{"464191":{"#nid":"464191","#data":{"type":"news","title":"Student Spotlight: Creating Their Own Future: Student Entrepreneurs at ISyE","body":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EWe all know about Silicon Valley as \u003Cem\u003Ethe\u003C\/em\u003E place for startup ventures. That said, Georgia Tech now offers a variety of ways for students to gain entrepreneurial experience: The \u003Ca href=\u0022https:\/\/inventureprize.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EInVenture Prize\u003C\/a\u003E and \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/venturelab.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003EVentureLab\u003C\/a\u003E are already well known for helping students get their new businesses up and running, but attracting increasing attention is \u003Ca href=\u0022http:\/\/create-x.gatech.edu\/\u0022\u003ECREATE-X\u003C\/a\u003E.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E\u201cCREATE-X is an initiative to instill entrepreneurial confidence in our undergraduate students.\u201d says CREATE-X director Raghupathy Sivakumar, also Wayne J. Holman Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ECREATE-X is an umbrella program that encourages students to learn about starting their own business, make their product, and then launch their own startups. In particular, Startup Summer is the \u201claunch\u201d portion of CREATE-X. Each startup team is given seed money, legal guidance, and hands-on help to get their businesses going. Recently, two ISyE students participated in Startup Summer on two different teams, and both students are living different versions of the startup life.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn Frederick Grimm\u2019s case (BSIE 2014), he came to Georgia Tech specifically because he was interested in entrepreneurship. However, Grimm\u2019s path to his current startup, FIXD, did not take a direct route. He originally participated in Startup Summer 2014 with a team called Sucette, which developed temperature-sensitive pacifiers. Due to development complications, he and his partner, Rachel Ford (BSBME 2015), are pursuing a patent for Sucette but have otherwise put the company on hold.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAt the time, Grimm had graduated and planned to work for McKinsey in August 2015, but that left a gap of eight months to fill, so when he was invited to join FIXD \u2013 another Startup Summer team on which Ford was also working \u2013 he took the opportunity. Grimm has been with FIXD ever since.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EThe FIXD team \u2013 four of whom are Georgia Tech alums and two of whom are current students \u2013 has developed a diagnostic sensor that plugs in below a car\u2019s steering column, and then connects via Bluetooth with an app they created. Once the app is opened, if the car\u2019s check-engine light is on, the app will identify the problem and its severity, and translate this information back to the operator in comprehensible English. \u201cWe\u2019re trying to help people better understand and maintain their cars,\u201d explains Grimm. \u201cYou can leave the sensor plugged in and whenever you have a problem, it\u2019s like a roadside assistant or a mechanic in your car.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EWhen asked how his background in IE helps support the rest of the FIXD team, Grimm says, \u201cMy role right now at FIXD is business strategies; we\u2019re looking at forming a lot of larger partnerships that can help us distribute our product and increase our revenue. We have mechanical engineers, computer science majors, electrical engineers, and they\u2019re very much concerned with building the product.\u201d In the longer term, Grimm very much sees an IE component for FIXD: He gives the example of aggregating data from customers to create a knowledge base for when specific parts will be needed based on a car\u2019s mileage, make, and model. This will enable auto-parts stores to carry certain parts at certain times. He describes this as a way to \u201cbetter manage the supply chain.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGrimm is fully committed to helping FIXD take off and getting the product into the hands of consumers. Having decided not to pursue his job at McKinsey, he\u2019s living the full-time startup life: \u201cIt\u2019s a lot of work. You wake up in the morning and talk to people all day and try to get your product off the ground \u2013 there\u2019s not a lot of separation between work life and [personal life] right now. It\u2019s fun because I enjoy it. That helps a lot.\u201d He adds, \u201cI don\u2019t want to make it sound like it\u2019s the easiest path ever \u2013 all the profits we\u2019re making we\u2019re reinvesting back in the company, so we\u2019re not taking a salary at the moment, just drawing off savings. We\u2019re going through the investment process right now.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EIn fact, in terms of funding, FIXD has taken the path of many startups \u2013 by launching its own Kickstarter campaign in September 2014. The campaign was 100 percent funded and attracted the attention of such tech-oriented websites as Mashable and Engadget, as well as support from the Georgia Tech community. And, as Grimm noted, the campaign verified that FIXD is creating a product that consumers want and need.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EGrimm recommends CREATE-X \u2013 and specifically, the Startup Summer program \u2013 for fellow IEs without reservation: \u201cI feel like sometimes ISyE students feel like they\u2019re at a disadvantage in terms of these startup programs because we\u2019re not taught to build physical objects. But that doesn\u2019t mean we don\u2019t have value on a startup team. ISyE students are very entrepreneurial themselves. I feel like I can see an idea and see the potential in it. A lot of classes teach [you to consider] how from a theoretical perspective can I optimize this? How can I take this from a small idea and make it huge potentially? If you have a team of all MEs, eventually they\u2019re going to face roadblocks that IEs could help them solve.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ERicardo De Andrade, who is currently a junior in ISyE with a double major in computer science, also went through the Startup Summer process this past summer, with the Shortweb team. Shortweb, as he describes it, \u201cmakes it extremely easy for people to do research by allowing them to search, aggregate, and reference the information they care about. We\u0027re making a research engine that delivers content that you can aggregate into relevant topics. We take it a step further than Google. Our search results aren\u0027t web pages, they are highlights of the relevant web page\u0027s content. Ranking of search results is based on content relevance and not page relevance.