There’s no shortage of students at CUNY, but only a handful of teams make it into the CUNY incubator, aka, the CUNY Center for Student Entrepreneurship. You know they’re driven, as it’s a big commitment: as if starting a business isn’t enough work, student must also attend bi-weekly meetings, phase deliverables, and meet with their designated mentor throughout the five months of the incubator.
Then there are office hours provided by Y Combinator and the meetings with CUNY faculty and entrepreneurs; corporate sponsors/ supporters and their employees and experts in variousfields; potential customers and investors.
All, while launching a new company.
It’s a lot, but from what we’ve seen and heard, all of that hard work has paid off. Here’s your sneak peek at the 5 startups from the CUNY Center for Student Entrepreneurship that are going to blow you away June 2nd on their Demo Day, and for the record, the entrepreneurs gave the program – and the mentors – high marks, too!
Image credit: CC by Official GDC
AMBER BLUE
Amber Blue is skincare, pure and simple. Literally. It’s flowers-based, but Amber Blue isn’t your garden-variety, environmentally friendly skincare company. First of all, it’s a luxury brand, and all of the flowers and herbs are not only grown using biodynamic farming – a method that has been practiced in France since the 1920s: they all come straight from the organic home garden of cofounders (and mother/daughter team) Jennifer Burney (a master herbalist and aromatherapist) and Tara Atwood (daughter, CUNY student and the company’s President).
“When we sell out, we sell out,” said Atwood.
And they do, which is one of the reasons why Atwood participated in the CUNY program: she doesn’t intend to keep the company a cottage industry.
The luxury brand, whose line currently includes high-quality luxury skincare products, is already carried in 10 different stores around the country, and there’s more to come.
First launched in 2012, they’re planning a relaunch later this summer, and thanks to her mentors, Joseph Messina,a 50 year veteran of the cosmetics industry, (Revlon & Estée Lauder) and Stan Kohlenberg, Founder and President of Calvin Klein Cosmetics, expansion is in the works, and the company has the opportunity to work with a manufacturing plant to increase production and expand their line – without compromising their farm-to-face ethos.
“People are looking for that quality and that luxury feel,” said Atwood. “Ours is created from scratch- and all we have is growth.”
OLIO
Olio founders David Kurfirst and Chris Zumtobel met in class, and were so moved by the professor’s passion that they built a crowd learning platform that connects passionate teachers with life-long learners (aka passionate knowledge seekers) who meet up in unique venues.
Think the Learning Annex in the Age of Online, and ‘classes’ certainly aren’t run-of-the-mill.
For example, upcoming Olios include Drugs and Religious Experience: Shortcut or Necessity? (being held at a Bushwick rooftop) and Pitching to an Editor. Classes are reasonable (usually about $20) and so far, have drawn anywhere from seven to 35 students. Teachers set the prices, and there’s a revenue split between the teacher, Olio and the venue.
The team also won first place in the NYS Business Plan competition (tech category).
“We’re mission-based,” said Kurfirst. “We want to change the way people view an evening in New York City. At least a couple of hours of it.”
People also seem to be hungry for in-person learning, he added, and meeting new people in venues they might not have otherwise known about.
It’s also exposing New Yorkers (for starters) to new interests, new venues – and the calendar is filling up!
CHAMPOLU
Champolu is an online language-learning platform and founders Despina Malliaroudakis and Hussein Ghaly are both linguists who speak at least a handful of languages between them, so when it comes to language learning, they know of what they speak – literally, and in multiple languages.
In fact, Malliaroudakis has a BA in linguistics from Queens College and an MA in linguistics from CUNY Graduate Center. And she’s a Macaulay graduate.
Champolu gamifies the language-learning process, but differently and making it both fun and effective by using minimal pairs, a linguistic method widely used in phonology for years.
