We couldnt have chosen our 2018 Startup Competition Cohort without the help of our expert judges — investors, entrepreneurs, public officials, educators, and CCNY alumni who took the time to read dozens of student applications, provide feedback, and score startups based on a variety of factors, including market value and innovation.A huge thank you to: Jack Abel, Namisha Bahl, Lisa Balter Saacks, Joe Barba, Marom Bikson, Gerardo Blumenkrantz, Claude Brathwaite, Art Brody, Elaine Chin, Yaroslav Chinskiy, Andrew Conde, Jared Day, Frank DeBernardis, Kate Debold, Sean Dhadialla,… Read More »
The Zahn Center's MakerLab is getting an upgrade! In June, the Manhattan Borough Presidents Office awarded the MakerLab with $500,000 in capital funds. The award will enable us to dramatically improve our manufacturing offerings by adding short run manufacturing capabilities to the equipment in our MakerLab, a rapid prototyping facility designed for student entrepreneurs and the hardware startup community. The new equipment and improvements will bring lasting impact to CCNY and Harlem, more broadly. We are incredibly grateful to Borough President Gale A. Brewer and Matthew… Read More »
On Thursday evening, Veripad took home $50,000 at MassChallenge's annual awards ceremony in Boston. They competed with 127 other startups from around the country to earn a spot in the accelerator's Top 26, and were eventually selected as one of 16 startups to receive a piece of MassChallenge's $1 million cash prize.Veripad has come a long way form their start at the Zahn Center. After winning the 2016 Zahn Social Impact Prize, and completing our Accelerator Program, Veripad learned more about how to reach their customers in the Google Adopt-a-Startup program. From there,… Read More »
We are very excited to announce that six Zahn startups (Active Hands, dawaCare, Function Cosmetics, nuravine, Ouvos, and Wrkbook) will participate in an Adopt-a-Startup program at Google. Over the next few months, Google mentors and startups will produce a marketing an customer acquisition strategy, with the results shared at a group presentation at Google in early December. Google mentors will help the startups define their KIPs, achieve set milestones, and utilize Google Analytics and Adwords.Each startup will work closely with two to three Google mentors. Below is a list of… Read More »
This semester we held one of our biggest hackathons yet! On Friday, October 6th, over 50 City College students competed in a hackathon hosted by Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD to create new innovations in skin health. Challenge topics included optimizing outcomes in skin health, quantifying skin wellness, creating medical devices for skin health, and skin health literacy. Although many hackathons require that students create an app or tech product, this hackathon was more open-ended. Students worked in multidisciplinary teams, and were inspired to create not only tech solutions and… Read More »
In the next month and a half, you'll be hearing a lot about our Annual Startup Competition as we call for applications for the 2018 cohort. A lot of you may be wondering, why should I apply to the Zahn Center's Startup Competition? What will it do for me? The answer, of course, is different for everyone. However, we hope to shed some light on why some of the entrepreneurs in our community applied in the first place, and what they got out of our program.In this blog you'll hear from Elizabeth Bitis, Co-Founder of FxN Cosmetics, a startup that competed in last year's… Read More »
Have you secured your ticket for our Accelerator Demo Day yet? If not, you'll miss out on some new things happening in the maker space.That's because half of the startups in our Summer Accelerator program are also part of the Futureworks NYC Incubator in the “Market Validation” cohort. As part of this cohort, startups work to understand their market fit, refine business plans, and explore funding options. Futureworks connects these teams to the Incubator's alumni and mentors, and also creates workshops and summits that are designed for startups in this stage. The following… Read More »
Sometimes chasing the American Dream is the only option you have. The following is a reflection on entrepreneurship, as told by Cris Mercado, CCNY alumnus and founder of KeyJargon, a free web app that connects college students and professionals with career opportunities. Cris will share more about his journey on a panel of entrepreneurs at our upcoming Accelerator Demo. I had not choice but to become an entrepreneur, and startup life has served me well. Immigration issues left me with no options to get a decent job, so in 2014 I took the leap and… Read More »
Sometimes your future doesn't pan out as you expected (and sometimes you're surprised to learn that the unexpected is exactly what you needed). The following is a reflection on entrepreneurship, as told by Revital Schechter, a founding member of Gleam (a 2016 Zahn startup). Revital will share more about her journey on a panel of entrepreneurs at our upcoming Accelerator Demo. The most common stories of successful entrepreneurs often start with anecdotes of their childhood. A story about how they started hustling at the age of 8, setting up well-organized garage sales… Read More »
As you may know, one of our goals at the Zahn Innovation Center is to prove product market fit and de-risk startups for potential investors, but also for the startups themselves. Zahn Center startups are all taught how to bootstrap their companies early on, so that they can focus 100% on their companies and solve real world problems.Examples of our method include one of our startups from last year, Veripad, who is a finalist in MassChallenge. Another one of the companies that has worked at the Zahn Center is StrongArm Technologies. They were … Read More »
Last Updated: 10/08/2020 22:24