The final event for the Faculty Startup Sprint 2018 took place on August 31st, with an impressive set of presentations. A total of 13 teams were involved in the program. Each team was required to provide a 10-minute summary of their startup concept, the number of interviews they conducted, business thesis, an overview of high-risk hypotheses about their business idea, and a business model canvas.
Team CalRegen, Inc founded by Leslie Gold (Faculty, NYU School of Medicine), Chinaza Egbuta (Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU School of Medicine) and Miguel Manzanares (Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU School of Medicine), were the first team to start off the presentations. CalRegen’s vision is to introduce a biotherapeutic calreticulin, that induces tissue regeneration for the treatment of chronic wounds, hair regrowth and facial wrinkles. They presented a summary of their current status, the challenges they faced and their next moves.
Above: Miguel Manzanares, Leslie Gold and Chinaza Egbuta from CalRegen, Inc
sTaRt (Founders: Tara McAllister (Faculty, NYU Steinhardt), Mario Svirsky (Faculty, NYU School of Medicine), Tae Hong Park (Faculty, NYU Steinhardt), Erin Doty (Associate Research Scientist, NYU Steinhardt), Helen Carey and John Riordan) is an application to help speech therapists eliminate treatment-resistant speech errors using real-time visual-acoustic biofeedback. They plan to focus mainly on reaching out to tech companies with development and marketing resources to target their customer segments.
Above: Tara McAllister from sTaRt
XiMiO’s (Founders: Beno Oppenheimer (Faculty, NYU School of Medicine), Adam LaPrad) Health response tool uses wearable tech to ensure that rescue teams accurately implement American Heart Association (AHA) guidelines. Their long-term goal is to increase the patient’s’ chances of survival to 35%.
Above: Beno Oppenheimer from XiMiO
Spectra Wine Services was founded by Timothy Bromage (Faculty, NYU School of Dentistry) and Sasan Rabieh (Postdoctoral Fellow, NYU School of Dentistry, Khemet Calnek, Junior Research Scientist, NYU School of Dentistry). They plan to provide producers with comprehensive data on the element composition of wine, reflecting contributions due to grape biology and processing. They are collaborating with Wine Spectator Magazine who will help them spread the word to the biggest wine producers in the world.
Above: Timothy Bromage from Spectra Wine Services
Dollaride (Founders: Su Sanni, Eric Goldwyn (Adjunct Faculty, NYU Shanghai), Max Kim (BS, Tandon), KaRon Joyner) spoke about planning to implement a mobile app with digital tracking and online payment services to the dollar van network in New York City. The biggest challenge they faced was to transition the commuters from paying through cash to online based payment services.
Above: Su Sanni from Dollaride
Of the 13 teams involved in the Faculty Sprint, 3 were directly supported by the NYU Tandon Convergence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Institute. Teams H2POWdR, Pi-Radio and WOKEN shared their goals and based on the program, future directions.
Team H2POWdR, directed by Professor Miguel Modestino from NYU Tandon, Frank Vallese Managing Director, MD5 Launch Acceleration, Thomas Yu (Postdoc, NYU Tandon) and Daniel Frey (PhD student, NYU Tandon) planned to develop solid state hydrogen storage technology for hydrogen fuel cell and fracking applications. The team wanted to focus solely on the hydrogen fuel cell market to develop a viable business initially rather than target multiple markets after listening to feedback from coaches and mentors.
Above: Thomas Yu from H2POWdR
Pi-Radio was founded by Founders: Marco Mezzavilla (Postdoctoral Fellow, Tandon) and Aditya Dhananjay (Postdoctoral Fellow, Tandon). The team shared their vision to make low-power fully-digital transceiver the de-facto communication technology for future mmWave radios. They continue to seek commitment from large testbed operations to use their technology.
Above: Marco Mezzavilla from Pi-Radio introducing his team
WOKEN was founded by Rachel Serwetz (MBA, Stern), Xin Tong, and Kalina Yingnan Deng. Rachel passionately spoke about their career management platform for young adults that helps them figure out their ideal career path and receive guidance throughout the entire job search. The team learned that results were much more drastic for younger adults. As a result, they have decided to focus on this population segment going forward.
Above: Kalina Yingnan Deng and Rachel Serwetz from WOKEN describing their venture
The audience intently listened to the presentations and were actively involved in providing their feedback to the teams. As a result, the teams benefitted from watching fellow teams present and listening to the audience react to their ideas. The presentations were followed by a group picture of all the teams that participated in the final week of Faculty Startup Sprint.
Above: Participants of the summer faculty sprint