea LLC, a transatlantic venture capital firm investing across healthcare, technology, media, consumer goods, and business services; and Mike Tucker, General Partner at ScOp Venture Capital, a Santa Barbara-based VC firm focused on early-stage software companies.

The finals consisted of each team presenting their business pitches to the crowd, followed by live judge feedback and audience questions. 

Del Pego and Godfrensen’s pitch highlighted the extensive customer research they conducted, including speaking with over eighty law firms to collect information regarding areas for improvement. 

“Law is a $1 trillion dollar industry loaded with old processes, making it ripe for disruption,” said Godfrensen in their pitch. “But ninety-six percent of lawyers say that their current AI tools are falling short.”

 Identifying the greatest needs in the timekeeping area, the solution provided by LegalTime AI provides a ten times return on investment for law firms from the time saved from the software

“Lawyers lose twenty percent of the time they spend on client matters throughout the day. Across the industry, this is an $80 billion dollar loss…on average, [LegalTime AI] helps to recover over $150,000 or more every year,” said Godfrensen. 

With six law firms currently using LegalTime AI, the startup plans to continue to pursue the business, secure additional funding, and expand to over a thousand firms by year three. 

“Quinn and I have an experience that spans across four tech startups in machine learning, sales automation, AI enablement, and backend development,” noted Del Pego. “And we are vigorously pursuing this as a startup and committed to bringing AI to law.”  

Learn more about the New Venture Competition and the Department of Technology Management at tmp.ucsb.edu.