Student Entrepreneurs Get a Boost in Business from VALIDATE Accelerator
Outcome/Accomplishment
Six teams of aspiring student entrepreneurs benefited from nine weeks of programming that included weekly sessions on building a business in a program sponsored by the Center for Smart Streetscapes (NSF CS3), a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) based at Columbia University.
Impact/Benefits
In addition to inspiring all six teams to pursue their business ideas, the Center’s VALIDATE Accelerator program helped two to achieve significant commercialization milestones, including a pilot program in Florida and a provisional patent application.
Explanation/Background
Thirteen teams applied; six teams were accepted and participated in the nine-week program. Weekly session covered the customer discovery process, stakeholder mapping, and other go-to-market topics.
The program closed with a Demo Day at the Center’s Innovation Summit. Since then, a participating team that developed FloodSense, which provides flood sensors and crowdsources data to improve the accuracy of flood forecasts, signed for an initial pilot program with Broward County, Fla. KeeVeeve, which, leverages edge-cloud servers and traffic cameras to visualize real-time traffic information, implemented and deployed the prototype on a Center testbed and filed a provisional patent application.
Location
New York City, NYwebsite
Start Year
Microelectronics and IT
Quantum, Microelectronics, Sensing, and IT
Lead Institution
Core Partners
Fact Sheet
Outcome/Accomplishment
Six teams of aspiring student entrepreneurs benefited from nine weeks of programming that included weekly sessions on building a business in a program sponsored by the Center for Smart Streetscapes (NSF CS3), a U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded Engineering Research Center (ERC) based at Columbia University.
Location
New York City, NYwebsite
Start Year
Microelectronics and IT
Quantum, Microelectronics, Sensing, and IT
Lead Institution
Core Partners
Fact Sheet
Impact/benefits
In addition to inspiring all six teams to pursue their business ideas, the Center’s VALIDATE Accelerator program helped two to achieve significant commercialization milestones, including a pilot program in Florida and a provisional patent application.
Explanation/Background
Thirteen teams applied; six teams were accepted and participated in the nine-week program. Weekly session covered the customer discovery process, stakeholder mapping, and other go-to-market topics.
The program closed with a Demo Day at the Center’s Innovation Summit. Since then, a participating team that developed FloodSense, which provides flood sensors and crowdsources data to improve the accuracy of flood forecasts, signed for an initial pilot program with Broward County, Fla. KeeVeeve, which, leverages edge-cloud servers and traffic cameras to visualize real-time traffic information, implemented and deployed the prototype on a Center testbed and filed a provisional patent application.