When you play Champolu, there’s no need to memorize grammar points and vocabulary over and over, which – let’s face it – is no fun at all. Instead, you learn pairs of sentences. Here’s how it works: Say you have two sentences in English and their equivalents in Egyptian Arabic:
I am eating chicken = ba akol feraakh
I am eating pasta = ba akol makaronah
From just a single minimal pair, you learn the sentence construct – and different words. As you continue playing, you continuously learn more vocabulary and grammar naturally and intuitively, without the repetitive effort of rote memorization.
Champolu launched beta about a month ago – and jumped from 5-25 visits to 700 in the past month. Besides the website, Champolu is available on Google Play and they’re working on a version for the Apple store (“everyone’s been asking for it,” said Malliaroudakis).They’re also adding analytics,to track the results of the patterns – did players get it right and how long did it take them to solve?
Greek, French and Arabic are currently available, and the team will be releasing another version soon, scaling to 10-12 languages – and scaling in the language complexities, too. Oh, they also went to native speakers to help with the languages themselves, and it does make a difference. For example, a native Parisian would say, ‘chat sur table,’ rather than ‘le chat est sur la table.’ (Did you know that native Parisians refer to their home town as Panam?)
“Instead of Candy Crush, learn a language, and use your time better!” Malliaroudakis suggested.
Translation: yes, learning a language with Champolu actually can be that much fun.
EXAMBLER
Exambler is an online exam management platform that allows teachers and professors to create, grade, and report standardized exams, and before you say, ‘yes, and…’ keep in mind that students cheat. In fact, that’s what helped to inspire the company in the first place.
Founder Eli Attias’s younger brother was taking the AP exams and their dad promised him an Xbox if he did well. Problem was, everyone else in the class was cheating. He eventually did get an Xbox – and inspired brother Eli to create an exam management tool that allows teacher to create, grade and report individualized standardized exams – without having to create them from scratch to curb cheating. Here’s how it works: the differentiator is that Exambler can generate a unique exam for each student, thus cutting down on cheating (won’t help to copy from your neighbor’s exam) then, using a webcam or camera, educators take a snapshot of the exam and grade it on the spot. Added bonus: educators know how each student did on the exam and can collect more information on students in order to generate better questions – or see what materials need to more explanation. Ergo, they can create better lesson content to help improve student comprehension. For example, if there’s a question on the exam and all but five students got it wrong, it just might be that the original lesson content that needs improvement.
Test results can also be texted to students’ phones, and welcome to the 21st Century.
Standardized exams are a $3B industry, and cheating is a widespread problem, which may explain why four charter schools have signed on to use Exambler – with three more in the pipeline.
“Being affiliated with the university is the best decision I ever made,” said Attias about the entrepreneurs program at Baruch. He has also been approached by Queens College to do pilot this summer.
A+!
DIVA DESIGNERS
Diva Designers is a monthly subscription service for girls ages 6-12 who like sewing, crafting and designing – or who want to learn. And no sewing machine necessary.
Let’s face it: sewing isn’t taught in schools any longer and it is a skill – and a craft – that many girls want to learn. Boys, too – and they’re next on founder Jody-Ann Allen’s agenda.
Here’s how it works: Diva Designer is a 24-month curriculum divided into six levels, to take a child from beginner designer, sewing simple headbands and bags, to advanced designer, sewing lined dresses, jackets and more. There are written and video tutorials to teach the basic skills needed to complete each project. Kits include an assorted selection of fabrics and notions for kids to create one of a kind item, and the things they need to get the job done. All projects have both hand sewing instructions and machine sewing instructions.
Parents can sign up for monthly subscriptions, or purchase individual kits.
As for the founder, Allen is a lifelong sewing enthusiast, educator and maybe even student, to some degree. She founded Diva Designers in December 2014 while studying nursing, envisioning a product that could positively affect the development of young girls. She is also a former fashion industry professional, having worked as a seamstress and patternmaker’s assistant in New York City’s garment district.
Oh, she also has a degree in neuroscience from Oberlin College, too.
It looks like she may well have a hit on her hands. Moms love it – when Allen first launched the website, 50+ plus moms signed up for their daughters in under a week – and asked when there would be kits available for boys, too.
