NSF Bay Area I-Corps News Archives - Page 2 of 12

February 27, 2021

January I-Corps @ UC Berkeley: Wrap Up

“The Bay Area I-Corps team gave us the shove we needed to move from what to why. We spent time understanding why our customers’ problems were important to them and why they are important to employers & insurers. Getting to the root and learning how to communicate it back to them in their language will be critical to our growth & success! Thank you I-Corps for the relentlessly honest feedback, the fire-under-our-butts motivation, mostly-funny jokes, and incredible cohort.” – Chris Wang, co-founder of Shimmer

Shimmer is a multidisciplinary, multi-school team focused on helping mental health patients in crisis. Chris Wang (MBA 22) was joined by co-founder and UCSF Medical School student Jon Wang and other team member to conduct 21 customer discovery interviews during the week long class.

One week after the class concluded, the team was awarded a $5k Blackstone Launchpad Fellowship for Spring.

What can I-Corps do for your STEM startup? Apply for our next cohort & find out!

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February 27, 2021

LAUNCH Fall 20 Winner Hails from I-School

A real life happy ending for UC LAUNCH team Redvest AI after a three month virtual accelerator!

Founder Silas Everett is a recent MIDS grad from UC Berkeley’s School of Information as well as a National NSF I-Corps alum. Redvest tracks personnel on large construction sites so that managers know exactly who is onsite and when.

UCSF team Breathily took second place for its contactless lung function measurement system and one week later, was named a Catalyst translational medicine awardee ($100k). OrganizationGG, helmed by MBA 17 alum Dima Okhrimchuk, all the way from Kyiv, took third place for their solution connecting streamers and fans for paid experiences. UC Berkeley Physics team won the Audience Choice award for their battery that charges in six minute and doesn’t explode.

Seven of 10 UCs were represented in this first-time-ever Fall edition of LAUNCH. The Spring cohort (with 8 of 10 UCs) kicked off 16 hours later–stay tuned for news on the teams and plan to join us for Demo Day on May 2!

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January 8, 2021

December I-Corps @ UC Berkeley: Wrap-Up

NSF I-Corps wrapped up 2020 with outstanding teams from UC Berkeley, UC Merced, Cal Poly SLO, UCSC & Stanford.

Berkeley Haas #EMBA team Novasine conducted 20 customer discovery interviews that yielded unique insights for their product roadmap. Cal-Stanford team ETTA also gained greater clarity around who their actual customer is for their drug delivery tech.

What can NSF I-Corps do for your STEM startup? Apply by midnight tonight for our next course (Jan 25, 27; Feb 1) & find out!

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December 7, 2020

NSIN Partnership Opens New Possibilities

The National Security Innovation Network, a program office within the U.S. Department of Defense, and the Blum Center have expanded their partnership to connect students, researchers, and entrepreneurs at the University of California, Berkeley, with the DoD.

This collaboration expands opportunities for researchers as well as students to work directly with organizations across DoD to solve important defense and national security problems. Teams are already forming and being trained in programs like Berkeley StEP and NSF I-Corps. The Office of Naval Research also provided one of the projects for this year’s Lean Transfer (MBA 295T) course.

November I-Corps @ UC Berkeley: Wrap-Up

Teams from across UC Berkeley, UCSB, Cal Poly SLO & Stanford elected to spend the first week in November with NSF I-Corps!

Berkeley Haas MBA/MPH students refined their idea for a solution to support patients with chronic conditions. Armed with new skills, they’ll build on the initial 15 interviews to refine the target segment even further.

LeviTrek, with UC Berkeley M.Eng and MBA students, refined their value proposition to include “increasing crowd energy” for live performers. Also part of Berkeley StEP, we can’t wait to see how the team pumps up the crowd on Demo Day.

What can 3 evenings & 15 interviews do for your STEM startup? Apply for our next cohort (11/30, 12/2, 12/7) by EOD this Friday, 11/13 and find out! Details here.

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October 4, 2020

Google Adds MyShake Into Android OS

National NSF I-Corps team MyShake recently had its California earthquake early warning system added into Android phones.

Based out of the Berkeley Seismological Labs, MyShake used the National program to pivot from a B2C to B2B model. Their lessons learned have clearly had an impact in making our world safer.

September I-Corps @ UC Berkeley: Wrap-Up

The popularity of E-sports continues to explode around the world. Betting on E-sports was already growing exponentially before lockdown and is now expected to be a $14B market by the end of 2020.

