This week was the final stretch before the week of the Make-a-thon. Class began with Professor Vishal clearing up everything regarding the Make-a-thon. The expectation and resources available during this event were explained. Once Vishal finished up we were given a presentation from social innovation representative Valerie. Valerie introduced to the class an opportunity to continue furthering their innovative ventures, while receiving non dilutive funding. This opportunity is provided by a program called the iVenture Accelerator. Which is a startup incubator. It’s a 10 week summer commitment and a full academic year seminar course. Participants receive $10,000 of funding and stipends throughout the summer. They not only provide this funding but have a pool of resources ranging from experts to additional funding opportunities. I am actually apart of the iVenture Accelerator. They really dive deep and help further your idea. They’ve introduced us to so many useful/helpful people. It’s really like a family. They bring you along and you become apart of this amazing ecosystem.
After Valerie’s presentation we met with Milestone Labs to give them an update of our progress to date. My team and I are team Solstice (team 1) so we went first. The folks at Milestone gave some good feedback and advice. They were delighted with our interviews and direction we’re going in. One thing we didn’t do was provide as much of our product as possible. We still have to do more sketches and ideation around a few key details regarding our product. From this meeting my team and I reconviented to brainstorm, reflect, and conduct a list of materials we need for the actual Make-a-thon. As a team we found this material called hydrophilic rubber, which is usually used in winter tires. We have a meeting with a material science professor to give us even more insight on materials and such. Also I have a professor who is a shoe cobbler on hi own time and he pointed us to a few materials as well. None the less we’re super excited for this event and our more refined product prototype!
