2018 IDEA Impact Report

IDEA: Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator IDEA: Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator

2018 Impact Impact Report Report 2018

2018 Impact Report IDEA: Northeastern IDEA: University’s Northeastern Venture University’s Accelerator Venture Accelerator

2018 Impact Report

03

Ecosystem

06

Our Team

09

Program and Funding

13

Our Ventures

15

Employment Impact

17

Partners and Supporters

25

Thank You

Our Entrepreneurship Ecosystem A network of student-led organizations that support entrepreneurship and venture creation at Northeastern.

From Scout’s design services, to product creation at Generate, and intellectual property protection from the IP Co-lab, our ecosystem is interdisciplinary and offers ventures a breadth of resources.

What Makes Us Unique We are student led.

Failure is part of the process.

We are industry agnostic.

We are not just for students.

Bridging the gap.

5

The IDEA management team is led by Northeastern undergraduate students passionate about helping ventures succeed and growing the IDEA program to reach its full potential.

Our program supports testing and iterating that’s necessary for an early-stage concept to develop.

IDEA ventures tackle big problems in every industry through the guidance and experience of our Entrepeneur In Residence, coaches, and mentors.

We welcome all Northeastern founders including undergraduates, Master’s students, PhD students, alumni, faculty, and staff.

IDEA Gap Funding is an educational grant for talented young entrepreneurs to help them build their businesses.

Letter from the CEO IDEA provides Northeastern students, alumni, faculty, and staff with support, mentoring, resources, in-kind services, and educational grants to help take their ideas from concept to launch. IDEA is not only an incredible resource for entrepreneurs in the Northeastern community, but it is also a place for young leaders to manage and grow an organization.

Over the past eight years, the program has flourished under its student leadership to support a rapidly growing community of ventures.

We have accomplished a lot this year. From kicking off a new fund for software projects to launching the Invest Stage, the team has continued to push the bounds of what this organization can achieve. We have developed resources and programming, re-evaluated processes to improve the experience for ventures, and driven initiatives to expand our reach across Northeastern that can last for years to come.

Thank you for being part of this community. It is truly amazing, and we are constantly humbled by what Northeastern’s entrepreneurs can accomplish.

Best, Kate Murdock, Altschuler-Meyer CEO

6

Our Management Team IDEA provides a valuable educational experience for coaches and student management team members running the program.

28

current management team members

5

out of 7 colleges represented

Marketing & Events Marketing and Events work to to collaborate with organizations around and across Boston sharing the message of IDEA and developing valuable learning environments for ventures. The marketing team owns and develops all IDEA social media channels, content marketing and creative media.

7

Tech Tech works to ensure that IDEA information systems and databases are fully functional to serve the community.

Operations Operations manages the flow of ventures moving through the stage-gate process by connecting them to recourses on and off campus.

Investment Committee Investment Committee conducts due diligence on ventures that apply for Gap and Prototype funding in order to determine grant allocation.

8

IDEA Program IDEA’s stage-gate process accelerates the development of ventures by providing relevant educational and business resources as they advance through each stage.

READY

SET

GO

Value proposition development

Business model creation, including revenue models

Execution on business milestones

Formation of go-tomarket strategy

Building, growing, scaling

Target market analysis Customer interviews Solution design

9

52

launched ventures

LAUNCH INVEST Prepare ventures raise to raise external capital through mentorship and education

Ventures are considered launched when they are self-sustaining, enter another accelerator program, or raise over 200k in external funding

The stage-gate process helped me take corrective action in many areas. With the guidance of IDEA and my coach, Johnny Fayad, I was able to get feedback from advisors, address the problems with my business model, and narrow down my company’s product offerings. Most importantly, I’ve learned how to grow the business in a more orderly and granular way as opposed to just fielding every opportunity that came before me.

Tonya Johnson, Ancient Bakers

10

Funding Impact IDEA provides venture funding to support the development and growth of early stage ventures. Applications for funding are reviewed by the student investment committee and awarded by the IDEA gap funding board.

49%

of ventures who received

gap funding

went on to raise

external funding.

GAP FUND PROTOTYPE

$10,000 non-equity grant through IDEA

$1,000 non-equity grant for MVP

11

$58K

$1.2M

EXTERNAL FUNDING Venture capital & Angel investment

IDEA has been a great resource for keeping Noble in check as we grow. We are always excited to get in the room with the team to challenge us on the choices we make for the business. We consider this support an advantage as we navigate the complexities of fundraising.

Drew Pomerleau, Noble

$86.6M

12

Our Ventures The logos below represent just some of the ventures that are currently in our program or have launched.

13

As a faculty member, it was helpful to have support from the school, especially with resources, advice and office space.

The support helped us get on our feet as a venture. IDEA offers a wonderful support structure for early-stage ventures that typically lack resources.

