Columbia University just finished its first accelerator program, Almaworks, focused on NYC student entrepreneurs. A total of 10 companies were vetted and selected to receive mentorship from industry professionals including Mahbod Moghadam, Founder of Genius, Mattan Griffel, Founder of One Month, and Mike Brown, Jr. of Bowery Capital for the 8 week program. The program provides no funding for the startups but also takes no equity as the IP remains with the student entrepreneurs while they are able to leverage the resources of the Columbia entrepreneurial community to draw investment, validate their product/service, and refine their offering.
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE 10 COMPANIES THAT PRESENTED AT ALMAWORKS DEMO DAY
Draftpot
Founded by Joey Levy, Josh Hughers, and Jessica Vandebon, Draftpot is a twist on the daily fantasy sports market, revolutionized by DraftKings and FanDuel, by offering a no salary cap format. Even with recent legislative challenges, daily fantasy sports sites will collect $4B in entry fees in the US this year and this total will rise to $20B in 2017 according to estimates provided by DraftKings.
FINDMINE
Founded by Michelle Bacharach and Konstantin Itskov, FINDMINE is a SaaS platform for retailers that incorporates machine learning to sift through merchant’s catalogues to customize personalized looks for each individual shopper. The platform can be used to generate targeted combinations for display on websites, ads, emails, and even in stores.
Behold.ai
Founded by Peter Njenga and Jeet Raut, Behold.ai is a computer-vision software that allows for object recognition at scale. Concentrating on image classification, this deep learning startup is focusing on the healthcare vertical as a diagnostic application that will allow medical professionals to diagnose patients more quickly, accurately, and consistently through it’s image processing service for symptoms that are physically present.
Riley
Founded by Daniel Ahmadizadeh and Edward Li, Riley is a lead management platform for real estate professionals where they can receive opportunities that have been vetted at an preliminary level via SMS. AlleyWatch covered Riley a few month’s back and it seems as though the company has pivoted from its consumer-centric model.
TalentJungle
Founded by Hua Liao, Qicong Chen, Hongkai He, and Chiang Yang, TalentJungle is a peer-to-peer platform for knowledge sharing through workshops. Students are able to learn from each other at a fraction of the cost of traditional learning programs while the teachers can showcase their specific hobbies and skills and earn income. A quick perusing of the site shows that users have a breadth of options of skills they can pick through the platform such cooking Twice Cooked Pork, learning magic, mastering photography, and even planning date night.
Wheeli
Founded by Jean-Pierre Adechi, Steve Delor, and Alexandra Ayache, Wheeli is a sharing platform that allows college students to purchase rides on road trips. Dubbed “new age hitchhiking”, this is perfect for the upcoming holiday season with scores of students needing to get home in addition to casual weekend getaways.
Edu.chat
Founded by Sarth Desai, Jacob Lazurus, and Ross Kopelman, Edu.chat is a messaging app that is focused on academia. Messaging apps have been grown to be the social lifelines of hundreds of millions. It was just a matter of time before someone tried it for the campus crowd.
Swipes
Founded by Helson Taveras, Julio Henriquez, Amaan Khullar, Annie Zhang, and Kunal Kamath, Swipes is a service that allows meal sharing at universities among sutdents. How it is envisioned to work is that anyone with a meal plan can share a meal with anyone else at the university seamlessly; even someone who does not have a dining plan. Currently, it is being used throughout Columbia University. Individual meals in dining plans are often wasted and this venture seeks to alleviate student hunger by making it frictionless to give or receive a meal.
Visit.org
Founded by Michal Alter and Violaine Pierre, Visit.org is a travel-booking engine that allows you to experience distinct itineraries in 26 countries with a focus on “off-the-beaten” path tours and activities that have a non-profit and community-based focus. However, there is no service component. There are 130 different combinations that a user can choose from presently including aiding in the recovery of sea turtles in Greece and helping Bedouin women in Israel pursue financial independence via weaving.
