Adam Silver, commissioner of the National Basketball Association, will speak at the Economic Club of Indiana‘s luncheon Thursday, Feb. 11. The luncheon will begin at noon. It will take place at the Indiana Convention Center, 100 S. Capitol Ave., Indianapolis.
Tickets for members of the Economic Club of Indiana are $30; tickets for nonmembers are $35. They can be purchased online.
Indiana University and IUPUI are platinum sponsors of the Economic Club of Indiana’s luncheon series.
We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet Trap Mike’s: Late Night Market
Two students from Carmel, Indiana — Misha Rekhter, a behavioral economics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, and Max Himelstein, an economic consulting and public policy analysis major in the Kelley School of Business — have founded Trap Mike’s: Late Night Market.
The company was founded to provide food options with quick delivery at an affordable price for all college students.
“Currently across college campuses, there is a lack of late-night food options. It’s fair to assume the average college student will experience many late nights throughout the year for a variety of reasons — including partying, studying and just enjoying a casual night with friends,” Himelstein said.
Rekhter said food options on the Bloomington campus after 10 p.m. are limited compared to traditional business hours.
“Additionally, companies that do not provide their own delivery service but utilize delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats charge more because of the additional service fees,” he said.
If college students prefer to order online from restaurants late at night, their options are equally limited.
Trap Mike’s grand opening will be Feb. 4 at IU Bloomington, operating only at night and renting space from an off-campus commercial kitchen.
“This will allow us to offer customers the best-tasting variety of late-night comfort food at the lowest cost,” Himelstein said. “We will offer a variety of comfort foods to satisfy people’s cravings and a fleet of drivers with optimized driving routes. If needed, we will utilize third-party delivery services if our drivers become backed up.”
The present and future for Trap Mike’s: Late Night Market
Rekhter said Trap Mike’s is determined to become part of campus life in Bloomington. The company plans to connect with Greek life, student organizations, club sports and Division I athletics to increase brand recognition.
“Furthermore, we plan to sponsor different campus events,” he said. “When someone orders from Trap Mike’s, they aren’t just getting satisfying, late-night grub; they’re participating in a quintessential college experience.”
Himelstein said Trap Mike’s will provide a working environment where employees will develop professional and interpersonal skills.
“We will abide by all Title XII and equal-pay requirements, but we also want to provide our employees with enough autonomy so that each truly feels they are contributing to the success of our business,” he said.
“Also, rather than throwing away food we didn’t use at the end of the weekend, we will donate all items that are still fresh to people in need.”
Rekhter said the spring 2021 semester at IU will impact how Trap Mike’s operates in the future.
“We need to have sufficient success to dictate whether we should expand to more college campuses next fall,” he said.
Praise for the Shoebox
“The Shoebox is a valuable resource in that it provides a space to get feedback and learn from other student entrepreneurs. While different companies obviously have different problems, there are certain similarities across industries that make hearing other people’s perspectives invaluable,” Rekhter said. “And it’s helpful to be able to talk through new ideas in a welcoming, understanding environment.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatchery pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business, as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, write to luddysic@indiana.edu.
In partnership with the Indiana University Department of Intercollegiate Athletics and the IUPUI Sports Innovation Institute, the IU Angel Network has launched the IU Angel Network Sports Innovation Initiative to bridge the gap with startup founders’ ideas and build an investment case around a fundable business proposition.
“This new IU Angel Network programming allows us to capitalize on IU’s long and illustrious history of success in all sports and as a leader in technology development,” said Tony Armstrong, president and CEO of IU Ventures.
“This new vision of sports includes health and life sciences, data analytics, materials and apparel, and e-sports, which provides a new opportunity to engage with our students and alumni in a more meaningful way.”
The IU Angel Network has created an internal advisory committee of world-class sports-industry executives, former professional athletes and representatives from IU Athletics. The goal is to connect sports-related startups founded by IU alumni and students with the appropriate support and expertise to facilitate bringing their ideas to the commercial market.
This provides an opportunity for the IU athletic department to issue innovation challenges to the IU entrepreneurial community to uncover new solutions while paving the way to leading in the adoption, integration and development phases of cutting-edge technology that can bring about enhanced athletic performance or augment the at-home experience for fans.
