Elias Stahl

Post-pitch story

Elias Stahl founded HILOS in Portland in 2019 to prove that shoes could be 3D-printed on demand instead of mass-produced and warehoused. When he pitched on the show, HILOS was its own footwear brand. Since then, it's become something bigger: a design, engineering and on-demand manufacturing platform for other footwear brands, with a client list that includes Steve Madden, Alexander Wang, Under Armour and Ralph Lauren. The pivot has been validated with serious money — HILOS raised a $9.7 million Series A in April 2025 (confirmed by an SEC filing), bringing total funding to nearly $17 million. Along the way the company pitched on TechCrunch Disrupt's Startup Battlefield stage in October 2024, announced a generative-AI design partnership with Steve Madden, and was granted a patent on its 3D-printed footwear construction. From making its own clogs to powering the design labs of global shoe brands, HILOS is one of Season 9's clearest success stories — it just succeeded as a different company than the one that pitched.