Startup UCLA participants talk about what it's like to participate in a college accelerator

by John Siegel
September 9, 2016

Startup UCLA, an on-campus accelerator program dedicated to fostering current and former students' entrepreneurial ventures, celebrated its fifth demo day last night. As more colleges around the country begin to offer similar programs, we were curious as to just what exactly students were getting out of the programs. So, we caught up with some recent grands and asked them about their experiences.

Here's what they had to say: 

 

Nopical 

Nopical leverages abbreviated story detail and eye-catching visuals, and ranks each story on the page based on user shares. According to founder Alex Gostomelsky, Nopical is the "Pinterest of News." 

What has Startup UCLA been like for your startup? Awesome. This is the first period of time I have been able to work on Nopical full-time, and doing it alongside eight other innovative startups with passionate founders and paired with the great mentorship and programming from Startup UCLA really pushed Nopical's team its max potential.

How important is it for colleges to offer startup preaccelerators and accelerators moving forward? It's essential. Launching a startup while in school is an ideal opportunity because it is a safe environment! If you fail, you have hedged your bets with the degree, and you have learned more than you ever could in the classroom. 

What advice would you give to college students looking to start a company? Get after it! Do exhaustive research on your idea, the market and the viability. Diligently prepare how you will accomplish your immediate goals. Only thing left to do now is execute.  

What's the most important lesson you learned in the program? Celebrate and share success. Collaboration is vital for any team, whether a startup or not, and when the team is putting in heavy hours, you need to give them a chance to unwind and stay grounded. 

What are the immediate plans for your startup? We launched a new product just a couple weeks ago and we are now primed to scale and grow engagement. With the election coming up, there isn't a better time to launch Nopical and we will use that growth and momentum to seek funding in Q1 2017.

 

Movementum

Movementum is working on a wearable device and companion iOS app that motivates patients to perform exercise and enables them to track the progress of at-home physical therapy. The team consists of, Liz Mazmanian, works on business development, Priscilla Cheng, who handles hardware and firmware and Stephen Link, who is the iOS developer. According to Mazmanian, the program has been a vital exercise in team building.

What has Startup UCLA been like for your startup? Startup UCLA has been a great experience. It gave us a workspace to build our product and connected with a network of mentors and advisors who could help guide us as we started to build our product. 

How important is it for colleges to offer startup preaccelerators and accelerators moving forward? We think it's extremely important for colleges to offer pre-accelerators and accelerators to provide a space where students and recent graduates can learn how to navigate the startup world before applying to other accelerators or receiving funding at the cost of equity in their company. 

What advice would you give to college students looking to start a company? I think the best thing that Priscilla and I did before starting Movementum was reading and learning as much as we could about the work that goes into creating a product people want, even at the early prototyping stage. 

What's the most important lesson you learned in the program? The most important lesson Priscilla and I learned at Startup UCLA was to reach out for help and guidance when necessary.  Neither of us have a focus in Physical Therapy so we reached out for help from physical therapists and were able to meet some incredible people willing to work with us as our advisors. 

What are the immediate plans for your startup? The immediate plans for our startup is to start giving out our prototype to physical therapists to test on patients and make adjustments to our product based on the feedback we receive. 

 

Formal Sheep

Formal Sheep is an independent game development company which, according to Founder Gary Chao, aims to create thought-provoking, surreal and fun experiences. Its debut game, The Rabbit and the Owl, is currently under development and is tentatively set to release in 2017 on Steam for PC and Mac.

What has Startup UCLA been like for your startup? Startup UCLA has been amazing. I've been working from home for a while now so coming here was a great change of pace with other highly-motivated and inspiring teams and a supportive aura. There are also a ton of interesting individuals from varying backgrounds who come in and talk about their experiences. Hearing about their paths and their lessons learned is invaluable food for thought.

How important is it for colleges to offer startup preaccelerators and accelerators moving forward? I would say it's the most important thing for colleges to offer. You'll hear this from many people: you don't go to college just to take classes. You go there to meet people and get exposed to different ideas and opportunities. Entrepreneurship was something I'd never considered before, and is easily one of the most important takeaways I got from college. You get really excited to do something cool, but where do you start? Almost everyone is a poor college student. Having a network to help you learn and grow is necessary for any budding startup.

What advice would you give to college students looking to start a company? Make sure you have a well-rounded team, but also be prepared to wear many hats, even if it means doing something you're not comfortable with. Be consistent with the work, always communicate with each other and be completely transparent with each other. It all starts with the team dynamic and if it isn't strong, it's not going to work.

What's the most important lesson you learned in the program? How to make a good pitch. The program really emphasizes everything from slides to content and how to cut things down. For any early company, you'll want this down.

What are the immediate plans for your startup? We're bootstrapping our game company, so we're doing a Kickstarter in the month of September to give us enough runway to finish the game over the next half year. After that, it's just finish up our game and release!

 

Arkaive Inc.

Arkaive Inc. is an education technology startup that provides management resources for student-athletes, students, instructors, and administrators in higher education. According to Co-Founder Yoomi Chin, the program has helped her startup grow a network of resources immensely.

What has Startup UCLA been like for your startup? "As a startup, one of the biggest challenges we face is finding the right resources and opportunities to scale. Working with Startup UCLA’s Summer Accelerator, which has been very supportive of what we build, has been a rewarding experience. We have been provided with access to many useful resources and networking opportunities. It is great knowing that there are campus programs like this one that help startups like ours."

How important is it for colleges to offer startup preaccelerators and accelerators moving forward? "Having colleges provide startup preaccelerators and accelerators is crucial. Programs such as these provide their students with a stimulating environment and the resources necessary to really dive deeper into their ideas and grow them. Through the experiential education provided, prospective entrepreneurs are able to turn an idea into a reality."

What advice would you give to college students looking to start a company? Our advice for college students looking to start a company is to take the risk. Find the right mentors and resources to make your company a success. If that does not work out, there were still valuable lessons learned throughout the process that make the experience valuable.

What's the most important lesson you learned in the program? Being a part of the Startup UCLA Summer Accelerator program, we have learned many valuable and important lessons. The most important has been the value of networking. The program has brought in many speakers and mentors that have helped our business in one way or another.

What are the immediate plans for your startup? Our immediate plans are to continue to focus on expansion and gaining more traction. We are also seeking funding which we plan to use to help attain these goals.

 

Images via Facebook.
 
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