Karthik Krishnan, Mentorworks

40%

42% Alumni

Venture Breakdown

2%

Faculty

Undergraduate students

16%

Graduate students

14

Employment Impact Whether you are a current founder in the IDEA program looking to co-op for yourself or a member of one of Mosaic’s management teams looking at post-grad careers, there are a wealth of opportunities. Our ventures and their founders understand the importance of experiential learning and continue to stay connected.

I found my passion for entrepreneurship, product development, and organizational management, and my experience inspired me - a finance major and computer science minor - to pursue a career in software development as late as my senior year of college despite what felt like an immense academic and professional disadvantage. I ultimately found Mavrck, a growing influencer marketing company spun out of IDEA, whose leadership hired me specifically because of our shared connection to Northeastern and Mosaic - because of what my high-level involvement in Northeastern’s Entrepreneurial environment told them about me. I earned a full-time contract before the end of my fourth month, and I am now a full-stack software engineer on Mavrck’s Product & Engineering team.

Ian McLarney, Software Engineer at Mavrck

15

Our first pilot was very disruptive. While working on PartRunner full-time through the Sherman Center between co-op, I was able to put in 8-9 hour workdays fully running the service and becoming an expert in the HVAC industry.

Yoshua Rozen, PartRunner

33 students

have done a co-op for their own venture

16

Our Coaches The IDEA coaching team is made up of young alumni, undergraduate, and graduate students who love startups. They work one-on-one with ventures to guide them through the stage-gate process and connect them with resources.

When I graduated, there was never a question of when or how I was going to re-engage as an alum. It was always IDEA. The program provides the perfect platform for young alumni to engage and stay plugged into what’s happening in Northeastern’s entrepreneurial community.

It’s also a great way to bring our developing expertise and perspective back to campus to hopefully better prepare students for the entrepreneurial journey.

Ben Bungert, Coach

17

We’re a team of engineers, so it’s been really helpful having a coach who is more skilled with sales and marketing. Joydeep has helped not only for what we want to learn as individual entrepreneurs, but also to fill in a knowledge gap that we’ve had with Unsize.

Katie Wilhoit, Unsize

I learn from Unsize, and they learn from me. It’s fun because every day it’s a new challenge.

Joydeep Singh, Coach

18

Entrepreneur in Residence Our entrepreneur in residence, Bob Lentz, provides personalized and tailored strategy planning sessions to ventures in all stages of IDEA. He is responsible for our network of investors and has extensive experience in the areas of technology & software and biotech & life sciences, respectively.

Bob has been a great mentor to our startup.

He really opened our minds to thinking beyond our initial market and pushed us to think about distribution channels we had not thought about before. As a result, we started to have early conversations with other potential distributors and customers, and that has prompted us to further enhance our current product.

19

Jack Yao, MobilePixels

Our Mentors I pitched ReeLock to the Venture Mentoring Network when I was at a standstill and didn’t know what to do. They were so helpful in giving me the knowledge and connections that helped propel my venture further. One of my mentors was able to get me a meeting with a bike-share company and I learned so much from them. Their guidance helped me make sure that ReeLock was on target for where the market was going.

Madison Rifkin, ReeLock

20

Our Partners We appreciate the support from our network of generous service providers who offer in-kind services in the areas of legal, PR, finance, IT, and others.

21

22

Our Advisory Board 2018

23

Advisory Board

Faculty and Staff

Robin Devereux—Chair of the Board Deb Boedicker Jim Bourdon Rich Corley Neel Desai Jeff Dolce Tom Durkin Raj Echambadi Gene Fay Max Kaye Nicholas Lento Roy Liu Alan Mateo Dan McCarthy Annika Morgan Krish Nangegadda George Overholser Dennis Shaughnessy Chris Wolfel

Northeastern University Center for Entrepreneurship Education: Esther Chewning Greg Dalle-Molle Dan Gregory, Co-Director Katie Hemphill Bob Lentz Michael Marafitte Marc Meyer, Co-Director Kevin Scanlon

The students of IDEA are an impassioned, dedicated, talented, hard working group of leaders committed to supporting Northeastern Entrepreneurs. The experience they gain working with IDEA is invaluable and prepares them to be successful entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future.

Robin Devereux, Chair of the Advisory Board

24

Thank You 2017-2018 Management Team CEO

Marketing, Events, Design

Kate Murdock

Natalie Duerr Stef Durcan Hugh Flood Connor Gross Cara Jennings Lauren Kourafas Anthar Nieto Carly Rudiger Laura Shrago Sarah Sienkiewicz Libby Vaughan Margot Vincent

Investment Committee Giovanni Armonies-Assalone Abhishek Balakrishnan Kaustubh Bansal Thomas Cerier Keith Corso Carlos Fuentes Robert Hartman Tyler Mangini Joanna Moore Katie Mulligan Nicholas Parente Carly Rudiger Rebecca Salzman Jordan Vallinino

Operations Vidhan Bhaiya Kyle Dolce Emalie Hermans

25

Technology Camden Phalen Drew Pomerleau Guillermo Saracco Julian Zucker

Rotational Wesley Jiang Vasuki Kaushik Nabeel Sherazi

26

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