The past two days have been a whirlwind here at the Keller Center. We hosted back-to-back Demo Days for our eLab program teams, on campus and at the AppNexus offices in New York City. Both days proved to be exciting, inspiring, and quite informative.
Six teams took to the stage to pitch their start-up ideas to over 375 possible investors. In just 8 minutes they explained their innovations for:
- BoxPower providing reliable, low cost electrical energy to off-grid, under-served markets.
- Epigrammar creating a learning tool to enhance teacher assessment and student-teacher communication.
- Flux Marine an electrical outboard motor with zero-emissions, a small carbon footprint which is virtually maintenance free.
- Homeworks a non-profit boarding program that provides after-school academic and community enrichment to high school girls who are homeless or have unstable home lives in the Trenton, NJ area
- Scratchwork an enhanced white board app with a focus on making the drawing process feel natural and provide collaboration opportunities when working with equations, diagrams, and drawings
- Thrive + a company that researches, designs, and manufactures products to reduce alcohol's next-day negative effects in a safe, effective, and socially responsible manner
The eLab Summer Accelerator program provided the teams with 10 weeks of on campus housing, specialized entrepreneurship curriculum, expert mentors, seed funding, meals, social activities, team building opportunities and of course two heart pounding days of pitching and networking.
eLab 2017 has been an incredibly successful and productive summer for our teams, eLab faculty, and staff. I wonder what’s in store for summer 2018?