23 Student Entrepreneur Teams Grow Businesses In Babson College Summer Venture Program

by 07/10/2009

Twenty-three teams of Babson College Undergraduate and MBA students have opted to skip vacation this year, and spend 10 intensive weeks in Babson’s Summer Venture Program to strategize, shape, and accelerate their entrepreneurial businesses. The Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship at Babson– organizer of the pilot program– was highly-selective in choosing the student entrepreneurs, and offers an environment that will stimulate the fast and flexible mind of an entrepreneur.

Open work spaces allow teams to be close—but not too close—for contagious motivation, networking with each other, and resource sharing. Campus Housing provides them with around-the-clock opportunities to refine their ventures.

Noon on Mondays is status update time when teams gather to share ideas and communally solve the week’s business challenge. Every Wednesday, a Babson faculty member or business guest addresses students during a brown-bag lunch discussion on a topic of importance. And on Demo Day–Wed., July 29th– student entrepreneurs will formally present their business plans to VC, angel investors, friends and family.

Babson College Summer Venture Program Companies
(student emails available at the end of this list.)

Undergrads

1. Name: Raul Pellerano
Company Name : BongoBing; www.bongobing.com

Company Description:
BongoBing is a technology company changing the way the world shops online by making it easier, faster and more efficient via its proprietary web based shopping platform which currently has millions of products.

2. Name: Alex Moazed
Company Name: Applico; www.applicollc.com

Company Description:
Applico is a mobile application development firm. They develop mobile applications and also provide development services to customers. One of their products, NYC Transit by Applico, is a Blackberry application that provides train, bus, and ferry schedules users without network connections. This application is under review by Blackberry and should be released soon.

3. Name: Alex Kravets
Company name: Zaang, Inc; www.zaang.com

Company Description:
Zaang is a social media platform that allows users to collaborate on any topic – using virtually any type of media or content – and have an opportunity to earn money doing so. The platform will gather users together around shared interests while allowing them to monetize their content.

4. Name: Diane Melville
Company Name: ScholarPro

Company Description:
ScholarPro aims to innovate the application and distribution process of scholarships and private financial aid within the United States private and public educational system. This will be accomplished through an online portal that allows students to apply for every scholarship in which they are eligible with just a single click.

5. Name: Chris Jacobs
Company Name: Emergent Energy Group; www.emergentgroup.com

Company Description:
Emergent Energy Group Inc. is an alternative energy consulting, planning, and development firm that specializes in wind power and solar power technologies.

6. Name: Martin Shen
Company Name: Trollsmash Design Studios; www.trollsmash.com

Company Description:
Trollsmash Design Studios is a web design business that focuses on start ups. The focus this summer is a project called “litiq,” a set of transparent tools which can be used on any web page to transmit and portray information better.

7. Name: Fan Bi
Company Name: Blank Label; www.blank-label.com

Company Description:
Blank Label is a leading provider of custom, made-to-measure corporate attire for college students. Currently their suits and shirts sell in Sydney, Atlanta and Boston, and they are looking to expand one campus at a time, one city at a time.

8. Name: Alec Bowers
Company Name: Diat Concepts, LLC.

Company Description:
Diat Concepts is a nutrition company that delivers its products primarily through food. Our first product is Skinï Mints, the world’s first appetite suppressing breath mint. Skinï Mints eliminates the urge to eat, allowing one to either eat less at meals or completely skip meals, depending on the number of mints consumed.

9. Name: Evan Morkiawa
Company Name: Alight Learning; www.alightlearning.com

Company Description:
Alight Learning is a free software tool designed specifically for the middle school context that stimulates personalized student learning.

10. Name: Alexander Debelov
Company Name: Crelligence Media; www.crelligence.com

Company Description:
Credillgence Media is a social media marketing company that specializes in compensated consumer-generated media. This summer, the company is going to be developing two concepts: ViralSkool, a creative community that rewards the best contributors with monetary compensation, and Rentafilmmaker.com, the future go to site for small businesses in need of a filmmaker in the Boston area.

11. Name: Morgan Smith
Company Name: Capital Comfort

Company Description:
Capital Comfort sells high end mattress pads to students through online and retail channels. This summer, Morgan plans on reinvigorating the business with a new marketing plan and pricing structure.

12. Name: Mark Bollman
Company Name: Ball and Buck; www.ballandbuck.com

Company Description:
Ball and Buck’s mission is to sustainably create all organic high quality clothing for those who love being outside. Whether hiking the Appalachian Trail, sailing off the Maine coast or hunting in Georgia, the company hopes that consumers wear B&B clothing in good faith, with the knowledge that they are not only helping the nature that surrounds them, but becoming part of it.

