On August 9th 2016, Princeton University’s Keller Center held eLab Demo Day 2016. The event marking the end of the University’s eLab Summer Accelerator Program was held on the university’s campus in Princeton, New Jersey. The summer program runs ten weeks and provides “enrichment opportunities” for student entrepreneurs with startup ideas, as described by the Keller Center Executive Director Cornelia Huellstrunk.
Once in the program students receive housing and a stipend, while participating in a formal curriculum that was developed specifically for the eLab. Complementing the curriculum are workshops and mentoring by highly accomplished business executives and entrepreneurs.
“We’ve learned a lot. We’ve pivoted a lot. But we also have stayed true to our founding principle which is that the eLab Accelerator has an educational mission,” stated Huellstrunk in her opening remarks at eLab Demo Day.
The culminating Demo Day serves the teams of student entrepreneurs by giving their startups broad exposure to fellow peer teams, past graduates of eLab, university faculty and staff, and the invited public that includes entrepreneurs, innovators and investors.
The team presentations featured a 2-minute promo video, an 8-minute pitch, and 5 minutes of Q&A with a feedback panel comprised of: Matt Barbieri, Partner at Wiss & Company LLP, Dina Brewer, Managing Partner at Princeton Law Partners, Kef Kasdin, Keller Center’s Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Ryan Silva, Partner at Wiss & Company. Demo stations following the presentations allowed students to meet directly with attendees.
The eight presenting eLab teams are:
Ads on Top: A real time bid platform for out of home advertising
Cartful: A fashion industry discovery engine
Hackerpack LLC: An ultimate web-based open-source toolkit promoting diversity in the technology space
Hubble: A social app that connects friends on college campuses based on their locations
Robolution: A robotics company creating an automated cooking system
SignSchool: A user friendly on line service to learn American Sign Language
Thrive+: An anti-dote to alcohol that diminishes productivity
Ultrasonyx: Developing next-generation medical imaging techniques
“This year’s cohort follows the footsteps of a lot of impressive eLab alumni,” Huellstrunk said.
Reflecting back on the teams of the past five years Huellstrunk noted successes such as: a first year eLab team that founded a company to connect employees with employers in the public works sector in the developing world that is now based in Kenya, an eLab participant whose team created an online photo platform and now has a startup providing software for body cameras, and an eLab graduate who built a platform for inner city youths to receive awards for the academic pursuits that has grown to a half million participating students.
“All of these teams that I have just talked about have received funding. They all have gone on to win prestigious awards,” Huellstrunk said, mentioning just a few of the twenty five teams that have gone through the Accelerator since its founding five years ago.
“I can’t stop being amazed by what the teams actually work on and how they make sense of this crazy wonderful world we live in,” Huellstrunk declared.
