Category: NSF Bay Area I-Corps News

The first University of California, Berkeley AccelerateHer @ Berkeley (AxH) is a wrap!

The program consisted of two Startup Weekends last Fall for 20 teams with at least one team member identifying as Female. Three teams (Revision, Bubble & Goodi, pictured) were selected for a semester long program of mentoring.

On Saturday, teams presented their final projects to an expert judging panel including Berkeley recent alum founders Chinmay Malaviya & Amy Fan.

All teams will receive fast tracking into the monthly National Science Foundation (NSF) #ICorps course. Revision will participate in the Skydeck hot desk program.

Thanks to the executive leadership team, especially Rajavi Mishra & Julia Liu. Gratitude also to program sponsors NSF #ICorps and Blackstone Launchpad powered by Techstars

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April NSF I-Corps wrapped this week with stellar teams from UC Berkeley, Stanford, Stanford GSB, Carnegie Mellon and Berkeley Labs.

Appropriately for the week of Earth Day, multiple teams focused on sustainability and environmental impact mitigation solutions. Mars Materials (pictured) conducted customer discovery for their solution converting methane into high value products. Verne explored usage of their hydrogen storage technology for large ships to reduce stress on oceans.

Refibered, after getting out of the building and talking with ecosystem players, did a radical pivot from an AI-based solution for managing unused textiles for reprocessing to a lower tech solution solving their potential customers’ “must have right now” problem. 

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One more example of the Bay Area STEM community joining forces to fight the pandemic. Great to see top teams for both Diagnostics & Ventilators helmed by #FemaleFounders who are *both* NSF I-Corps National alums!

Tara DeBoer, founder of BioAmp Diagnostics (UC Berkeley) & Winnie Liang, co-founder of Neptune Fluid Flow Systems (Stanford) led the winning teams for Best COVID-19 Diagnostic Design & Best Ventilator Design, respectively.  

Read more about the hackathon here and find out how NSF I-Corps can prepare you for when it matters most. https://bit.ly/2Xmj3Ke

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Industry Mentors (IM) are the backbone of the National I-Corps program.  They volunteer their time as an extension of the teaching team, going through kickoff/closing and weekly online sessions. Their guidance and support is invaluable in getting teams over the finish line with insights derived from 100+ interviews.

Cathy Farmer is one of our selfless superstars–she just finished IM-ing for two Stanford-based/Bay Area Node sponsored teams in the Winter cohort.  Over the past two years, she has IMed for a total of four National teams.

Cathy has been in software development and technology for over 25 years, mostly focusing on HealthIT with both Kaiser Permanente, her own ventures and those she invests in.  Her contact network is second only to her generosity in mentoring both NSF I-Corps teams as well as teams over multiple years in UC’s LAUNCH Accelerator.

Here most recent mentees above are CanaryQ (simplified lab sample processing) and Cortexxus (empowering people living with epilepsy).

Thanks, Cathy for all you do for our students and founders!

L-R: CanaryQ: Estevan Mendoza, Brenda Torres; Cathy Farmer; Cortexxus: David Ribeiro Alves, Ana Margarida Alves (photo courtesy of Cathy Farmer)

 

 

 

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This #FemaleFounderFriday we celebrate recent Berkeley Haas MBA/MPH grad Amy Fan, co-founder of Twentyeight Health. 

Now located in Brooklyn, Amy et al. wrapped pre-seed fundraising last Fall and is starting StartX now. 

They’re growing like gangbusters and helping women across the country get their birth control in three easy steps.

Amy did our one week Lean Startup program last year.  What can three evenings and 15 customer discovery interviews do for your idea or startup? Apply here for our upcoming April 13 course and find out–deadline is today.

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“We were trying to do too many things, for too many people.”

“NSF I-Corps taught us to look through the lens of real people to see what they actually care about–we now know how to quantify that.”

Startup teams from UC Berkeley, Haas EMBA & EWMBA, UCSF, University of Alaska & Stanford did 15 interviews each and made tremendous progress on ventures from microgrid management to precision medicine to grid monitoring for wildfires.

What can our 1 week, 3 evening course do for you? Find out–apply by 3/27 for our 4/13 cohort. https://bit.ly/3assD1r

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UC LAUNCH ’18 standout & National NSF I-Corps team Cruz Foam announced their seed round, as well as a $225k Phase I SBIR grant.

Hailing from UCSC, the team creates a biofoam from shrimp shell waste. The original idea was to replace the material inside surf boards, but through our one week NSF I-Corps course and UC LAUNCH accelerator, they quickly discovered a bigger market with a more urgent need–packaging.

Read more on their journey here and apply for our April I-Corps program here by 3/27.

 

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January wrapped with 10 teams from across UC Berkeley and UCSF, all completing at least 15 customer discovery interviews.

UCSF Startup Marketplace team, WYZ is a group of MBA-MPH students working with a UCSF researcher on a digital tool for teens with HIV.

WYZ (pictured here with their ecosystem diagram), completed 15 customer discovery interviews during the week and learned that their ecosystem is much more complicated than they had expected.

Another team that gained significant insights quickly, is ROBIN–a group of M.Eng students working on a tool to separate recycling. After their 15 interviews, they discovered that real, underlying problem experienced by potential customers is very different from what they initially hypothesized.

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In the Fall of 2018, electric scooters faced a scale-limiting problem–charging.  Three first year Berkeley Haas MBA students took their idea through our one week NSF I-Corps course.  Instead of receiving an easy “thumbs up”, they were shocked and discouraged by what they heard from customers.

They applied the lessons learned in I-Corps to pivot and get closer to product-market fit.

Read more about where they landed here and watch the video here.

 

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