As MassChallenge moves into the final phases of
its $1 million competition, seven teams comprised of
Tufts University alums or students prepare to make
their visions a reality.
MassChallenge, now in its second year, aims to
"catalyze a startup renaissance" by connecting
entrepreneurs with the resources they need to launch
their companies. The initiative is pat of the White
House's Startup America Partnership, which aims to
promote innovation entrepreneurship. This year's
competition garnered 733 entries from 24 countries
and 34 states. After two rounds of judging, 125
finalists have moved into the MassChallenge
22,000-square-foot office space at Fan Pier to
accelerate their growth. Here teams are connected
with mentors and advisors for a three-month
accelerator period.
As the world's largest start-up competition,
MassChallenge intends to address the seed-stage
investment gap by empowering novice entrepreneurs
from any part of the world with any type of idea.
The highest impact, most valuable start-up will win
the final million-dollar prize, but all competitors
will benefit from the use of the MassChallenge
office space, free legal advice, and a series of
crash entrepreneurial courses that will help them
grow their fledgling companies.
Among the finalists are seven Tufts teams:
1Minute40Seconds, Educate Lanka, Jump off Campus,
Pintley, Roof For Two, Sanergy, and
Swellr. Below are brief interviews with each of the
teams.
1Minute40Seconds
Founded by Blade Kotelly, E95
1Minute40Seconds is a technology company designing a
web-based video design platform. To this company,
MassChallenge is about much more than winning a
contest. Blade Kotelly, the company's founder, says
the object of a company is to get exposure to a
network of potential investors, customers, or
employees.
"Imagine if you were a high school football star
being recruited by a few different schools," Kotelly
asserts. "Is it the objective to be recruited by the
number one football school or to have a football
career? I'm not worried about winning the challenge
itself. That'd be a wonderful thing, but my sights
are on being a great company. For me it's about
exposure to more people, the right kinds of people.
It's about getting to be known by people in the
community. I want to hire the best—I want the
community to see what we're doing so we can hire the
best team possible."
Educate Lanka Foundation
Team includes: Manjula Dissanayake, F12 and
Sadruddin Salman, F12
Educate Lanka Foundation, third place winner in the
social entrepreneurship track at this year's Tufts
100K Business Plan Competition, sponsors
underprivileged children in Sri Lanka through a
peer-to-peer micro-scholarship model to provide them
with an education.
According to Manjula Dissanayake, co-founder and
president of Educate Lanka and a student at the
Fletcher School, Educate Lanka's team has benefited
enormously from their experience in the Tufts
competition.
"The Tufts competition was crucial for our success
in MassChallenge," Dissanayake said. "The extensive
preparation and writing of the business plan for the
Tufts competition makes competing at MassChallenge
much easier. The experience of pitching our idea for
Tufts, and the constructive feedback we received at
the competition, helped us improve and fine-tune our
pitch and presentation for MassChallenge."
Interestingly, as one of the few non-profit
organizations competing in the final round of
MassChallenge, Educate Lanka is vying for more than
just money.
"Although prize money would help us a lot, we know
that it is difficult to attract major investors for
a non-profit business model," Dissanayake said.
"Therefore, our main goal is not to focus on major
investors, but to find possible partners, advisors,
as well as potential funding opportunities. You
never know who we might impress or attract, so we
certainly would not count anything out. I think
entrepreneurs have to always keep their options open
because you never know what the next day or even the
next hour has to offer you."
Jump Off Campus
Team Includes: Cal Shapiro, A11, and Mark Abramowicz,
A10, and Kyle Nichols-Schmolze, E11 (Previously
called "Ditch the Dorm.")
Jump Off Campus is another MassChallenge competitor
who seeks the network of fellow entrepreneurs and
their advice.
"Our goal is to learn from the other finalists and
to get access to all the other people who are
involved in MassChallenge," co-founder Caleb Shapiro
said. "The entrepreneurial network is a pretty
tight-knit group and what's great about it is that
everyone is there to help. Getting this deep into MassChallenge
means that we're surrounded by people who want to
help us grow, unlike the corporate dog-eat-dog world
which sometimes offers a less collaborative
workspace."
Jump Off Campus is a web-based company that provides
information and resources for students moving out of
university housing. The enterprise markets itself as
a "student's one-stop-shop resource for any, and
all, off-campus housing needs."
Shapiro, along with his partner Mark Abramowicz,
attributes the Entrepreneurial Leadership program at
Tufts in helping the pair develop the business plan.
"Tufts was incredibly instrumental in terms of
giving us the knowledge we needed to be able to
develop our business idea, market it, and sell it to
people who would be listening. That's
entrepreneurship. You can look at anything and say,
'that needs improvement.' Then you make it better."