An accomplished advisory committee has been assembled to help drive the initiative forward:
Jason Whitney, executive director of the Angel Network, lauded the advisory committee.
“The assembled industry expertise in sports and business will accelerate the growth and trajectory of the startups affiliated with this programming,” Whitney said. “We are fortunate to have secured their faith and guidance in the launch of his program.”
Founders interested in engaging in the programming or angel investors interested in the sports startup space should reach out to IU Angel Network Executive Director Jason Whitney for more information at www.iuventures.com.
We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet Onboard Manuals
Cherif Redissi, a master’s student in data science from Tunis, Tunisia, co-founded Onboard Manuals along with along with Safwen Bouali and Amine Troudi. The company helps hardware manufacturers transform text manuals into immersive 3D manuals.
“Our clients are companies that are having a hard time onboarding their customers and training their workforce due to the inefficiency of textual product manuals,” Redissi said.
“That difficulty results in major customer churn, with clients leaving after the first bad support experience. As for assembly-line operators’ training, injuries are due to a drastic lack of documentation.”
Onboard Manuals’ software-as-a-service, or SaaS, platform allows hardware makers to create 3D assembly instructions in a few minutes, share them instantly with their clients, receive insights on the manuals’ visualization and customers’ data, and manage tickets or incidents through multiple funnels thanks to the multiple integrations they provide.
“We reduce the onboarding time of our clients’ customers by 85 percent, reduce the amount of support calls by 60 percent and offer a better customer-support experience to our clients’ customers,” Redissi said.
Onboard Manuals’ client testimonial
Khaoula Baya Rachid, marketing manager at Meubles Intérieurs, is one of Onboard Manuals’ clients.
“Thanks to Onboard’s 3D product manuals, setting up the household furnishings we provide to our customers has never been that easy and satisfying for them,” she said.
Onboard Manuals’ present and future
Redissi said Onboard Manuals has achieved several international milestones:
“We also recently raised $175,000 in a second round of funding — mainly from Kepple Africa Ventures and several angel investors including Ahmed Hentati and Karim Jouini,” Redissi said.
Onboard Manuals seeks to grow its network of partners and customers.
“We are building a community of 3D-content creators on our platform while also partnering with universities to have them and their students deploy and showcase their creations,” Redissi said.
“Our goal is to become the go-to platform for checking online assembly instructions in 3D.”
Praise for the Shoebox
“I joined the Shoebox only halfway through the semester, and I wish I had done it early on,” Redissi said. “The Shoebox is an awesome community of like-minded entrepreneurs. Challenging each other’s ideas — suggesting and building on top of each other — while getting introduced to the local ecosystem in Bloomington has been great.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatcher pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business, as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, write to luddysic@indiana.edu.
We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet Deep Word
Ankush Bikkasani, a senior from Tampa, Florida, majoring in finance at the Kelley School of Business, founded Deep Word. The company produces synthetic videos of people talking without having to film them saying the words.
“Video production is an incredibly time- and cost-intensive process. For midrange production quality, most companies spend four hours and $500 to $1,000 per minute of edited video,” Bikkasani said.
“Deep Word can create, update and personalize synthetic videos for companies at one-tenth the time and cost it takes to produce them traditionally. All we need is a 10-second video of the person we want to see talking and the audio or text we want them to say. With those, we can create endless content, personalized at scale.”
Bikkasani said Deep Word has developed security measures to stop the production of malicious content.
“We are able to view all inputs uploaded to our platform, and we can stop production before a video is returned to its creator,” he said. “We also have an auto flagging system that detects potentially malicious content and holds it for our manual review.”
Deep Word’s present and future
Deep Word recently won Elevate Ventures’ pre-seed pitch award of $20,000, Bikkasani said. The company is also approaching $1,500 in monthly recurring revenue and is finalizing talks to pilot with a few companies in the medical, educational and software-development spaces.
“We are currently working on higher-resolution output for our product,” Bikkasani said. “We are on track to reach nearly photorealistic video quality before summer.”
Deep Word is currently targeting three markets. In corporate communications, it is lowering employee turnover rates by personalizing the employee onboarding experience. With e-learning, it is increasing student retention by adding teacher camera feeds to video lectures. The company has also begun integrations into CRM software, allowing sales teams to personalize their email outreach videos and onboarding teams to personalize new-customer product walkthroughs.
