Launch Pad

 Karl Ulrich talks with Startup Challenge Semifinliast & InstaHub founder Michael Wong, W'19Elevator Pitch, from Michael: “Our vision is to simply simplify automation with snap-on solutions, to help automate energy savings. Our product is a motion-sensing device that goes on top of a light switch, and it mechanically flips the switch for you. So imagine a mini-robot on top of a light switch. You do not have to pull anything out of the wall or hire an electrician to re-wire any systems.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich talks with Startup Challenge Semifinalist & Chipper founder Haley Russell, WG'18Elevator Pitch, from Haley: “Chipper Pet is an environmentally conscious pet food company that enables pet parents to do good for their pet and for the planet. We do this by using sustainable alternative proteins. Our first product is a dog treat that uses cricket protein, which is really powerful. It has two-and-a-half times the amount of protein as your traditional animal meats, and it uses just a tiny fraction of the land and water. It's loved by pets and enables pet parents to feel good about what they're buying.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich talks with Startup Challenge Semifinalist & Avisi founder Rui Jing Jiang, W'18Elevator Pitch, from Rui Jing: “Avisi is a medical devices company that's working on a product called VisiPlate. VisiPlate is a nanoscale aqueous implant for the drainage of intraocular fluid in glaucoma patients. Glaucoma is the second leading cause of blindness in the world, and it currently has no cure.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Republic is, in founder Ken Nguyen's words: "an investment platform that allows everyone, not just millionaires, every day people, irrespective of your income of net worth, to actually invest in private companies, may it be crypto or equity. It's a relatively new thing. It's only been legal for a little bit less than two years." This means that you--yes YOU--can go on Republic.co right now and invest as little as $10 and as much as 10% of your income in the startups that Republic has vetted and decided are a good fit for equity crowdfunding. Then if they get rich, you get a piece of the pie. Listen to Karl and Ken talk about the benefits for both investors and companies, the legal and technical difficulties of making it all work--and a bonus primer on "initial coin offerings" or ICOs. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

As an analyst at a big Wall Street bank, Wharton Executive MBA grad Jack Kokko spent a lot of time digging through information, and he vividly remembers the feeling of “fearing that you're missing something critical that's putting a billion dollar deal at risk.” Other analysts need no longer suffer as Jack did, thanks to Jack himself, CEO and founder of AlphaSense. In Jack’s words, “AlphaSense is an intelligent search engine for knowledge workers in corporations and financial firms. We're doing to business information what Google did for the internet. We're organizing it and making it really fast and easy to find the information you need as a business professional.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich does a great job of summarizing what Kabbage, founded by Kathryn Petralia, does, after several minutes of intense conversation around APRs and credit lines: “I can get a reasonable amount of money in ten minutes, at not-onerous interest rates, with you guys doing the work of filling out the forms based on access to my financial records.” Here’s how Kathryn puts it: “Kabbage is a data and technology platform, enables real-time lending just to small businesses. We do this both directly in the US, and deployed over $4 billion to 130,000 small businesses in the US, and we also operate internationally, through partnerships with large institutions that licensed our technology to do the same thing abroad. We partner with big banks like Santander, ING, and Deutsche Bank. And our customers are able to, using our automated platform, get through the entire application process for a small business loan in less than ten minutes, and actually in many cases have funds in their accounts.” Listen to their half hou

When it comes to finding patterns in huge quantities of data, computers are way better than the human brain--at least once they're properly trained. (This is the hard part.) Zebra Medical Vision is training computers "how to detect malignant tissues in breast mammograms, how to detect brain bleed in head CTs, how to detect vertebral fractures in chest and abdomen CTs, and how to detect opacities and congestive heart failure in chest x-rays and many others." Because not only are computers better at this than people--they can handle the huge quantities of data, as we do more and more scans to diagnose disease. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for March is VEERAH, founded by Stacey Chang, WG'12.Elevator pitch, from Stacey: “Veerah is inspired by women, made for warriors. We are a mission-driven luxury shoe company founded for women to conquer the world in style and make a positive impact. Veerah is PETA approved vegan. All of our shoes are responsibly sourced and meticulously crafted without compromising quality and style. We are proud that we are the only luxury shoe brand that offers high fashion, high function and high impact. Our founding principle is to do good, look incredible.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

