Over the course of the last two years, Wentworth's ACCELERATE program has funded 23 startups with a collective $113,000. More than 450 students have strolled through the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Center's doors — armed with ideas, yet looking for inspiration.
"It's been really interesting to see how the student population has reacted to the offerings," said Monique Fuchs, associate vice president of innovation and entrepreneurship. "They have jumped right in."
The Center launched in May of 2012 with ACCELERATE, a competition designed to help jumpstart students' entrepreneurial journeys. Interdisciplinary teams would participate in a "Pitchfest" once a semester, making their case for up to $10,000 in capital to an esteemed panel of judges.
At the beginning of this year, ACCELERATE's funding model changed. Rather than awarding students once a semester with larger sums of money, Fuchs said they decided "it would be good for students to have more opportunities." With that, the Center started dishing out money twice a semester, but in smaller amounts, to help teams prioritize better and focus in on what their absolute next step needs to be.
"The students aren't as overwhelmed with having $10,000," acknowledged Fuchs, adding the strategy has led to much better retention and kept students engaged.
Now, startups can pitch multiple times. Simply Stored, founded by seniors Deborah Massaro and Stephanie Nannariello, first received $6,000 through a competition, but then returned to pitch twice more, receiving $1,000 in March and another $6,000 in April. The company is creating a decorative and space-saving way to store and organize nail polish, and has 3D printed a product they are currently iterating on.
The uniqueness of Wentworth's entrepreneurship program is reflected in the amount of products being built, similar to that of Simply Stored. Just this semester, 13 teams have pitched, 10 of which pitched products.
"We want people to perceive Wentworth as a maker community," Fuchs added. "[Students are] taking the technologies they're dreaming up and applying them to a larger social context."
In between funding rounds, students are offered workshops in which they can hone in on specific skills, such as how to complete market research or handle intellectual property. The goal is to help them create the beginnings of a business plan, "even if it's just a short one," Fuchs said, and forces teams to think about specific questions and incrementally achieve milestones.
"We don't want the students to see it as a semester activity," Fuchs explained. "We want to make sure students engage much, much more throughout the year."
Wentworth's Social Innovation Lab has assisted in accomplishing that. The program, which launched last year, spans the summer semester and equips six students from six different academic disciplines with the resources necessary to start developing product and technology innovations that could solve meaningful social problems. The second, 12-week iteration of the program is slated to start on May 19.
Given the breadth of the teams that have sprung from the program over the course of the past academic year, the Social Innovation Lab likely won't be the only place work is getting accomplished. Four product-focused startups received their share of $13,000 last semester, and six additional startups received funding this spring.