A team of students hailing from UC Berkeley and Harvard are building the tools needed to keep up with the brave new world of E-Sports bookmaking through their startup, Rimble.

The team, including MET student Shivam Shorewala, was a standout in our Setpember NSF I-Corps short course. Rimble conducted 17 customer discovery interviews during the one week course to identify the optimal go-to-market customer segment and its associated value proposition.

The team initially hypothesized that streamers would find value in tools to increase fan engagement. After talking with streamers, they found interest only in free tools…or those that would collect viewer donations. Pivoting to E-sports teams, the trio quickly learned that solutions would need to be proprietary to even be considered.

Pivoting again to interviewing American and Europeans based bookmakers (both those that did/did not support e-sports), the team gained a profound insight after digging in on the why. The biggest reason bookmakers haven’t shifted to e-sports is because there are no reliable analytics and real time predictions are non-existent. They further discovered the bookmakers who have shifted to in-house with data scientists are now using solutions that are losing them money.

Now that they’ve found a pain point, what’s next? A pilot program with a white-paper study on the effectiveness of their odds and rating system. Stay tuned!

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September 27, 2020

Coreshell Technologies Raises $4M

National NSF I-Corps team Coreshell Technologies recently announced raising $4M for their lithium-ion battery coating. After completing National I-Corps as a community-track team (Summer ’18), the company obtained a Phase I NSF SBIR grant.

Since then, they’ve continued to refine their technology to align with the needs uncovered during customer discovery: reduced cost with added capacity and an extended lifetime.

August I-Corps @ UC Berkeley Wrap Up

In addition to teams from UCSC, UCSF and UC Berkeley, we had not one, but two Haas EMBA physician-led teams in this month’s NSF I-Corps!

Lida Papadopoulos (EMBA 16) is a National I-Corps alum, leading her last company (neuroFit) through the program and on to a Phase I SBIR. She returned with a new venture–a formulary for digital health technology, co-founded by luminaries in the future-of-healthcare space.

Neal Johnson (DDS, PhD, EMBA 18) co-founded Hypnos Biomedical to solve the issue he and his colleagues have experienced when nasal intubation is needed during dental and oral surgeries. This was the team’s first exposure to I-Corps and they learned multiple lessons as they moved through their first 18 customer discovery interviews.

Early mistakes
Not asking “why” more often
Why “love it”?
Why “lukewarm”?

Listen for insights
Customer will describe their own ideal device
Flattery goes far “you’re the expert”
Humor helps when the conversation stalls

Lessons
Don’t underestimate ANY aspects of your value props (others may weigh more importance to features of the device)
Discovered new potential customer segments

What can I-Corps do for your STEM innovation? Find out here and apply by 8/28 for our September cohort.

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July 31, 2020

Bay Area Node: Celebrating 80 National Teams

So much to celebrate with our first 80 National I-Corps teams!

Founders with fundamental tech innovations from UC Berkeley, Berkeley Haas, UC Santa Cruz and Stanford shared their journeys to, through and beyond the 7 week/100 interviews/$50k National program.

See the recording here. Password: C5m09#5A

Several founders shared their original two minute Lessons Learned videos and reflected on their early mistakes (narrow customer segments!), post-I-Corps experiences and the importance of continuing customer discovery. 200 interviews, on average, were done on the way to securing NSF, DOE, NIH and other Phase SBIRs along with private capital to scale their ventures. Check out the video to see which team has secured $12M and is now raising $50M!

We also officially welcomed GEM I4 to the Bay Area Node family. GEM is a national organization and consortium of universities and companies founded 44 years ago for

African American, Hispanic, Native American Masters and PhD students in science and engineering. With over 4000 alumni and five Fellows currently at UC Berkeley, it was fantastic to hear more about the specific GEM I4 partnership with NSF I-Corps to provide support to Fellows interested in technology commercialization and entrepreneurship. We look forward to reporting success stories at our next Showcase…stay tuned!

Finally, one of the most thoughtful responses yesterday came from Trevor McQueen, co-founder of Neptune Fluid Flow Systems. When asked if going through the National I-Corps program had changed the way he does science, he responded, “It hasn’t changed how I do the science. It has changed what I do my science on. That’s the key difference–there’s lots of different things that the commercial industry cares about that if you focus on those and apply the scientific knowledge and training that you have, you can actually deliver a lot of value to customers, very quickly and help a lot of people.”

And that, is what it’s all about…using your STEM superpowers for good.

Learn more about Bay Area Node National teams here.

Applications for August I-Corps due today, more info here.

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