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EAlthough both companies were launched via Startup Summer, Shortweb\u2019s development took a slightly different route than did FIXD. First, the Shortweb team participated in HackGT, Georgia Tech\u2019s national hackathon, and then in the University of Michigan\u2019s equivalent, MHacks. Ultimately, Shortweb reached the finals for GT\u2019s 2015 InVenture Prize \u2013 all of which was encouraging. So, when summer arrived, De Andrade had a decision to make: study abroad in France, while co-founder Miguel Oller (BSME 2015) interned on Wall Street, or together spend the summer developing Shortweb. In the end, he says, \u201cWe decided to apply to Startup Summer because we though that being part of an accelerator was going to bring a lot of value to the company, which it did. We managed to finish a usable product by the end of summer.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EDe Andrade is currently balancing the demands of starting his own company with being a full-time student. He typically wakes up between 2 and 4 AM and works on Shortweb until lunchtime. After lunch, he goes to class and takes care of school responsibilities such as homework until 8 PM. Then, work on Shortweb begins again until midnight, which is when he finally sleeps. When asked what drives him to keep such a demanding pace, De Andrade explains, \u201cLearning. One of the things that I like the most about entrepreneurship is how much one can learn in such a small amount of time. For example, during the summer, Miguel and I taught ourselves a new computer language, and we built the whole app with it. With Shortweb, I feel that I have learned so much, not only technical stuff, but also in business, legal, marketing, and many other fields.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EShortweb is evolving quickly, he adds. It started out as a Google Chrome extension that let people highlight stuff in any website. De Andrade and Oller have further tweaked the idea, and they are building a research engine that will help people find relevant content online. Anyone from bloggers to students can benefit from this.\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ELike Grimm, De Andrade talks about how Georgia Tech encourages entrepreneurship in its students, and how IE fits in well with business: \u201cWhen I arrived to Tech, I was not thinking at all about building my own company. As time passed, I became aware of the entrepreneurship environment that was flourishing on campus. With Shortweb I have learned that entrepreneurship is what I really want to do, because it is what I am really passionate about. IE may sometimes teach concepts focused in big, well-established companies, but almost everything that is learned during the degree can actually be applied to one\u2019s company. IE and entrepreneurship are not mutually exclusive.\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESanjay Parekh, Associate Director of CREATE-X, has plenty to say about nurturing entrepreneurship in Georgia Tech\u2019s students. \u201cThis is really the next frontier for universities; we\u2019re educating them to get jobs but we need to educate them to be able to create jobs. This is really going to change the face of Georgia Tech. I can\u2019t wait for the day when there are kids saying, \u2018I want to go to Georgia Tech because I want to be an entrepreneur, and they have this great program. That\u2019s going to couple with the engineering that I know I want to do, so I can start this great company.\u2019\u201d\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003ESilicon Valley, watch out.\u003C\/p\u003E","summary":null,"format":"limited_html"}],"field_subtitle":"","field_summary":"","field_summary_sentence":[{"value":"Two ISyE students participated in CREATE-X\u0027s Startup Summer and have created their own companies."}],"uid":"28766","created_gmt":"2015-10-29 13:43:06","changed_gmt":"2016-10-08 03:19:51","author":"Shelley Wunder-Smith","boilerplate_text":"","field_publication":"","field_article_url":"","dateline":{"date":"2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00","iso_date":"2015-10-29T00:00:00-04:00","tz":"America\/New_York"},"extras":[],"hg_media":{"464161":{"id":"464161","type":"image","title":"FIXD Sensor","body":null,"created":"1449256385","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:13:05","changed":"1475895209","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:29","alt":"FIXD Sensor","file":{"fid":"203687","name":"fixd_sensor.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/fixd_sensor_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/fixd_sensor_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":1555300,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/fixd_sensor_0.jpg?itok=x9HCgHTy"}},"464171":{"id":"464171","type":"image","title":"Frederick Grimm of the FIXD Team","body":null,"created":"1449256385","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:13:05","changed":"1475895209","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:29","alt":"Frederick Grimm of the FIXD Team","file":{"fid":"203688","name":"fg.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/fg_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/fg_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":22570,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/fg_0.jpg?itok=DZnZn24N"}},"464181":{"id":"464181","type":"image","title":"Miguel Oller and Ricardo De Andrade of Shortweb","body":null,"created":"1449256385","gmt_created":"2015-12-04 19:13:05","changed":"1475895209","gmt_changed":"2016-10-08 02:53:29","alt":"Miguel Oller and Ricardo De Andrade of Shortweb","file":{"fid":"203689","name":"miguelandricardo.jpg","image_path":"\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/miguelandricardo_0.jpg","image_full_path":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/\/sites\/default\/files\/images\/miguelandricardo_0.jpg","mime":"image\/jpeg","size":82960,"path_740":"http:\/\/www.tlwarc.hg.gatech.edu\/sites\/default\/files\/styles\/740xx_scale\/public\/images\/miguelandricardo_0.jpg?itok=aw8fkFkl"}}},"media_ids":["464161","464171","464181"],"groups":[{"id":"1242","name":"School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE)"}],"categories":[{"id":"129","name":"Institute and Campus"}],"keywords":[{"id":"137161","name":"CREATE-X"},{"id":"3472","name":"entrepreneurship"},{"id":"146231","name":"FIXD"},{"id":"169580","name":"Shortweb"},{"id":"166972","name":"startup summer"}],"core_research_areas":[{"id":"39501","name":"People and Technology"}],"news_room_topics":[],"event_categories":[],"invited_audience":[],"affiliations":[],"classification":[],"areas_of_expertise":[],"news_and_recent_appearances":[],"phone":[],"contact":[{"value":"\u003Cp\u003EShelley Wunder-Smith\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003EStewart School of Industrial \u0026amp; Systems Engineering\u003C\/p\u003E\u003Cp\u003E404.385.4745\u003C\/p\u003E","format":"limited_html"}],"email":["shelley.wunder-smith@isye.gatech.edu"],"slides":[],"orientation":[],"userdata":""}}}