Praise for the Shoebox
“The Shoebox provides an excellent network of like-minded student entrepreneurs,” Bikkasani said. “We have received lots of helpful feedback from the group and have been made aware of relevant opportunities for our startup. It is by far the greatest resource for student startups on the IU Bloomington campus.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatcher pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, email luddysic@indiana.edu.
Tony Bates, CEO of Genesys, will speak at the Economic Club of Indiana‘s luncheon Wednesday, Jan. 20. The luncheon will begin at noon. It will take place at the Indiana Convention Center, 100 S. Capitol Ave., Indianapolis.
Tickets for members of the Economic Club of Indiana are $30; tickets for nonmembers are $35. They can be purchased online.
Indiana University and IUPUI are platinum sponsors of the Economic Club of Indiana’s luncheon series.
We’re celebrating Indiana University student innovators and entrepreneurs who are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student-startup incubator. Located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus, the Shoebox provides 24/7 office space to help student entrepreneurs build, launch and sustain their businesses.
Meet Blueprint Stats
Hunter Hawley, a recent alumnus from Cloverport, Kentucky, majoring in entrepreneurship in the Kelley School of Business, founded Blueprint Stats. Its client base is young athletes who want to improve their skills and college scouts looking for the best prospects.
“In general, there is a communication crisis in the youth sports space,” Hawley said. “Youth athletes want to be recognized for their skills, but scouts have to sift through unreliable player profiles to source talented athletes for their college programs.”
Blueprint Stats tags videos of youth athletic competitions and calculates advanced statistics on team and individual performances from the tags.
“Our athlete clients receive in-depth insight into their performance as well as a trustworthy, third-party source of statistics to use in their own recruiting efforts,” Hawley said. “Our scout customers receive a reliable stream of data on players they are interested in bringing into their programs.”
Blueprint Stats’ present and future
Blueprint Stats was the 2019 winner of the Elevate Ventures Nexus Pre-Seed competition and secured another bridge round of investment from Elevate Ventures’ Community Ideation Fund. It has developed a client base, including state-champion high school basketball teams.
Hawley said Blueprint Stats has remained focused on its efforts through the pandemic and will increase its statistician workforce when it becomes safer to return to sports.
“We will need to find a pool of people who are detail-oriented and love the game of basketball, enough to be paid for watching it,” Hawley said. “We will recruit online, sharing the opportunity on our Twitter and LinkedIn pages.”
Praise for the Shoebox
“I’ve tried to make this semester more about what I can give to the Shoebox than what I can get from it,” Hawley said. “As a young student entering the center, I was helped by a lot of older students who had experienced a few more things than I had, and I want to be that person for others. It’s that community aspect that makes the Shoebox so special.”
Student startups can apply for 24/7 access to the Shoebox’s office space, which is located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center, Luddy Hall 2150. The Shoebox also collaborates with the Hoosier Hatchery pre-incubator at the Kelley School of Business, as well as Bloomington’s Dimension Mill startup accelerator. To apply for coworking space, write to luddysic@indiana.edu.
Seven Indiana University Bloomington students are participating in B-Start, a pre-accelerator program for entrepreneurs and their early-stage startups in Monroe County. The program is offered through the Bloomington Economic Development Corp.
The four startups led by participating IU students are:
B-Start is designed for entrepreneurs who want to take their creative business idea through a comprehensive refining process to build a foundation for acceleration. Each B-Start participant has been paired with a local entrepreneur or business leader who will guide them through the program.
At the end of the program on Feb. 11, all participants will deliver a virtual, five-minute pitch to a panel of judges via Zoom. The winners will receive cash prizes to advance their business.
Indiana University alumni, students, faculty and other supporters who have an interest in early-stage venture investing but do not meet the Securities and Exchange Commission’s parameters to be an accredited investor can apply for the IU Angel Network’s newly established educational membership level.
The new membership level allows nonaccredited investors to engage in network activities and participate in pitches, although they will not be able to actually invest. It also gives individuals who are accredited by the SEC — but are not looking to actively invest — the opportunity to share their expertise during network activities.
