2019 Summer Sprint : Off to an Excellent Start
June 4, 2019
By Shubham Aggarwal
The Convergence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship Institute in partnership with the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute welcomed the new cohort for the 2019 Summer Startup Sprint. It took place on May 28th at the Leslie e-Lab with a set of impressive presentations. Each team was required to provide a 2-minute summary of their business thesis, their plan on interviewing future customers and an overview of high-risk hypotheses. In total, 14 teams were selected from 60 applications across 10 different NYU Schools.
The first team “The Great Fantastic” founded by Kyle Bergman (NYU Stern School of Business ‘19) and, Elizabeth Bell, started off the presentations. The team expressed their vision to create the world’s most comfortable apparel using sustainable materials and ethical manufacturing resources. The team talked to 5 customers near Washington Square Park. They presented a graphical plot illustrating how much a role comfort played in their customers purchase decisions; 80% of the customers agreed that comfort was important in their buying decision. The team plans to conduct more interviews before coming to a conclusion.
Above: Kyle Bergman from The Great Fantastic
Team “Releasur” founded by Charles Le Pelley du Manoir (Gallatin ’19), Antowan Wallace (Stern ’19), William Talley, aims to provide an online platform that allows urban Hip-Hop artists to find local technical help needed to complete projects. They emphasized the need for getting quality video production for artists who are not well established yet. They plan to determine whether artists are not completing the projects efficiently and music technical services are struggling to find customers.
Above: (left to right) Antowan Wallace, William Talley, Charles Le Pelley du Manoir from Releasur
Team “Chorebug” founded by Avante Price (Stern ’22), Vivianne Ramselaar (GLS ’22), Oliver Leopold, Pablo Ramos-Torrescano focuses on providing a web platform that connects high-school students looking for part-time work to community members near them for help with odd jobs. Already, ChoreBug has helped over 500 clients connect with youth in their neighborhood! With notability throughout the North Shore Area of Chicago, IL, and major financial and networking support from NYU, ChoreBug is poised to expand nationally by the end of 2019. They hypothesize that their expansion is dependent on a town’s income disparity since its less likely that people will pay students for help with odd jobs unless they have a certain amount of disposable income.
Above: (left to right) Avante Price and Jenn from Chorebug
Team “CODie” provides a user-friendly mobile application that helps students to learn basic coding through gamifying their learning experience. Founded by Jiayun (Cecilia) Zou (Stern ’20), Koken Ishii (Tisch ’20), CODie’s main focus is on college students who want to learn coding skills through an engaging experience on mobile phone apps instead of learning through a traditional medium like books. They will assess whether most high school and non-CS major college students are interested in learning to program and would use a mobile app.
Team “Recko” founded by Tiffany Patafio (NYU CUSP ‘19), Tushar Gupta (Fordham MBA ‘19), Danijel Sofric (VP Data Analytics) is a platform that intends to improve the way new parents and consumers research and review products. This will enable users to quickly and easily analyze insights from known sources to help make informed purchase decisions with more confidence in a fraction of the time. The founders will conduct interviews with users like members of NYC Mom & Dad Facebook Groups, Customers at Buy Buy Baby as well as with customers (midwives, doulas, nurses, and MDs). They believe that current solutions used by new parents could be significantly improved.
Above: (left to right) Tushar Gupta and Tiffany Patafio from Team Recko
“The Easiest Keto” founded by Kyu Kim (NYU Stern 2020), Lauren McMullen (Northeastern University 2019), and Ebenezer Ackon (NJIT 2015) is a social platform to help ketoterians, people who strictly follow a ketogenic diet, improve their health while avoid being judged about their dietary decisions. The team addresses this problem by providing a community where users can feel encouraged, supported, and share their progress and success. They intend to conduct interviews with people who are committed to keto diets to address health complications. They also plan to talk with doctors who recommend a keto diet, individuals who start keto diets with the support of their partner and those who do not have supportive partners.
Team “Exchange” by Daniel Hyun (Stern ’20), Krish Chelikavada (Tandon ’19) provides a marketplace where tech job seekers and universities access technical training services from software engineers. The team can help in improving the technical skills of job seekers by 85% within 4 sessions. They solve the problem of losing out on a salary increase of $12,500 (on average). They plan to interview software engineers and data scientists from Optum and LoanDepot firms. The team believes that existing technical interview prep resources are inadequate. An assumption they hold is that domestic job seekers are more likely to purchase their programs than international job seekers. Moreover, tech job seekers have a strong desire for technical training programs, as their coursework or previous job experience have not been adequate.