Pintley
Founded by Tim Noetzel, A08
Pintley is a web-based company that
gives personalized beer recommendations to a
community of beer aficionados while connecting
consumers to different breweries.
For more information about Pintley, check out the
recent coverage in
TechCrunch
or read our
profile on Tim Noetzel.
Roof for Two
Team includes: Karan Randhawa, A11, Andrew Altman,
A11, Max Pinto, A11, David Chen, A11, Justin
Ferranti A12
Roof for Two is an Indian-based motorcycle
accessories company dedicated to "Making Monsoons
Manageable" for motorists in South Asia. The team is
comprised of undergraduate Tufts students who met in
their first entrepreneurial business-planning
course, ELS101.
The Roof For Two team members each took a different
advanced entrepreneurship course while crafting
their business model and the skills they acquired,
they believe led them to win the Tufts 100K Business
Plan Competition. Co-founder Maxime Pinto asserts
they are prepared to take on MassChallenge because
of the counsel they received on campus.
"The entrepreneurial leadership department has
helped us tremendously as we formalized our business
throughout the course of the year," Pinto said. "The
variety of courses the team took gave us strong
foundations in finance, marketing, and leadership.
In addition, the professors themselves have been a
great help in and out of class—providing advice,
contacts and support."
Pinto believes that the Tufts 100K Business Plan
competition prepared his team for MassChallenge
because the presentation and panel-judging format is
similar between the competitions. The process of
developing a business plan through the
Entrepreneurial Leadership Department propelled the
team into the entrepreneurship arena. Roof For Two
feels they now have a structure to follow when
speaking with potential investors.
"We were actually more nervous for the Tufts
competition than the second round of MassChallenge,"
Pinto said. "We are excited to learn more about the
world of entrepreneurship and form a strong
relationship with the MassChallenge mentors. We plan
to network extensively in search of investors and
contacts in the Indian motorcycle industry while we
develop a better understanding of our market with
the resources available through the MassChallenge
accelerator program."
Sanergy
Team includes: Gaurav Tiwari, F12, Lindsay Stradley,
David Auerbach, Ani Vallabhaneni, Nathan Cooke,
Benji Monicivaiz, Tom Odoyo, Kenneth Owade, Ella
Peinovich, Nate Sharpe, Joel Veenstra.
Sanergy has already taken first place in this year's
Tufts $100K Social Business Plan Competition as well
as the MIT 100K Business Plan competition. The
team's goal is to permanently reduce
sanitation-related diseases in Africa's slums by
making hygienic sanitation affordable, accessible,
and sustainable. The team of engineers has developed
a cost-efficient but high quality sanitation center
and intends to franchise a network of the centers
across Nairobi slums to local entrepreneurs. The
waste is collected from each center and converted
into electricity and fertilizer that can be sold for
a profit.
Lindsay Stradley, one of the first team co-founders
who is currently working out of Nairobi, believes
that Tufts Business Plan competition helped Sanergy
focus on the profitable aspect of the business. "The
way the questions in the competition were framed
helped us make sure we were clear as to why this was
a good investment as a business and how it is going
to be profitable and successful."
Gaurav Tiwari, who is currently handling team
relations with the MassChallenge office, thinks that
the group is doing a great job of pushing forward
with their enterprise while participating in
MassChallenge. The team has 11 founding members—all
of whom will be spending time in Kenya this summer,
and 3 of whom have moved there long-term.
"Lindsay Stradley, Ani Vallabhaneni, and David
Auerbach, who really started this project, moved to
Nairobi to keep the project moving. That really gets
everyone going—the fact that there's already a pilot
that they're working on and there's so much more
going on, on the ground.."
Stradley also asserts that Sanergy is in a different
position than most MassChallenge competitors. Their
goal is to maintain and strengthen their connection
to the entrepreneurial network and resources
MassChallenge offers, despite the distance between
Boston and Nairobi, Kenya.
"Having our connection back at MassChallenge has
helped keep our momentum and makes sure we are still
learning and being reflective about what we are
doing," Stradley said. "We can stop and assess and
continue to learn. This competition process is all
about making you and your enterprise more
effective."
Swellr
Team includes: Andrew Varley, E06, Shonak Patel, and
Nathan Rothstein.
For Swellr, a socially conscious e-commerce
marketplace that empowers citizens to fund education
projects by shopping locally, the office space and
the perks that come with it are the biggest draw to
the competition.
"For us, one of the greatest advantages is to
actually have a centralized office space with a
hundred other start-ups," said Andrew Varley,
co-founder of Swellr. "You can constantly bounce
ideas off of other teams experiencing similar
issues. Every one of these start-up events that you
go to, you come away with some unbelievable idea
that you would never think of but someone else had
crossed that bridge maybe two months ago and they
say 'hey you should think about this,' and then it
puts you on this whole new path."
