Convergence of Innovation & Entrepreneurship

2019 Summer Startup Sprint: Its A Wrap!

By Barr Morgenstein

For the last two weeks, the 2019 Summer Sprint teams have been working intensively with the mission to build their own startups. With enthusiasm and much effort, the 14 teams, consisting of 32% female co-founders, presented their work from the last few weeks. Some needed to reassess their target markets, some had to redefine their entire model and examine the ‘pains’ they were looking to solve, but all have learned important lessons and skills in entrepreneurship.

The first team to present was team ‘codin’ (previously known as ‘CODie’) co-founded by Jiayun (Cecilia) Zou (Stern ’20) and Koken Ishii (Tisch ’20).  The company, aiming to create a game-like education platform for basic coding, experienced challenges in defining and meeting the needs of their initial target customers. Fortunately, by experimenting with potential audiences and diving deeper into the market need, codin was able to shift and find possible adjacent opportunities with MBA students, young professionals, partnerships with universities and with non-native English speaker markets.

Above: Koken Ishii from team ‘codin’

Team ‘RedCapper’  founded by Marnix Heuker of Hoek (Tandon ’19), Jonathan Sgouros (CAS ’16) and  Brian Brink (Stern ’15) are looking to provide a better and more efficient way for potential home renters to review real-estate listings using virtual tours. After testing their hypothesis with both brokers and consumers, the ambitious team decided that the startup should focus on consumers, the potential renters who are willing to pay for their service. The RedCapper team is looking forward to continuing their project with a positive outlook.

Next, Emily Long (SPS ‘20) and Arahant Ashok Kumar (Courant ‘20) of ‘PIVOTtag’ showed how dedication and perseverance pays off. The team had to remodel their initial plan and target market completely, and found great opportunity within the hotel industry, offering an innovative solution for their luggage services. With the aim to provide safe and systematic tags to locate personal belongings, the team is planning to test pilot designs and close new partnerships within the next couple of months.

The ‘ChoreBug’ team led by Avante Price (Stern ‘22) and Jenni Funt (Tandon ‘22) wish to create an online platform that connects local high school students with community members in order to help them with different tasks such as moving, gardening and painting. Throughout the sprint coursework, the team was exposed to the existing competitors in the market and was able to interview and learn from different potential customers, workers, and students and better narrow their target market. The platform is now defined to offer its services to community-involved age 35+ mothers who wish to help local high-school students. With lower prices and added community value, ChoreBug is hoping to create 20% month-over-month growth and continue to gain nationwide exposure in the next 3-6 months.

Above:  Avante Price and Jenni Funt (right to left) from team ‘Chorebug’

Team ‘Heybor’ co-founded by Kiola George, Tyler Benjamin (Gallatin ‘17), Oatlie Ramsay (Gallatin ‘21) and Felix Gaye (Stern ‘18) sought to provide a communication platform between buildings, owners/landlords, and tenants. They conducted experiments and spoke with potential consumers and found that indeed there is a desire to improve communication within buildings.  The team will continue to work on segmenting its customers, defining the platform, and testing its viability.

Charles Le Pelley du Manoir (Gallatin ’19), Antowan Wallace (Stern ’19) and William Talley of ‘Releasur’ is an online platform aimed at connecting aspiring Hip Hop artists with the videographers needed for their projects. With the help of mentors, interviews with both artists and videographers in the industry, the team revealed the ‘pains’ they were looking to solve. This also helped them narrow their target audience down from producers, audio engineers, and videographers, to just videographers. The platform is now offering a transparent way for artists and videographers to schedule and conduct payments for services that are part of the video production process. With a running pilot and more improvement plans in the future, Releasur is excited for what the future holds.

Next, the environmental and social oriented ‘GROUNDED Upcycling’ team led by Parker Reposa (Gallatin ’20), Drew Enyedi (Stern ’20) and Preet Bhaidaswala (CAS ‘19) (who recently joined the team), presented a venture looking to reuse spent coffee grounds. With more than 125,000 tons of coffee grounds produced per year, the team is looking for a way to ensure that more of the grounds are utilized and less is gone to waste. During the sprint course, GROUNDED Upcycling decided to redefine their initial environmentally conscious and vegan target market and remodel the activity of cosmetic products. Interviews with coffee shops owners and managers provided meaningful insights which allowed them to pivot to their new proposition: providing value-added waste management services to small-mid size coffee shops.