Above: (left to right) Krish Chelikavada and Daniel Hyun from Exchange
“Grounded Upcycling” founded by Parker Reposa (Gallatin ’20), Drew Enyedi (Stern ’20) is a social venture that works with the spent coffee grounds from coffee shops to create soap and other products, thereby diverting coffee grounds from entering landfills. The team intends to conduct interviews with brand cosmetic customers, coffee shop owners and with people involved in distribution channels like hotel chains, natural grocers, subscription services, and waste-free shops. They will test their assumption that customers are comfortable using a product made from “waste”. Vendors/cosmetic shops see the value of upcycling and using organic waste, while coffee shops are willing to pay for coffee waste collection. The major goal for the team is to find out whether their business operations can match the price for composting in the market.
“RedCapper” founded by Marnix Heuker of Hoek (Tandon ’19), Jonathan Sgouros (CAS ’16), Brian Brink (Stern ’15) serves as a real estate platform focused on virtual tours. It provides a real estate listing portal that helps NYC Real Estate Brokers to solve the problem of property showings with poorly informed leads. They plan to conduct various interviews with individual brokers, salespersons, and directors from real estate agencies like Compass, Corcoran, Douglas Elliman, and Mdrn Residential. They will assess whether brokers want to eliminate showings with poorly informed leads and give clients as much information as possible prior to meeting in person.
Above: (left to right) Marnix Heuker of Hoek and Jonathan Sgouras from RedCapper
Team “Heybor” founded by Oatile Ramsay (Gallatin ’21), Felix Gaye (Stern ’18), Tyler Benjamin (Gallatin ’17), Kiola George provides a service that streamlines the rental process for tenants and property owners while opening lines of communication between neighbors. The founders intend to conduct interviews at Washington Square Park and expect to find recent graduates as well as other students who have recently or are currently undergoing the apartment hunting process. They will test whether their primary users would be young adults in New York City ages 18-30, who are looking for an apartment. They also surmise that property owners care about tenants feedback and that their primary customers will be apartment owners.
Team “Miranda” founded by Sara Liu (Stern ’22), Alberto Chierici (Tandon ’22) is an intelligent web app that digitizes independent insurance agents’ front-desk operations by integrating chatbot framework with popular messaging apps and Customer Relationship Management. After speaking with over 20 agents all over the United States, the team has identified two types of users for their business: agents and customers. They believe that the users can configure the bot with almost no learning curve.
“Novelty Interactive” founded by Jason Charles (Tandon ’19), Yael Ezer (Steinhardt ’18) is an ed-tech startup that designs and creates accessible story-based learning tools for children with disabilities. They will test whether the early adopters would be teachers, administrators and other professionals in K-6 school environments who are actively seeking solutions and tools to assist struggling learners. In addition, they will assess whether most schools within the NYC DOE have tablets or smart devices to provide a digital experience through customer discovery.
Team “Pondhop” by Talib Jafri (SPS ’20), Farva Jafri (CAS ’10), Daniel O’Brien, Nicholas Konieczko, Nicholas LaVelle is focused on customer experience improvement through guest-facing technology that optimizes labor for restaurant managers. The team wants to provide operational efficiencies to small business owners that struggle with negative customer service experiences. Business owners “care” because they operate on razor-thin margins that cannot be compromised by negative reviews that customers tend to write online after a bad experience with their server. They plan to carry out customer interviews focusing on hospitality groups and small business owners. They will evaluate whether the assumptions that the key decision makers at restaurant/bars have concerns with slow service and that businesses have seen consequences due to negative reviews from slow service.
The last team to present “PIVOTtag” is founded by Emily Long (SPS ’20), Arahant Ashok Kumar (Courant ’20). The team creates personalized encoded tags that when scanned, texts the item’s owner instantly, for use by individual travelers and in hospitality venues. They plan to carry out customer discovery first focusing on Airline baggage handlers and employees at HI NYC Hostel and International Student Center Hostel. They will investigate whether millennials care about having a luggage tag in their things and have anxiety that their bag will not get to them.
The next two weeks at the summer sprint would be an exciting journey for all the teams as they would actively learn how to turn their business idea into an actual startups. The final presentations, where teams will share what they learned through NYU’s startup resources, will take place on June 7th from 10:00 a.m. through 6:00 pm and conclude with Q&A on startup resources. Stay tuned with CIE’s official Twitter and Facebook channels for latest updates on all teams during the next two weeks.
Above: (left to right) Arahant Ashok Kumar and Emily Long from PIVOTtag