13. Name: John Gesimondo & Jacob Brady
Company name: Jmondo PC Rebirth LLC; http://jmondo.com/inprog/howitworks.html

Company Description:
Jmondo PC Rebirth is a computer service company that allows users to do a few things: They can log on our website and get their computer fixed automatically in 1 hour (which is licensed from another company), request support for their technology via phone, or request on-site support if they live in the Metro-West area.

14. Name: Enrico Palmerino
Company Name: ThinkLite; www.thinklite.net

Company Description:
ThinkLite offers residential home owners the ability to go green without the green price tag. ThinkLite custom tailors highly efficient, state of the art lighting that burns at a proper temperature and emits the proper amount of lumens and light wavelength to most closely match the lighting currently installed in homes. The light bulbs offered by ThinkLite are both economically and aesthetically appealing.

15. Name: Rishad Mehta and Jacob Enyeart
Company Name: Club Portal;

Company Description:
Our company aims to integrate the main aspects of the nightlife industry using an online community and web application. We aim to provide streamline club promotions and the ability to give clients an unbeatable online experience and be the primary destination for the clubs, DJ’s and event managers by giving them access to the worldwide club community. By providing the ability to book a table, buy tickets, download a DJ’s music or be able to search for a venue on the go.

16. Name: Andrew Kitzenberg
Company Name: Wandering Roots; www.TastyTrippin.com

Company Description:
Wandering Roots is a reseller of innovative products through online channels. They focus on selling high margin products while maintaining as little owned infrastructure for the business as possible, allowing them to market the products in innovative ways.

17. Name: Nicholas Horvath & Marcello Mallegni
Company Name: IVD Media Incorporated

Company Description:
Guests want instant, interactive information available in the comfort of their hotel rooms. IVD Media solves this problem by providing hotel guests with direct interactive access to an online catalog of videos and information about local restaurants, clubs, events and local attractions through their hotel room television. These companies pay for advertising on the interactive catalog.

Grads

1. Name: John Hilliar
Company Name: RetireLife; www.retirelife.net

Company Description:
Service providers pay to advertise and receive analytics about users who login and search for retirement-related living products and services.

2. Name: Ben Saur
Company Name: RecipeKey; www.RecipeKey.com

Company Description:
Currently, the RecipeKey website allows users to find the common link between seemingly unrelated ingredients in a user’s kitchen in order to create a delicious meal. RecipeKey gives users the ability to find recipes based on ingredients in the user’s virtual pantry. RecipeKey’s goal is to create strategic partnerships to interface the website with grocery stores. Through these strategic partnerships, user pantries will be digitally updated after each shopping trip.

3. Name: Rahul Sahni
Company Name: Fit in clouds; www.fitinclouds.com

Company Description:
Fit in clouds is a women’s shoe company that specializes in light weight, portable shoes that are small enough to fit into a tiny ladies purse. Women who wear heels often complain of foot pain by the end of the night. The alternatives available to them so far are walking barefoot or carrying a pair of flip flops. Both of these options are unpractical, and this is where Fit in clouds comes in. These shoes are comfortable, and at the end of the night, when the pain from the heels gets unbearable, they take off their heels, and put on their clouds.

4. Name: Alice Leung
Company Name: Top Sprouts; www.topsprouts.com

Company Description:
Top Sprouts partners with building owners to invest in their rooftop space. We develop rooftop greenhouses to grow produce for urban consumers while conserving energy and creating value for the building.

We are currently talking to 3 interested building owners to host the first pilot project. Once confirmed, we will approach investors for the first round of funding to conduct building surveys and determine the pilot site.

5. Name: Tom Lovett
Company Name: Banyan Buildings LLC

Company Description:
Banyan Buildings is a Commercial Real Estate advisory firm that provides building owners with a comprehensive analysis and implementation plan for converting existing buildings to sustainable “green” buildings. This includes investigation of renewable energy potential and repositioning strategies to reduce expenses and increase asset value.

6. Name: Juan Rincon
Company Name: Green Food Packaging LLC.

Company Description:
Due to the increasing global warming, ocean plastic debris and other contamination concerns, there is a big tendency to use “green” environmental friendly products. The food packaging Industry is not the exception; indeed, because of health and food regulations this industry is highly sensitive to this trend.

GFP is introducing a novel environmental friendly, food innocuous, thermal, flexible packing line, which represents an affordable substitute product for both the contaminant plastic food trays, and the (toxic, health dangerous and highly contaminant) Styrofoam food trays, both of which are widely used to pack all kind of precooked and frozen food, such as: meat, chicken, fish, hamburgers, Chinese/Thai food, fries, etc.

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