Q2 Named Semifinalist in
MSU’s Burgess New Venture Challenge
East Lansing, Michigan — February 2026
Q2 Systems has been selected as a semifinalist in the 2026 Burgess New Venture Challenge (BNVC) at Michigan State University, one of the university’s premier competitions for student-founded ventures.
For Q2 Systems, the moment represents more than participation in a pitch competition. It marks a milestone in a journey that began when founder Nthanda Manduwi first toured Michigan State in October of 2023, with a clear intention: to build a company grounded in systems thinking, data, and real-world problem solving. The Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business presented much alignment for what our founder needed to build.
Q2 Systems was founded by Nthanda Manduwi (Eli Broad College of Business), with technical development led by Alvaro Anaenugwu (College of Engineering), Mechanical Engineer and Lead Engineer at Q2 Systems.
Together, the team has been doing foundational research to get the company off the ground with help from the Burgess Institute of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, developing cyber-physical infrastructure platforms designed to help emerging markets make smarter decisions about complex systems.
The company aims to integrate real-world systems, digital twins, and simulation engines into a single adaptive ecosystem. This approach allows governments, institutions, operators and individuals to test infrastructure decisions virtually before implementing them in the physical world.
At its core, Q2 Systems is built around a simple principle: better decisions come from better evidence.
Across sectors such as infrastructure, agriculture, logistics, and education, institutions often face high-stakes decisions with limited access to reliable planning tools. Q2 Systems aims to close that gap by generating actionable data, system-level knowledge, and predictive insights that allow planners and operators to evaluate scenarios before deploying resources in the real world.
Rather than offering isolated technologies, the platform creates an integrated feedback loop between:
- Autonomous systems
- Digital twins
- Interactive simulations
Together, these components produce continuous streams of operational data and system intelligence that help organizations understand how their environments behave and how they can improve them.
The Burgess New Venture Challenge provides a platform for student founders to test and refine ventures through mentorship, venture development support, and exposure to Michigan’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
For Q2 Systems, the competition is not simply about prize funding. It represents an opportunity to demonstrate a broader vision: building knowledge infrastructure that helps emerging markets design, test, and scale smarter systems.
A New Chapter: Detroit
As the team prepares to present at the BNVC semifinal round on April 9, 2026, the moment also marks the closing of an important chapter in the company’s journey at Michigan State.
Q2 Systems has recently begun establishing its presence in Detroit, a city whose deep industrial heritage, mobility technology, and growing innovation ecosystem make it a natural environment for the next phase of the company’s development.
Detroit has also expanded the scope of Q2 Systems’ mission. While the company’s early work was motivated by infrastructure challenges observed across Africa, operating in Detroit has reinforced a broader insight: the systemic problems facing emerging economies are not unique to one region. Cities and industries around the world—from rapidly growing regions in Africa to post-industrial economies in the United States—face similar challenges in infrastructure modernization, system coordination, and data-driven decision making.
Detroit represents an important step in Q2 Systems’ global vision, positioning the company to develop technologies that serve emerging markets everywhere, while continuing to build solutions that ultimately benefit African systems as well. The team will share more in the coming months about its work in Detroit and how this new chapter connects to its long-term global mission.
The team is grateful to the State of Michigan and the City of Detroit for their support and looks forward to sharing more soon about why Detroit was chosen as Q2 Systems’ next base of operations and what the company hopes to build there over the coming year.
As Q2 Systems prepares to wrap up its Lansing chapter through the Burgess New Venture Challenge, the team invites students, faculty, and community members to attend the showcase, connect with the founders, and learn more about how Q2 Systems is working to build smarter infrastructure systems powered by data, knowledge, and evidence.
To register to attend, visit https://bit.ly/2026-burgessnvc.
As the venture continues to evolve, the mission remains constant:
transforming complex physical environments into systems that can be understood, simulated, and improved through data and evidence.
Build the Future with Q2
Q2 Systems is building the next generation of cyber-physical infrastructure for emerging markets — integrating real-world systems, digital twins, and interactive simulations to generate the data, knowledge, and evidence needed to design smarter systems.
From agriculture and logistics to infrastructure planning and applied learning, Q2’s platforms help institutions test ideas, understand complex environments, and make better decisions before deploying resources in the physical world.
Investors & strategic partners
Collaborate with Q2 Systems as we expand pilots, simulation platforms, and infrastructure intelligence tools across emerging markets.
Contact: invest@q2corporation.com
Developers, engineers & creators
Work with Q2 Systems and Kwathu Kollective to build the next generation of simulation environments, applied learning systems, and cyber-physical tools. Visit q2corporation.com/careers
Public sector institutions & global development partners
Partner with Q2 Systems to deploy data-driven planning tools, digital twins, and simulation infrastructure that support smarter policy, infrastructure design, and last-mile innovation.
Contact: kollective@kwathu.org
