Catlin Tran ’23 business economics didn’t tell her family she had applied for a $25,000 small business grant from Verizon. She didn’t even tell them when she made it to the finalist round. So, when she walked through the front door with an oversized check in hand and announced she’d be heading to Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, their reaction was what you might expect.

“They were like, ‘No, you’re not,’” Tran recalls with a laugh.

But she was. And it wasn’t just any Super Bowl trip—it was an all-expenses-paid experience, complete with exclusive events, networking opportunities, and two tickets to the biggest football game of the year.

“It was overwhelming, in the best way,” she says. “New Orleans is a beast on its own, and then you add the Super Bowl energy on top of that. The passion from the fans was unreal.”

Tran will be the first to admit she’s not a die-hard football fan. But she was swept up in the moment, marveling at the sheer scale of it all. “As a business owner, it was incredible to see how the NFL has built this massive brand, this culture,” she says. “It made me think about how we can create that kind of excitement and community with Nutripair.”

Nutripair, the startup that earned her the Verizon grant, has been her full-time focus since graduating from UC Irvine in 2023 with a degree in business economics. But the seeds of the company were planted years earlier—inside a classroom here at UC Irvine.

From class project to company

In her first quarter at UCI, Tran was a pharmaceutical sciences major. That didn’t last long. “I realized pretty quickly that it wasn’t my calling,” she says. She switched to undeclared, searching for a path that felt right.

That’s when she stumbled into a computer science entrepreneurship course taught by computer science professor Ramesh Jain. She hadn’t intended to take a business class—she had signed up thinking the focus of the course was computer science—but it turned out to be exactly what she needed.

Early in the class, students were tasked with pitching a business idea. At that time, Tran had been thinking a lot about food and health. Her mother had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, and their family was suddenly paying much closer attention to nutrition. They were reading ingredient labels, researching food-drug interactions, and trying to make informed dietary choices—all while realizing how difficult and time-consuming that process could be.

What if there was a way to make it easier?

That question became the foundation of Nutripair. The idea started as a food tracking tool, then evolved into grocery recommendations, then recipe suggestions. Each iteration brought new challenges and insights.

At one point, Tran considered dropping the class. “I told Professor Jain, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing. I signed up for this by accident. I should just drop it.’”

Jain wasn’t having it. “He said, ‘No, you’re not. You’re staying until the very end,’” Tran recalls. “And that small push was all I needed. He gave me the confidence to think of myself as an entrepreneur before I even realized that’s what I wanted to be.”

And she ended up winning the class pitch competition.

Innovation and growth

By the time she graduated, Nutripair had solidified its focus: helping people with dietary restrictions and preferences find restaurants that cater to their needs, while also supporting small, local businesses.

The company has grown steadily, but the biggest transformation, Tran says, has been within herself.

“The hardest part of being a founder isn’t necessarily the logistics or operations—it’s the internal battle,” she explains. “There’s so much self-doubt. You think, ‘Am I too young for this? Do I know enough?’ You start listening to other people’s advice instead of trusting your own instincts.”

That’s something she’s had to work on. “I’ve learned that no one knows my business as well as I do. Taking advice is great, but at the end of the day, I have to trust my gut.”

Her confidence has been strengthened by the team she’s built—many of whom, fittingly, are fellow UC Irvine alumni. “UCI gave me such a strong community, so it felt natural to bring other Anteaters into this journey,” she says. “When you work with people who share your values and work ethic, everything just clicks.”

Thinking big

Even as Nutripair continues to grow, Tran is already thinking bigger. Under the company’s umbrella, she’s developing OOMAMI Experiences, a platform that curates high-end, food-centric events around major occasions. “Think Super Bowl, Michelin-star dining, immersive culinary experiences,” she says. “It’s an extension of Nutripair, but on a different level.”

The idea was already in the works before her trip to New Orleans, but the Super Bowl experience gave her the final push. “Being in those rooms, meeting the CEO of Verizon, the commissioner of the NFL—it made me realize there’s nothing stopping us from playing at that level,” she says. “We just have to go for it.”

Looking back, she credits UCI—not just for giving her the skills to build a business, but for giving her the space to figure out what she wanted in the first place.

“College isn’t just about classes. It’s about finding the things you’re willing to stay up all night working on, the things you pour yourself into even when no one’s forcing you to,” she says. “For me, that was Nutripair.”

And as she stood in the middle of the Super Bowl stadium, surrounded by thousands of passionate fans, she felt that same drive.

“I realized that’s what we’re building—not just a company, but a movement,” she says. “Something people can feel connected to. Something that matters.”

Not bad for a class project.

–Jill Kato for UC Irvine School of Social Sciences