Undergraduate Blog / Defining Your Babson

SF Summer Venture Showcase Recap!

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Our first ever Summer Venture Showcase in San Francisco was a huge success! Over 110 attendees gathered to watch 10 teams present their businesses at Mozilla.

Leading up to Showcase, the teams participated in a 10 week intensive Summer Venture Program designed to accelerate the development of entrepreneurial ventures. The program supports the most promising graduate, undergraduate, and alumni entrepreneurs from Babson College and they received advisors, co-working space, and speakers to develop their startups.

6L4B09551yBefore and after the presentation, the entrepreneurs had a table to display their businesses and interacted with investors and the local community. Two booths displayed above include Brown Bag (Ashwin Mysore M’14) which offers employees at large offices to meet, learn, and network with people over lunch and Scootybees (Carey Fan M’12) which provides safe, convenient, and reliable ride-sharing transportation for children’s before and after school activities.

To kickoff the evening, Lynn Santopietro, Director of Babson San Francisco, Debi Kleiman, Executive Director of the Blank Center, and IdaRose Sylvester, Director of the SF Summer Venture Program gave opening remarks and welcomed the audience. Then, the pitches began!

6L4B1821yThe startups were all diverse in nature, ranging from Kiwi International (Mike Corkrum ’15), a nutritionally fortified Gari, a West African staple food, to Grow (Mike DeMaria M’15) an automated investment service application focused exclusively on Socially Responsible Investing.

6L4B1239etShowcase was a culmination of the team’s hard work and they shared their milestones and accomplishments to the public. Phil Motto ’18 presented ModPost, a social hub for the automotive aftermarket, and Brendan Barbato ’17 introduced Shelfie, a platform that provides fundraising photo campaigns for nonprofits.

6L4B1821yzIt was evident that the teams built a lasting bond and friendship from working together all summer! They repeatedly acknowledged the support they received from each other, their advisors, and the staff. Pictured above is Gustavo Skoff Diaz ’17 of Let’s Go Hustle, startup education for tomorrow’s founders, and Jonathan Kong M’17 of DayPop, a mobile scheduling platform that personalizes how friends reconnect through events.

6L4B22121etEveryone was all smiles after the presentations including Sarath Chandran M’17 from Big Travel, a startup that connects student travelers to local experiences (other members include Dishank Kukreja M’17 and Dinesh Rajasekhar M’17), and Joe McHugh M’17 who finances renewable heating and cooling for homes and buildings with his company, Earth Loans.

6L4B1002 (x)We couldn’t be more proud of our innovators and entrepreneurs 🙂 ! Everyone brought their A game and our inaugural Summer Venture Showcase was truly a night to remember. A big thank you to Mary Gale, Faculty Director of Summer Venture Program, our Advisors Elliott Adams and Michelle Messina, and Babson’s Speech Center, who all worked tirelessly with our teams throughout the 10 weeks. Also, a special shout out to Mozilla for allowing us to host our event in their beautiful space by the pier.

Thank you to to everyone who attended Showcase and for supporting Babson’s entrepreneurs in San Francisco!