Above:  Parker Reposa, Drew Enyedi and Preet Bhaidaswala (right to left) from team ‘GROUNDED Upcycling’

Team ‘Reecko,’ co-founded by Tiffany Patafio (NYU CUSP ‘19), Tushar Gupta (Fordham MBA ‘19), and Danijel Sofric (VP Data Analytics) want to create a web-based platform for new parents to consume baby products with reviews. They were able to learn that users’ decision-making is heavily dependent on recommendations, research, and family members. More so, big supply companies often invest in learning about their customers, while smaller supply companies struggle to get such data. Reecko is currently planning to continue their experiments with potential users and to further investigate their proposal with marketing professionals.

‘The Great Fantastic’ founded and led by Kyle Bergman (Stern ‘19) invested significant time in market research and engaged with over 143 individuals! Kyle presented a The Great Fantastic’s apparel, which is meant to be functional, comfortable, and provide a unique style statement for consumers who wish to express themselves through their clothing. The next steps for The Great Fantastic include continuing their market discovery, prototype creation and exploring financial funding from potential partners.

Team ‘Novelty Interactive,’ co-founded by Jason Charles (Tandon ’19), and Yael Ezer (Steinhardt ’18) went through both highs and lows in the past two weeks. The team initially sought to provide interactive educational tools for children, but experienced difficulties in its execution and customer targeting. While Novelty Interactive’s future is uncertain, it is clear that they learned a lot from the process of becoming entrepreneurs.

Talib Jafri (SPS ’20), Farva Jafri (CAS ’10), Daniel O’Brien, Nicholas Konieczko and Nicholas LaVelle founded ‘Pondhop’ in the effort to improve customers’ experiences in restaurants. Their experiments on potential markets of non-enterprise restaurants provided a few key insights around customer rewards, and that enterprise restaurants may be a better fit. In light of their findings and new ‘pains’ they discovered in the restaurant labor force, the team decided to pivot and pursue opportunities and a new hypothesis focused on providing a better work force to restaurants. The Pondhop team is excited to test their new assumption, experiment, and hopefully start a customer pilot with the enterprise market in the next 6 months.

Team ‘The Easiest Keto’ co-founded by Kyu Kim (Stern ‘20), Lauren McMullen (Northeastern University ‘19), and Ebenezer Ackon (NJIT ‘15) worked diligently to segment their target customers. Aiming to help and encourage ketoterians’ diets and provide support for embarrassments they encounter due to their lifestyle choices. Following the team’s experiments, they understood that most ketoterians are not ashamed of their choices and do not need encouragement of that kind, but would highly appreciate a platform enabling them to track their diet and connect with other ketoterians. Having their new concept in mind, team The Easiest Keto is looking forward to testing a diet progress-monitoring platform and learning more about the Keto diet through upcoming community events.

Above: Lauren McMullen, Ebenezer Ackon, and Kyu Kim (right to left) from team ‘The Easiest Keto’

The ‘Miranda’ team led by Sara Liu (Stern ‘22), Alberto Chierici (Tandon ‘22) and Sydney Cheng (Stern ‘22) (who recently joined the team), showcased their progress over the last two weeks. From their initial concept of a one-stop shop that provides insurance services targeted at independent insurance agencies, to a low cost, efficient fact-finding tool for P&C insurance agencies focusing on commercial insurance for SMBs. With 3 beta users on board and expected growth of another 3-20 users in the next three months, the Miranda team are excited to continue working on their startup.

Above: Sara Liu from team ‘Miranda’

Last to present was team ‘Exchange,’ co-founded by Daniel Hyun (Stern ’20), and Krish Chelikavada (Tandon ’19). The team successfully marketed their interview training platform for aspiring SW engineers and received positive responses for their prototype experiment. The team is currently contemplating whether they should market their platform to other potential customers or focus solely on fresh SW engineers. Exchange is looking to raise funding and continue working and improving their platform.

Above: Summer 2019 Sprint Participants

All in all, the day was an exciting exhibition of hard work, perseverance and passion from 37 aspiring entrepreneurs. From insurance to education, the teams chose to focus on vastly diverse needs and target markets. Keep an eye out for these young entrepreneurs as they take their next steps in pursuing their dreams!