Tuesday, June 8, 2010

Babson College picks 15 teams for summer venture program

By Lynette F. Cornell

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Fifteen teams of Babson College students and recent alums are spending ten intensive weeks of their summer vacation taking part in Babson’s Summer Venture Program to strategize, shape and accelerate their entrepreneurial businesses. Eighty-one teams applied to the program.

The program’s organizer, the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at Babson, is providing open work space for the teams to develop their business projects, network, assist one another and share resources. Many of the students live in Babson dorms so they can work around the clock to refine their ventures.
  
On Mondays, the teams share ideas and solve the week’s business challenge. Every Tuesday and Thursday, a Babson faculty member or business guest addresses students during a brown-bag lunch on a topic of importance, and Wednesdays are “Hot Seat” days when a single team presents their business and receives intensive feedback. Teams receive in-house counsel from the program director and meet with entrepreneur-mentors in person at least once a week.

Babson’s entrepreneurs will formally present their business plans to venture capitalists, angel investors, friends and family on Demo Day, July 29.

 
Babson College Summer Venture Program Companies

Undergrads
Name: Austin Conti
Company: Sweet Spot Parking
Sweet Spot Parking is striving to enter into the privatization of parking meters for local towns while providing superior metering technology that will lower overall expenses to towns, and create a more streamlined system of parking for drivers.
 
Name: Damian Gray
Company: Insite Motion Media
Creators and providers of web site video content and marketing technology.

Name: Enrico Palmerino and Dinesh Wadhwani
Company: ThinkLite LLC
ThinkLite LLC provides energy efficient lighting solutions to businesses and households at no upfront costs. ThinkLite uses advanced technologies to measure energy consumed by lighting and provides turnkey solutions that reduce monthly lighting costs by up to 80 percent. In exchange for their services, ThinkLite receives a percentage of the guaranteed monthly savings realized by the customer.

Name: Greg Schwartz
Company: Ball and Buck
Ball and Buck is an online clothing retailer that provides customers with a sustainable lifestyle brand that incorporates socially and environmentally responsible practices to create customizable products.
 
Name:  Colin Winter
Company:  ShuffleChat  
ShuffleChat is a video chatting website that focuses on creating clean, quality engagements between its users.
 

Undergrad Alumni

Name: Mark Bollman and Candace Sombrero
Company: Social Butterfly Group
Social Butterfly is an enterprise level web application that enables companies to schedule social media campaigns across platforms and see detailed analytics to measure their impact on company exposure and sales.
 
Name: Alexander Debelov
Company: Crelligence Media
Viralskool allows companies to host video contests, where the winner is determined based on how viral their video becomes on the internet.
 
Name: Chris Jacobs
Company: Honest Discounts
Honest Discounts provides businesses, sports teams and charitable groups with a platform to distribute custom discount prescription drug cards at no charge that allow people to save between 10 percent and 65 percent on medications at over 65,000 pharmacies nationwide.


MBAs

Name:  Seth Burstein
Company:  Trade Show Internet
Trade Show Internet offers a plug-and-play, internet-in-a-box solution to provide internet connectivity at trade shows and corporate events.

Name:  Joshua Leffler
Company:  BrandXO
BrandXO leverages existing social media applications and proprietary analytics to help executives develop their personal brand.
 
Name:  Joanna Meiseles
Company: Zip Cuts
For busy professionals who seek convenient and low-cost hair care services, Zip Cuts will provide mobile haircuts from branded trucks that will travel to office parks and business centers where lots of people work.
 

MBA Alumni

Name: Farnaz Bakhtari and Nirav Shah
Company: TrainingPal
TrainingPal is a SaaS-based online platform that enables personal trainers to offer their services over the Internet and manage their clients’ performance.
 
Name: Shabnam Emamian  
Company: HappeningMap
HappeningMap.com is an early-stage community-based venture that promotes the growth of local economies by helping to connect community members and local businesses in innovative and mutually advantageous ways.
 
Name: Sara Gragnolati and Zachary DeAngelo
Company: Evolve Foods
Evolve Foods is a nutrition-based, gluten-free food brand that uses ancient grains to make healthy, convenient products.

Name: Ben Saur
Company: RecipeKey
RecipeKey is a recipe search website that allows users to search for recipes based on ingredients they already have in their kitchens.