Fostering Student Innovation

As an ongoing series this summer on the YEI Blog, we asked the  summer fellowship teams to answer a few questions about their experiences starting their ventures. This Q & A is with Communificiency - a crowdfunding platform that allows businesses, nonprofits, and other organizations to raise money from their communities to finance investments in the energy efficiency of their buildings, cofounded by Max Webster (YC '12) and Sherwin Yu (YC '12).

1. Who was your favorite guest speaker and why?

Chris Devore was excellent. He gave honest and concrete advice about what investors are looking for from the accelerator stage (e.g. getting accepted to TechStars) to later series rounds. We also really enjoyed hearing his thoughts on how communities can successfully build strong startup ecosystems.   

2. What strategy or hypothesis about your venture have you changed since you started the summer fellowship?

We came into YEI knowing that we wanted to focus on crowdfunding for sustainaibility. Over the course of customer discovery and development during the summer, we have focused on providing financing and awareness for energy efficiency retrofits of small and medium sized businesses. 

3. What did you take away from the YEI Fellowship’s tour of more established startups like HubSpot and (2010 YEI fellowship company) Hadapt?

Hard work, good hiring, and genuine passion can lead to a large impact in the world in a relatively short amount of time. 

As an ongoing series this summer on the YEI Blog, we asked the  summer fellowship teams to answer a few questions about their experiences starting their ventures. This Q&A is Neil St. Clair (GSAS '13), cofounder of UnBuyThat, a secondary marketplace for the reselling of services, such as hotel and restaurant reservations and daily deal coupons.

1. Who was your favorite guest speaker and why?

While we have experienced many wonderful speakers, Marc Cenedella, founder of TheLadders.com, was by far and away the most inspiring for us. He brought a bit of reality to an entrepreneurial success story. Showed us clearly and intelligently how he found success and failure in different areas--marketing, product development, etc. His initial thoughts on customer acquisition strategies and customer engagement through his newsletter gave us a lot to think about as a company going forward.

As an ongoing series this summer on the YEI Blog, we asked the  summer fellowship teams to answer a few questions about their experiences starting their ventures. This Q&A is with YEI venture Mental Canvas, a software that enables designers to explore unfinished ideas built from sketches and photographs arranged in a coherent, lightweight 3D environment. The fellowship team comprises of Paul Christensen (SOM '13), Patrick Paczkwoski (GSAS '13) and Smita Venkat (SOM '13)

1. Who was your favorite guest speaker and why?

I really enjoyed the visit by Caren of Nestio. It’s always powerful to see entrepreneurs who have been really engaged in the nuts and bolts of starting up a venture, and can speak clearly about the experience. For ventures like ours, which are working through the day to day challenges of launching a new enterprise, it’s incredibly useful to be able to speak with people who understand what we are going through. 

2. What strategy or hypothesis about your venture have you changed since you started the summer fellowship?

Since starting the summer fellowship, we’ve realized that our business could have much wider applications that we previously thought. We’ve widened our thinking to consider how we could approach not only a specific industry niche, but also how Mental Canvas could be applied to broader consumer markets.

3. How have your mentors helped you advance your business?

Our mentors are a critical element in developing our business. We have a group of mentors who understand the software industry and the process of transferring technology out of a university. A number of successful entrepreneurs and venture capitalists have told us that one of the most important qualities of an entrepreneur is having “good ears.” We’ve taken that to heart, and listening to our mentors has been one of the most important ways for thinking through how to structure our business model and pitch.

 4. What did you take away from the YEI Fellowship’s tour of more established startups like HubSpot and (2010 YEI fellowship company) Hadapt?

Success is possible!

As an ongoing series this summer on the YEI Blog, we asked the  summer fellowship teams to answer a few questions about their experiences starting their ventures. This Q&A is with YEI venture Project Optix, a dynamic daily deals website for discounted movie tickets. The fellowship team is comprised of Vela-Susan Park (YC '13) and Derrick Gomez.

1. What is the most important learning experience you've gained so far while working in the incubator space at YEI?

We are amazed by the amount of resource and nurturing environment that YEI creates for its student ventures. We have learned that it’s okay to fail, but what is more important is to take lessons from our failure and make our venture even better. We have also learned to think critically about the problems or inefficiencies in the market, and come up with viable solutions to meet that demand.

2. What obstacles have you overcome within your business model that has made your new venture gain momentum?

So far, being persistent and reaching out to our mentors for advice have been extremely helpful. We have been engaging in an active discussion with the moviegoers and movie managers to make sure that we are addressing their problem or need. For instance, we have created surveys and contacted 12 movie theaters in NY and CT to gain their feedbacks. Next, we are planning to do a pilot test to prove our hypothesis.

3. Who was your favorite guest speaker and why?

Our favorite speakers were Ka Mo Lau from PaperG and Chris DeVore. We felt that Mo provided crisp and to-the-point insight on how to develop a successful business as a student entrepreneur. We also found Chris DeVore’s talk very helpful because we were able to gain viewpoint from VCs and investors, and learned how to prepare and approach them in the future. 

As an ongoing series this summer on the YEI Blog, we asked the  summer fellowship teams to answer a few questions about their experiences starting their ventures. This Q&A is with YEI venture Cronote, a web technology to allow users to schedule an email or text message reminder about an upcoming product. The founders of Cronote are Aaron Abajian (MED' 15) and Ann Nguyen.

1. What has been your biggest challenge so far at YEI?

By far, it has been to define the problem that our business really solves. We started YEI with several assumptions about customer needs, but we soon learned that those assumptions weren't entirely correct. We had essentially created a solution for a problem before truly understanding if there was a demand. Now, we are spending more time on customer discovery and customer validation in order to find the right niche for our product.

2. Who was your favorite guest speaker and why?