IDEA: Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator
2018 Impact Report
2018 Impact Report IDEA: Northeastern University’s Venture Accelerator
2019 Impact Report 2018 Impact Report
IDEA: Northeastern IDEA: University’s Northeastern Venture University’s Accelerator Venture Accelerator
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Ecosystem
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Our Team
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Program and Funding
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Our Ventures
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Employment Impact
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Our Coaches
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Entrepeneur In Residence
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Partners and Supporters
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Advisory Board
Our Entrepreneurship Ecosystem IDEA is part of Northeastern University’s premier entrepreneurial ecosystem, one that fosters the continuous creation and development of student and alumni led ventures. Mosaic, the university’s alliance of students, coaches, faculty and advisors, brings together a group of multidisciplinary organizations that together support ventures from their inception to their launch. From Scout’s design services to Generate’s prototype and product creation, this group of student leaders is always ready to offer a wide breadth of services to the local entrepreneurial community.
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Accounting + Finance + Tax
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What Makes IDEA Unique We are student-led.
We embrace failure as part of the process.
Our program supports testing and iterating, a process that is necessary for early-stage concepts to develop.
We are industry agnostic.
IDEA ventures tackle big problems in every industry with the help and guidance of our entrepreneur in residence, coaches, and mentors.
We welcome more than just students.
Our program is welcomes founders from anywhere in the Northeastern community. This includes undergraduates, Master’s and PhD students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
We help bridge the gap.
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The IDEA management team is made up of Northeastern undergraduate students that are passionate about helping ventures succeed and helping foster continued growth of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The IDEA Gap Fund is an educational grant for talented young entrepreneurs to help them continue to grow and build their businesses.
Letter from the CEO In my three years working with IDEA and the people in this community, I have had the sincere pleasure of witnessing the impact this program creates for our founders. Hundreds of businesses created, thousands of new friends made, millions of customers supporting these entrepreneurs with their purchases, and countless “aha” moments through which this impact comes to life. IDEA’s mission—to educate entrepreneurs and launch successful businesses—is deliberately twofold. We acknowledge that success comes in many forms, and that we learn new ways to support our community every day. Those who gain the confidence to speak about their worth are as successful as those who build household-name companies. Either way, we are teaching problem-solving and decision-making. We are teaching the value of listening before speaking, and of humility in failure. We are helping people realize the value of their experiences and their potential as builders and leaders. These successes have become the successes of the IDEA team and all those who have supported us through the years. This year is no different, and as I conclude my time at Northeastern I feel a bittersweet energy in leaving this community. The students, faculty, staff, and alumni have pushed us to unprecedented progress. We are providing more personalized support for an ever-increasing venture population. We are welcoming a more diverse group of team members and entrepreneurs than ever before. We are building a community built on mentorship and a tangible passion for the work we do. Still, there is much work to be done. As we approach a decade of life for the program, the future of IDEA is bright. I welcome you to join in our continued mission to support the Northeastern community in solving problems that matter. Thank you, Bailey Kane Altschuler-Meyer CEO
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Our Management Team IDEA is 100% student-led by a group of undergraduate students who make up the management team. Our team strives to offer a valuable educational experience for our ventures while bringing together varying educational backgrounds to help ventures succeed.
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out of 7 colleges represented
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current management team members
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
Chairwoman of the Board
IDEA Fun Fact During the 2018-2019 school year, the IDEA management team has represented over 15 countries!
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Marketing & Events This team is IDEA’s main public-facing entity. By supporting initiatives crafting and spreading IDEA’s message, engaging with the community on social networks and, writing thought-leadership articles for our external facing blog, this group has a hand in telling the world who we are and what we do. This team also creates and sponsors events that support the continued development of Northeastern’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. This includes putting on workshops, panels, conferences and showcases that give ventures in the program an opportunity to interact with potential customers, investors and future founders in Boston.
Community This team is responsible for creating and strengthening connections within IDEA’s core communities: the IDEA management team, ventures, coaches, university faculty and staff, and Boston’s external entrepreneurial community. By helping IDEA build lasting relationships with multiple groups, this team enhances the level of communication, access to resources and programming that we can offer our ventures and student partners.
Tech & IT The Tech team exists to ensure operational efficiency, data validity, and integrity within IDEA. By providing support across teams to identify issues and solve problems, this team helps IDEA become more efficient everyday with the help of technology driven solutions and programs. This team also helps deliver valuable data-driven insights that help the program become more valuable for ventures every single day!
Venture Supporting ventures and making entrepreneurship an accessible and understandable opportunity for the Northeastern community is the core mission of the Venture Team. This group is responsible for supporting entures through IDEA’s patented stage-gate process, which combines educational, monetary and community-based resources to bring ventures success as launched businesses.
