The welcoming event for the Faculty Startup Sprint 2018 took place on August 2nd, with an impressive set of presentations. Each team was required to provide a 2-minute summary of their startup concept, in addition to customers who they plan on interviewing, and an overview of high-risk hypotheses about their business idea. The program schedule started with a welcome introduction, followed by team presentations, an Intro to Custom Discovery, Value Propositions and lastly Customer Segments. In total, 19 applications were received across 12 different NYU schools, and 13 teams were selected. Of the 13 teams, 11 are STEM oriented, and 10 have female or other founders who are underrepresented minorities in tech/startups. Supported by the Convergence for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Institute through the National Science Foundation I-Corps Sites Program are teams H2POWdR, Pi-Radio and Woken.
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), is a “solid state hydrogen storage technology for hydrogen fuel cell and fracking applications.”
For H2POWdr, Daniel Frey shared how this experience will shape his team’s vision moving forward: “The overall response to the presentation seemed positive. Since there are multiple markets that we are thinking about entering, the main feedback was to pick one market to focus on right now. This experience will be very important for us as we learn from the coaches and mentors so that we can, ultimately, develop a viable business out of our research. Regardless of the market that fits best with our solution, our goal is to implement our product in order to improve the sustainability of that market.”
Center: H2POWdr: Daniel Frey, PhD Student, Tandon, Thomas Yu, Postdoctoral Fellow, Tandon, Miguel Modestino (not pictured), Faculty, Tandon and Frank Vallese (not pictured), Faculty, Tandon.
Team Pi-Radio’s vision is to create “low-power fully-digital transceiver the de-facto communication technology for future mmWave radios.” This team is managed by Marco Mezzavilla (Postdoc, NYU Tandon) and Aditya Dhananjay (Postdoc, NYU Tandon). When reflecting on the feedback they received following their presentation, Aditya notes that “the teaching and the feedback sessions were incredibly useful. As a co-founder of a company who has previously made every single mistake that the class warns us about, the session was filled with “a-ha” moments.” She also discussed what she would like to get out of this experience, emphasizing the importance of receiving guidance from credible professionals: “We would like to learn from the best. We would like to confront the hard questions, the main risks, and go about testing the riskiest hypotheses in a systematic manner. I would also like to develop my skills in speaking with complete strangers. At the end, our goal is to either have a clear business model that is credible, or the acceptance of the fact that it isn’t credible, and we need to go back to the drawing board. Essentially, we want to be at the point where the engineering tasks that lie ahead of us receive a clear “go” or “no-go”.
Center: Pi-Radio: Aditya Dhananjay, Postdoctoral Fellow, Tandon and Marco Mezzavilla (not pictured), Postdoctoral Fellow, Tandon.
Lastly, team Woken led by Rachel Serwetz (Tech MBA, Stern) Xin Tong (Tech MBA, Stern) and Kalina Yingnan Deng (Fashion MBA, Stern) is a “career management platform for young adults to figure out their ideal career path and receive guidance throughout the entire job search.” After speaking with Rachel about her presentation and the responses from the audience, she also had similar feelings to team Pi-Radio about the audience’s advice: “The feedback we received was to make sure we run our customer interviews in one segment at a time, to ensure that we can effectively synthesize patterns per target segment.”
Additionally, Rachel looks forward to gaining insights from the experts as she embarks on this project: “This experience is very exciting! As I’ve seen a widespread problem over the past five years, it is going to be great to dive in to verify assumptions, dig deeper into the target market, and start to really hone-in on each piece of the business canvas. For me, the Startup Sprint is a way to gain guidance from experts to help me move my business forward. Having understood the problem so deeply, it’s now very exciting to start to make traction and progress towards a potentially scalable, effective and innovative solution.”
Center: Woken: Xin Tong, Tech MBA, Stern, Rachel Serwetz, Tech MBA, Stern and Kalina Yingnan Deng, Fashion MBA, Stern.
Ultimately, the audience intently listened to the presentations and were actively involved in providing comments and questions to the teams. As a result, the teams benefitted from watching fellow teams present and hearing the audience react to their ideas.
Center: The audience is pictured listening to the presenters up front.
Based on the presentations and feedback provided throughout the event, all teams are planning to continue to work on their ventures through August. The final presentations will take place on August 31st from noon through 3:30pm and conclude with Q&A on startup resources.