Jason Whitney, executive director of the IU Angel Network, said creating the membership level addresses issues for potential angel investors who are not yet accredited.
“By not being accredited, many aspiring investors miss out on the educational aspects of angel investing, including the review of term sheets, discussions around investment options and the due-diligence questions asked of the founders in order to make an informed investment decision,” Whitney said.
“This lack of exposure to working on deals extends the timeline to success at the point when someone does begin to qualify as an accredited investor.”
Creating the educational membership level also benefits the Angel Network.
“In addition to providing these members with access to the education and experience necessary to be an effective early-stage investor, the overall network benefits by being able to tap into the knowledge sets and personal networks of these newly added partners,” Whitney said.
Membership testimonial
Danielle Mantich is a 2018 graduate of the IU Kelley School of Business. She is an equities private markets analyst in New York and is among the first IU alumni to participate with IU Angel Network at the educational membership level.
Mantich said she had been seeking a way to become involved in the intersection of entrepreneurship and financial markets. She explored the IU alumni community to find available connections.
“It took only a few minutes into an introductory call with Jason Whitney to feel deeply aligned with the core mission of the Angel Network,” Mantich said. “I knew that I wanted to find some way to be part of it, irrespective of age and experience in the industry.”
Mantich said the educational membership has been “nothing short of an incredibly rewarding experience.”
“I’m excited to continue sitting in on the startup pitches during the Zoom meetings. They are orienting me to the investment nomenclature and process,” Mantich said.
“Looking to the individuals with compounded experience in this industry and whom I hope to emulate, I am building muscle memory for identifying and performing due diligence on opportune investments.”
Mantich said IU Ventures provides a nucleus for connecting student, alumni and investment veterans to the university’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“It feels incredibly special to be part of the first inning of an exceptional program whose mandate is to teach, grow, develop and invest in Hoosiers of all types,” Mantich said.
IU-affiliated individuals can learn more about the IU Angel Network’s educational membership level by visiting the application page. Applicants will be contacted to discuss their interest in joining the network and provided additional information.
Email iuangels@iu.edu with questions.
Five startups with connections to Indiana University students or alumni received $220,000 in total during the fall 2020 Elevate Nexus Pitch Competition.
Deep Word and ShuffleMe both received $20,000 in the pre-seed category for the Southern Indiana region. Reezy received $20,000 in the pre-seed category for the Central Indiana region. Blueprint Stats and Stagetime Inc. both received $80,000 investments in the seed category for the Southern Indiana region.
Deep Word, ShuffleMe and Blueprint Stats are clients of the Shoebox, the university’s student startup incubator, located in the Shoemaker Innovation Center in Luddy Hall on the Bloomington campus. Stagetime has attracted an additional $210,000 in investments from members of the IU Angel Network and the Flywheel Fund, a newly launched member-managed fund in Bloomington.
The students and recent alumni founders and their schools are:
Travis J. Brown is the senior executive assistant dean of innovation, entrepreneurship and commercialization in the Luddy School of Informatics, Computing and Engineering, and the executive director of the Shoemaker Innovation Center. He also has worked with the Kelley School of Business through the Johnson Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation to support IU Bloomington student innovators and entrepreneurs. He has witnessed the university increasingly dedicate resources to support students’ innovative and entrepreneurial endeavors over the past decade.
“I am heartened to witness the coming together of IU Bloomington students to support each other’s entrepreneurial pursuits with the resources provided through the collective efforts of the university and the local community,” Brown said.
“I can personally attest to the fact that the institution has never been better positioned to support our students’ entrepreneurial ambitions. I am deeply proud of these teams, and I look forward to keep working alongside our community partners to continue to build our entrepreneurial ecosystem.”
The Elevate Nexus Pitch Competition was launched to invest in startups based in Indiana, especially those connected with the state’s institutions of higher education.
Seventy-two finalists competed in the virtual regional contests in October. Finalists competing for pre-seed awards were seeking funds to create their minimum viable product, or MVP. Finalists competing for seed awards were further along in their development and looking to scale their business.
The 15 companies awarded investments in the competition are eligible to pitch during the 2021 statewide competition, when an additional $320,000 will be awarded.
