For the newest members of Bloomington’s first startup accelerator program, the answer was simple: they’d create the technology themselves.
In August, the Bloomington Economic Development Corporation began accepting applications for their new B-Start pre-accelerator program, a program to help guide students through the process of starting a business.
Around 30 applications were received and reviewed by local volunteer mentors who then selected the startup they would most like to work with. Nine student startups were selected to make up the program’s first group.
“I’m really excited we received so many applications,” said Dana Palazzo, the project’s manager. ”It shows the pent up demand for a program connecting students with mentors, getting them off campus and getting them engaged with some of the benefits and resources we have here.”
Most of the businesses are in the very early stages of development — some are only ideas.
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Freshman Stan Mattingly said he’s been looking for creative ways to make money since he was a little kid.
He said he thinks his new startup, College Deedz, could be his best project yet.
The website serves as a platform for subcontracting college students. During the summer months especially, when students have a lot of free time, they can create profiles listing their specialties (like yardwork or design).
“It can help students not only make money but also build a resume,” Mattingly said. “It lets people specialize in whatever they want to do and encourages self-employment.”
The website has been operating for one summer, but Mattingly said he’s excited to work with B-Start to take the business to the next level.
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Senior Brennan Keough started competing in international martial arts competitions when he was 15 years old. There, he saw competitors doing crazy flips and other moves he had only seen in movies.
“It’s called martial arts tricking,” Keough said. “It’s a rapidly growing underground sport that combines martial arts kicks, acrobatics and break dancing.”
Right now, he said, there are very few places in the world where this sport is actually taught. He had to learn by watching YouTube videos.
“There are people who have devoted their entire life to this sport and don’t have a platform to share that knowledge with all the people who want to learn it,” he said.
He is working to create Gravity’s Edge, his B-Start project, to meet that need.
The business will offer online martial arts tricking tutorials at a reasonable price. Keough has already found three instructors willing to make videos.
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Matt Callison and Tiffany Roman are both doctoral students with experience in teaching. One thing that frustrated them about online education was the ineffectiveness of discussion forums.
“Even though discussion forums are a common tool for teachers to use, we have not had the best experiences with them,” Roman said. “We felt they were forced and not engaging.”
They began to develop Critique, a platform where students will submit their work for reflection, review and revision. The idea is that any type of project can be posted on the site as well as explanations of the project or things they are having trouble with.
Peers and instructors will be able to review the material and offer their suggestions by answering prompts.
The entrepreneurs said the platform will be more interactive and versatile than a site like Canvas and provide a better opportunity for dialogue.
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One day, Junior Brett Watkins was sitting in his house, and he was hungry.
“I was trying to figure out what to eat with the ingredients I had that would be healthy and actually taste good,” Watkins said. “I’m not really a cook.”
It was then that he came up with SoundsGood.
To use the technology, people will buy their groceries with their phone using some sort of payment app. The food they buy will then be recorded in their SoundsGood cabinet, which would keep track of all of the food in their house. Then, when they go to their kitchen to make a meal, the app will be able to provide them with healthy and tasty recipes that can be made with the ingredients they already have.
“Our generation is very tech involved,” said Watkins, who is now working on the project with junior Owen Friesen. “The tech department is becoming a huge opportunity for us because people our age are coming up with all these ideas that no one’s ever had before.”
