Did the "Shark Tank" TV Show Really Visit Waltham This Past Weekend?

April 18, 2026 was a busy Saturday all around town, with Patriots' Day celebrations everywhere, and for the 3rd year, the annual "Falcon's Nest" event (also known as Pitch Day), at Bentley University, was in full swing -- featuring brilliant student entrepreneurs!

If you live in Waltham and regularly read this Patch site, then you likely know that Bentley is a private co-educational university in Waltham, with about 4,500 undergraduate students and around 1,000 graduate students. Their sports teams are called the Falons.

Although "Falcon's Nest" is a competition just like you see on television's "Shark Tank" show, every student involved in this student-created event is really quite a winner. Devanshi Bhartia is the founder, Julia Campbell is the executive director, CiCi Li is the President of Bentley Entrepreneurship Society, and the list of talented students goes on and on.

Open to the public, mark it on your calendars if you missed it this year. Get your free ticket online from EventBrite.com (look up "Bentley University Events"), and visit this campus to support these incredible young adults. From 12:30 to 4pm, you'll be treated to a buffet of free food (salds, sliders, desserts and more); a table full of swag including notebooks, folders, classy event pins; a free raffle for the audience to win prizes; and, a fun afternoon learning about what these students have been studying in master classes for months to prepare for this exciting day that caps off all their hard work.

Each team has only seven minutes to pitch to the judges. You'll see their power point presentations as they stand on stage facing the judges and audience, and sometimes a team will surprise you with a demo of their product in action. Judges then get to question the students and give feedback for five minutes.

At the end, the judges vote and decide the top three pitches - and the audience gets to vote, too. The "GoQuest" pitch team of Leo Miller and Trevor Carter won the audience vote, as well as the judges' 1st place vote, 2nd place went to the "Crown" pitch by Arthur Mutambara, and the "Attention Arsenal" pitch from Ingkar Serikpayeva and her partner won 3rd place. Cash prizes were awarded!

Maybe next year Bentley will consider adding a new category of "Best Tag Line" as a judge mentioned that honor would have gone to sophomore Kevin Mason -- whose unique behavior-driven "Meridian" dating app (for serious-minded singles wanting a lifelong relationship) had the very clever tagline: "Let's delete this app."

Another new category might be "Best Product for the Campus" as surely the team "Better U" with Alisha Khalifa and Stephanie Ribeiro would have won that.

If you want to learn more about this fantastic annual student event, open to the public, visit the Bentley Falcon's Nest Instagram account at: instagram.com/bentley_falconsnest

instagram.com/bentley_falconsnest/