Eight Stanford Start-Up Products Unveiled

The youthful enthusiasm at the Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) Labs Demo Day Thursday resembled the energy of a grade-school science fair. Eight professional start-ups stood eagerly behind tables to display their products and answer the public's questions. With the guidance of Stanford Student Enterprises Labs, the entrepreneurs had honed their presentations to a perfect science.

"We're praying to the Gods of Apple that they'll approve our app," laughed Jacob Klein, co-founder of Motion Math, an iPhone application that teaches fractions through an interactive game. Klein and his co-founder, Gabriel Adauto, submitted the application last week and hope to have it available in the App Store within a week.

Other veteran entrepreneurs were a little more relaxed.

"We're not really nervous because we know everything will come together," said Alvin Tse, CEO of TixxMe, his second start-up company. Tse and his team want to change the way people communicate by creating a cross-platform mobile application. "When you have a good product, the presentation pretty much writes itself."

Each company had a chance to showcase its product to the audience and then demo it at the tables. For many, Thursday was the first time the products were presented to such a large, diverse audience.

"You're my first registered user for today," Smita Saxena, CEO of Accevia, said to a tester. Accevia targets small investors and aggregates them with others like them. Then the website matches the pool with investors at companies like Charles Schwab and TD Ameritrade.

Others, like Tom Currier of Black Swan Solar, had to remain tight-lipped about their products because of pending patents. Black Swan Solar is looking to make solar power cheaper than coal—not by creating more giant solar panel fields, but by using the coal plant itself. Currier is prototyping a product that he says can be four times cheaper than the technology now available.

"Coal plants can be the greenest energy plants with this new technology," Currier said.

All eight companies had applied last April to become a part of SSE labs, a non-profit start-up accelerator specifically for Stanford students.

In the heart of Silicon Valley, it's not surprising to find accelerator nursing start-ups, but one solely for Stanford University is the first of its kind.

"There wasn't a single program at Stanford that would take you from the inception of the company, developing your product and then releasing it to the market," said Cameron Teitelman, founder and chairman of SSE Labs.

Teitelman, a recent graduate, and his team spent the past year working with venture capitalist George Zachary of Charles River Ventures to launch the accelerator. Bursting with innovative ideas, these companies had the vision and SSE Labs provided the workspace, guidance and venture capital contacts.

"I was intrigued because SSE would help students build real companies and not just how to write business plans," Zachary said of his initial decision to become involved.

Zachary said to the audience that he was inspired by Paul Graham and the Y Combinator in Silicon Valley, a venture firm that funds early stage start-ups.

Managing Director Dan Ha added, "We wanted to bring entrepreneurial education and valuable service to the Stanford community."

The team said they weren't looking to create companies  but to foster existing ones. To participate, one team member of the company had to be a Stanford undergraduate, graduate, or doctoral student. SSE Labs takes zero equity from these companies and exists purely for support and resources.

"We know that each of these companies could have done it on their own," Teitelman said. "But we wanted to provide resources, mentors and an office space."

At the Demo Day, a panel of successful entrepreneurs offered insights into the expanding start-up market. Panelist Harj Taggar of Y Combinator agreed that the sense of community was the appeal for start-ups to participate in accelerators like his company.

"It can honestly get lonely at times," Taggar said. "Starting your own company is much more manageable when you're part of a group."

Panelist Timothy Lee of venture capitalist firm Sequoia Capital and Ryan Spoon from Dogpatch Labs noted that working in an entrepreneurial environment allows start-ups to feel a sense of "camaraderie" and allows each team to bounce ideas off one another.

"It was great being able to meet the other teams and knowing 'what do they care about?' 'what are they thinking?'" said Juan Escobar of myLinkPower. "It was integral getting feedback from other innovative thinkers."

As part of SSE Labs, speakers visited the teams to paint a realistic picture of the entrepreneurial lifestyle. Back in August, Zachary spoke to the companies about not only how to become successful but also about his own obstacles, mistakes and failures.  Each failure was almost a badge of honor, a Purple Heart in the start-up battlefield.

In April, each company braved a panel of Venture Capitalists and successful entrepreneurs and pitched their ideas. From a pool of 70 applicants, the panel ultimately chose the nine most impressive and promising companies. The company founders came from a range of backgrounds, from education to computer science to software engineering.  

"Within five minutes of the interviews, we could tell which were the right entrepreneurs for the program," Teitelman said. 

Yet defining "success" in the start-up world is difficult. There are many metrics, Ha said. There's the traditional way of measuring success by capital. Fifty percent of companies are in the early stages of securing funding while others are bootstrapping and foregoing funding because they don't need it. There are also the intangibles that Ha and Teitelman have witnessed throughout the summer. The founders have seen each company iterate incessantly on their products and have connected with countless mentors and venture capitalists. All companies are continuing even after SSE Labs. The day after Demo Day, teams could be seen in their offices coding away.

Though Teitelman returned to Stanford to take more computer science and business classes, he said he will continue to manage SSE Labs. He and the panel will select another group of promising, driven entrepreneurs to inhabit the SSE Lab space in the autumn quarter of the academic year.

"We're absolutely going to run another summer program," Teitelman said. "It's going to be just as intense and with teams just as talented."

During the year, he said, SSE Labs team will focus more on the communal aspect of the accelerator and building relationships with mentors. Teitelman and SSE Labs will provide guidance by building contacts and selecting which classes will be most beneficial. Institutionalizing SSE Labs into Stanford is another main goal, he said.

Innovation isn't something new at Stanford. But with SSE Labs, it seems to have found a permanent home.