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2018-2019 Program IDEA’s stage-gate process is designed to accelerate the development of ventures by providing relevant resources as they move through each stage. In addition to this, the IDEA process fosters mentorship throughout the various stages by assigning ventures coaches in an effort to both strengthen the community and build entrepreneurs that are passionate about building businesses.
SET READY Ventures in the Ready Stage focus on communication of what they do, who they do it for, and why they do it better than their competitors. The combination of three concepts is known as their company’s value proposition and is an important foundation for future marketing and sales activity. Developing a strong value proposition is an iterative process of customer interviews, market research, and brainstorming with IDEA coaches.
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With a clear idea of what product they’re selling and who they’re selling it to, ventures in the Set Stage think about how to sell their product. To do so, they strategize how their business will make money, what resources they’ll need to make it sustainable, and how they will reach their first customers. Together this creates a holistic view of how they’ll add value to their target market and is known as their company’s “business model” and “go-to-market strategy.” While tackling the details of each they have access to both Northeastern University’s Entrepreneur in Residence, as well as to a personal coach.
LAUNCHED To be Launched from our program, a venture has raised at least $200K in external funding, or is self-sustaining on their own revenue.
GO Ventures continue to iterate and execute on the plan they defined in Set Stage. To support them through this process they gain access to a dedicated network of mentors, monetary support for closing their earliest gaps in achieving productmarket fit, and a community of peers to learn from.
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launched ventures
OF THAT
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launched in 2018
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Funding Impact One of IDEA’s main sources of support for ventures is funding to help continue their development and growth as early-stage businesses. The Gap Fund, a non-equity grant is awarded to ventures looking to fill a close gap in their business and is just one of the ways in which we support ventures financially.
$58,203 Prototype Funding Awarded
$1,395,644 Gap Funding Awarded 136 Ventures Received funding 11
PROTOTYPE The prototype fund is awarded to individuals or ventures looking to fund early stage development and testing of their product. It is awarded every other month to any hardware or systems-level concept that can be prototyped.
GAP FUND IDEA’s gap fund is a non-equity grant awarded to ventures seeking to close a significant gap in their business’s development. It is awarded every other month pending an application and review process by IDEA’s investment committee and advisory board.
IDEA Fun Fact Our launched ventures have gone on to raise over $145 million in external funding.
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Our Ventures IDEA has over 275 ventures currently in the pipeline, and over 60 already launched. Our ventures cover a wide array of industries and products, from food and beverage to technology and software –we’ve seen it all! The logos below are just a sample of who we’ve worked with in the vast and innovative ecosystem that IDEA helps foster.
Everyday Speech is a social learning platform that educators use to teach social skills to their students who may not pick them up naturally.
Esportudo is a data-driven media company that focuses on personalization to increase user engagement and retention.
Holobiome is a private biotechnology company developing microbiome-based therapeutics for diseases of the central and enteric nervous systems.
Idyoma is changing how people learn languages, by creating an environment by making it social where you can meet local language learners.
Mobile Pixels helps mobile laptop users increase their productivity by providing a secondary monitor while on-the-go.
Noble is a mobile app that eliminates point-of-sale interactions that account for 50% of a bartender’s workflow during busy periods.
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42%
40%
Alumni
Venture Founders Demographics
2%
Faculty
Undergraduate students
16%
Graduate students
LinkSquares is a web application for legal teams to better track and manage contracts.
ScholarJet is an online, skills-based competitions for undergrad students to get hired for internships and full-time jobs, while earning money for school or student loan debt
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Employment Impact Many founders go on to co-op for their own businesses, providing employment opportunities for members of Mosaic management teams and other students along the way.
40 students
have done a co-op for their own venture
Mavrck has always been grateful for its initial Gap funding from IDEA and support from Northeastern. Today, we have over 50 team members in Boston, 15 in our Denver office and a few more in Chicago and New York. Every year we have been able to employ Northeastern Interns/Co-ops across teams such as Engineering, Product, Marketing and Operations and will continue to do so because of our confidence in the talent and dedication from fellow Huskies! Sean Naegeli, Co-Founder & Chief Influencer Officer of Mavrck
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The IDEA Program has been by far my biggest learning experience here at Northeastern. The mentors, management team and the phenomenal resources have been instrumental in getting my venture, Dr. Brinsley, to a point where I’ve been able to launch in India and work on it for my co-op! Vidhan Bhaiya, Founder of Dr. Brinsley, Go Stage Venture
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Our Coaches The IDEA coaching team is made up of young alumni as well as undergraduate and graduate students passionate about startups. Coaches work one-on-one with ventures, guiding them through the stage-gate process, connecting them with relevant resources and providing valuable insights as needed.
