Award comes with $40,000 in seed money.
By Raif Karerat
WASHINGTON, DC: Cornell Tech is looking to inspire a new generation of startup-minded entrepreneurs and has introduced the Startup Awards to do exactly that.
According to Cornell Tech website, recipients of the award will receive $40,000 in seed capital and one year of free co-working space at The New York Times building in order “to support their full-time transition from academia to the commercial world.”
The awards are an extension of Cornell’s “Startup Studio” program, in which students pursuing their master’s found a real startup and test its resulting product with legitimate users. The Startup Awards provide Cornell Tech alums with the means and opportunity to continue pursuing a worthwhile startup even after they’ve graduated.
Dean and Vice Provost Daniel Huttenlocher stated the aim of the awards is to “bridge that gap” between a promising idea and a venture-backed business, reported TechCrunch. He noted that while some student projects had real potential, “No sane angel investor would invest in most of the things these students have done by the end of the summer” — at least, not on terms ideal for a nascent entrepreneur.
The dean previously spoke with Fast Company in early 2014, stating Cornell Tech’s goal was to “reinvent” graduate-level tech education with a practical focus that bridges the traditional divides between academia and industry.
The Startup Studio class is headed by investor and entrepreneur David Tisch, who, according to his LinkedIn profile, also co-founded New York City’s branch of TechStars, an elite, world renowned think tank and incubator.
Tisch informed a TechCrunch reporter who sat in on one of his classes that by exposing students to the startup world and getting some of them to work directly on new products and new companies, he sees Cornell Tech as providing “a foundational piece of the New York tech ecosystem.”
Cornell Tech’s Chief Entrepreneurial Officer Greg Pass argued that there is a drastic difference separating Cornell’s approach from that of an incubator: “If we were an accelerator, it’s really mostly about the company first and the entrepreneur second,” he mused. “In school, we’re invested in the success of students, not their ideas. Their idea is secondary to creating an environment for delivering lessons that will benefit them for their entire lives,” he continued.
Per TechCrunch, the 2015 Startup Award winners are:
- DogStar — a wearable device that measures a dog’s happiness and stress level
- Epicure — an online service that can make healthy suggestions after analyzing your shopping receipts and food orders
- Mynd — a Bluetooth wristband that helps teachers and other adults track large groups of children
- Pace — a social app that connects people so they can run together
- Trigger — an online investment platform that automates the trading algorithms of professional investors
Speaking to Cornell Tech’s publicist, the DogStar team of Li Guo, Mike Karp, and Yannis Tsampalis called their achievement “awesome” and remarked that they “could not have been happier” about the startup hitting its first major milestone.
“We’re thrilled to see what happens next,” they exclaimed with the brightly unbridled optimism of recent graduates.