For the first time in the nine editions of the program, the director of the Babson Summer Venture Program is a non-faculty member: David Chang, a local entrepreneur and angel investor who previously led PayPal's Boston office.
As an entrepreneur in residence at Harvard Business School and a judge of different student pitch competitions, Chang has already had a chance to meet with students from all over the country, willing to launch businesses across all industries. According to Chang, many of them face the initial difficulty in transitioning from an academic mindset to taking action.
"Most students are very shy when it comes to going out to talk to a customer," Chang said. "Despite as much work as you can do within your four walls, in your dorm, you can't get the answers by thinking through. You actually have to do it."
The Summer Venture Program at Babson College is a 10-week intensive experience designed to accelerate the development of entrepreneurial ventures. During Week 1, students will get to know each other, meet key advisors and attend a workshop to understand if their ventures are on the right track. From Week 2 to 6, they will be offered a series of tools to grow their business and as entrepreneurs, including meeting with guest speakers and going on field trips to Boston companies and co-working spaces. In the last part of the program, students will prepare to showcase the progress of their business and presenting their ideas.
Since its inception in 2009, the program has supported over 200 graduate and undergraduate entrepreneurs from Babson College, Olin College of Engineering, and Wellesley College. This year, about 60% of the students are undergrad and 40% are MBA and masters.
Here are the 2017 Babson Summer Venture Program teams (descriptions provided by Babson College). The startups they're launching are in the tech and mobile industry or in the green/energy industry. There are also consumer products and social ventures.
- Bear Sword Boots (Chad Caisse MBA’18 and Gus Barber MBA’18) is the maker of custom-fit safety boots. Bear Sword Boots improves the safety, comfort, and health for workers while increasing productivity and saving money for employers.
- Cathexis (John Whalen MBA’18 and Simon Kohnstamm MBA’18) is creating an IoT device that lives in your fridge, tracks the health of your fruits and vegetables, and warns you before they spoil.
- CliqBit (Olivia Joslin, Wellesley College ’19 and Hannah Wei, Wellesley College ’19) seamlessly connects companies with Gen Zers for virtual or in-person consumer research.
- DetraPel (David Zamarin ’20) is a liquid repellent spray that protects anything from everything for up to a whole year.
- Knetic (Wilson Tang, F. W. Olin College of Engineering ’18) aims to revolutionize the way physical therapy treats and manages patients with the power of IoT and advanced data analytics.
- Kross (Jacob Riedel, F. W. Olin College of Engineering ’17 and Ryan Louie, F. W. Olin College of Engineering ‘17) is a cloud-based software platform that provides concerned citizens access to safety metrics from visual traffic data.
- Lula (Matthew Vega-Sanz ‘19, Michael Vega-Sanz ‘19, Mark "Ryan" MacDonell ’19 and Raunak Siroya ‘19) is the only peer-to-peer car sharing platform for college students.
- Magnomer LLC (Ravish Majithia MBA’18) is a product design venture, employing a cradle-to-cradle design methodology to enable closed-loop recycling of plastic packaging.
- OSAM (Chloris Ruohan Yang MSEL’17, Anmol Garg MSEL’17, Allen Zhang MSEL’17 and Nathen Xin Nie) provides awesome temperature for your drinks, always.
- Project 99 (Yulkendy Valdez ’17 and Josuel Plasencia ‘17) develops immersive experiences that inspire and enable millennials of color to become the leaders of tomorrow's workforce.
- Quonvo (Mitchell Troyanovsky ’19) is a web based Q&A platform that connects students with their peers to receive instant one on one chat-based assistance on academic questions.
- Vidvision (Derek Tu ’18 and Kyle Lawson ’18) offers a suite of lead generation tools that helps SMBs drive ROI on their video content.
- Vinci (Eagle Wu ’19, Tom Eng and Tiffany Yue) makes product design cheaper and faster with immersive virtual reality.
- Wanku - Healthy Tradition (Juan Giraldo MBA’18, Nicolas Estrella and Jose Torres) is an ancestral and refreshing infusion made of more than 20 medicinal herbs and aromatic flowers from the Andes region. It has diuretic, digestive and anti-stress properties and it tastes great!
Image provided.
