Whistle While You “Cold Cake”

Entrepreneurs Kevin Xia ’28 and Daniel Zhu ’29, alongside James Gómez CMC ’27, earned first place and a $5,000 prize at the spring SageTank pitch competition where 5C teams pitch their startups to a panel of VC partners and investors in front of a live audience. Their startup, Whistle, is an agentic software platform that streamlines the complex process of National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) compliance.

The trio, all teammates on the CMS men’s soccer team, developed Whistle to provide athletic departments with precise answers to regulatory questions quickly. “The impact is twofold,” says Xia. “It helps the compliance officer find answers faster [within 30 seconds] and with extreme precision so NCAA compliance infractions don’t occur.”

The team’s journey from the soccer field to the boardroom was fueled by HMC’s Enterprise and Entrepreneurs course taught by Josh Jones ’98 and Benson Tsai ’06 and the Entrepreneurship Studio, directed by computer science professor Zach Dodds. Xia also attended the Claremont Accelerator program, a 5C student-run accelerator that helps student founders scale their ventures by providing capital, mentorship and staffing. Their journey even included some “cold caking”—literally wooing prospective customers with cake.

With their SageTank winnings, the founders worked full-time this summer to scale Whistle. “Building something of your own and growing it with your best friends—that feeling is indescribable,” says Xia.