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Actives Coaches
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I like when you help ventures get to that “ah-ah!” moment especially when they’ve been really struggling with something, and you kind’of just brainstorm with them, throw things out on the white board, think about different ways they can reach their customers or how they can structure their revenue model to make their idea feasible. It’s really rewarding when you get those moments and are able to help shape the direction in which the company goes in its very early stage. Blake Billiet, Set stage coach
IDEA Fun Fact Over 200 coaching sessions were provided in 2018. 18
Entrepreneur in Residence Our entrepreneur in residence, Bob Lentz, provides personalized and tailored strategy planning sessions to ventures in the Set and Go 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.
The Center for Entrepreneurship Education is a university-wide resource that integrates entrepreneurship and innovation courses, entrepreneurial co-ops in early stage companies, venture incubation through our oncampus IDEA program, and venture funding and launch by helping our entrepreneurs network into the local angel and VC community. 19
Our Mentors The McCarthy(s) Venture Mentoring Network is a university wide resource available to all Northeastern student, faculty, and alumni ventures. The goal of the VMN is to pair Northeastern entrepreneurs with high-quality, experienced mentors that can help address business challenges and make our ventures more successful. Once a venture reaches the final stage of IDEA, they get paired with industry-specific mentors to execute on business model milestones and go-to-market strategy.
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Our Partners We appreciate the support from our network of generous sService Providers who donate in-kind services in the areas of legal, PR, finance, IT, and more.
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Our Advisory Board 2019 Advisory Board Robin Devereux–Chair of the Board Alan Mateo Bob Lentz Chris Wolfel Dan Gregory Dan McCarthy Dennis Shaughnessy Gene Fay George Overholser Jeff Dolce Jim Bourdon Kate Murdock Krish Nangegadda Marc Meyer Neel Desai Raj Echambadi Rich Corley Ron Caplan Roy Liu Samuel Altschuler Tom Durkin
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Faculty & Staff
Northeastern University Center for Entrepreneurship Education: Bob Lentz Dan Gregory Esther Chewning Greg Dalle-Molle Greg Collier Gwen Corner Katie Hemphill Kevin Scanlon Marc Meyer Michael Marafitte Stephen Golden
Thank You! We would like to thank everyone that was involved with making IDEA the successful organization it is today. The 2018-2019 school year would not have been as triumphant had it not been for the continued and unrelenting support from our advisory board, support staff, faculty, and donors that, year after year, help push our mission of educating entrepreneurs forward. As a team, we thrive on the unyielding support of those who believe in the program as much as we do. As we enter a new school year full of new perspectives for success, we look forward to continue working with each and every one of you. To anyone and everyone that helped bring this program to life: thank you. It is because of you that we have been able to continuously help entrepreneurs bring their business ideas from inception to launch, many of which have continued growing exponentially throughout the years. In the next ten years, we look forward to seeing IDEA as even more of a renowned and prestigious entrepreneurial resource for all those associated with Northeastern University. IDEA’s future is bright, there is much to do still, and it is up to all of us – our support staff, advisory board, donors, and management team – to propel it forward. From its very beginning, IDEA has benefitted from the guidance and deep commitment of Dan Gregory, our founding faculty advisor. With his retirement from IDEA and Northeastern University this year, we lose an advocate, a leader, and a friend. We are excited to see what new passions he pours himself into in his next stage of life. Thank you, we couldn’t have done it without you. The IDEA Management Team, 2018-2019
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Management Team 2018-2019 Team Altschuler-Meyer CEO Bailey Kane Marketing & Events Anthar Nieto Cassidy Destefano Danielle Vandre Jake Willis Lauren Kourafas Maeve Martin Margot Vincent Maria Lisac-Ramirez Marisa Dell’Anno Prisca Joseph Yara Darouni Community Abhishek Balakrishnan Caroline Ingram Duncan Legget Jaime Gonora Jordan Lin Kasia Kumor Katie Mulligan Nabeel Sherazi Nick Parente 25
Venture Ameya Bhat Austin The Connor Gross Darragh O’Gorman Emalie Hermans Giovanni Armonies-Assalone Jason Mclarney Joanna Moore Kyle Dolce Lucas Walsh Matty McLaughlin Maya Gandhi Paola Darbouze Paula Quintana Garcia Rob Hartman Ryan Clark Stef Durcan Tyler Fohrman Vikram Pathalam Tech Kaila Fleisig Wesley Jiang
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northeastern.edu/idea @IDEAneu 27