How do you go about convincing factories to work with your startup--especially if you're trying to make a luxury shoe entirely vegan, without sacrificing quality craftsmanship or comfort? Stacey Chang, WG'12, founder of VEERAH, knows, because that's exactly what she did. Listen to her and Karl Ulrich, Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the Wharton School, talk about her manufacturing journey, plus the story of how she got Suzy Welch into a pair of VEERAH shoes (hint: it involves Instagram and a lot of persistence). See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

After 20 years as what she calls a "sick care entrepreneur," Ashley Dombkowski wanted to truly become a health care entrepreneur. She’s now Co-founder and CEO of SpoonfulOne, a startup that is trying to stop food allergies before they start. Based on intellectual property licensed from Stanford University, SpoonfulOne introduces the foods are responsible for 90% of food allergies to babies when they are just four to six months old and starting to eat solid food. The science behind this says that, as Ashley explains, “if you can introduce and then include foods that may commonly become allergenic before they become actual allergens to that immune system, we can keep the body from starting to think that those foods are actually something that they should mount an attack to.” Basically, give babies common allergens right away, and they’re less likely to develop allergies to those foods. SpoonfulOne makes this as easy as possible: the product comes in powder form, and includes a daily dose of vitamin D. Parents c

Finding a new place to live is stressful, but VeryApt—founded by two Wharton MBA alumni, Scott Bierbryer and Ashrit Kamireddi, both WG’14—aims to reduce that stress by restoring trust in the apartment search process. Recently, Scott joined Karl Ulrich, Wharton’s Vice Dean of Entrepreneurship and Innovation, on his radio show, Launch Pad. Here’s Scott’s elevator pitch for VeryApt: “VeryApt is an apartment marketplace that allows renters to search, schedule and sign an apartment all on one platform. When we built VeryApt what we really wanted to solve was trust in the process. So when lots of people think about the apartment search they think about bait and switch and they think about scams and they really are not sure what they're getting into when they're moving to a new apartment. Everything that differentiates our site is really focused on building up that trust and then getting the renter to the point where they can really enjoy thinking about their new home.” Listen to Karl and Scott’s half hour conversat

Fig Loans is super cool for a bunch of reasons: 1)They’re in the payday loans business, but they’re helping people rebuild their credit; 2)The founders are Wharton alumni who met and founded the company while they were getting their MBAs (fun fact: their first project, created at PennApps Hackathon two weeks before school started, was a game called Llama Run);3)Karl loves the way they identified the opportunity for Fig Loans; 4)Their goal is to “survive indefinitely and to not rely on venture capital money, but to take it, instead, for purposeful growth.” There’s so much here to love. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for February is Rockets of Awesome, founded by Rachel Blumenthal. Elevator pitch: “Rockets of Awesome is a personal shopping service and vertical apparel brand for kids. What we really seek to do is to deliver solutions and services to parents. And what we had identified is that kids are outgrowing their clothes every single season. So unlike you and me, where maybe we want a new pair of jeans or a new jacket, my kids actually need an entire new full dresser every single season. It's entirely time-consuming and expensive to do that every three months. So we wanted to do the work for parents, and deliver them exceptional products and value with amazing service.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Karl Ulrich has given a LOT of thought to how to come up with a great company name, but his conversation with Rockets of Awesome founder Rachel Blumenthal has made him revise his naming rules. Listen to hear why he thinks Rockets of Awesome is such a great name--as well as for some great entrepreneurial insights about how to validate an idea, and for hints on the huge importance of data—as Rachel puts it, “We are actually a tech and data science company, that is masked by a kids' apparel brand.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

In the words of Sally Poblete, WG'00, Wellthie founder: “Wellthie is a marketplace and sales optimization platform so that small businesses can find the best fit insurance for them across the United States, with the help of a licensed insurance expert.” Wellthie lays out the full array of insurance options for small business—with under 50 or, in some states, under 100 employees—which account for 95% of businesses in the US, employing about 50-60 million people. Sally knows this industry from the inside—she spent over 20 years in healthcare—and she always knew she wanted to start her own business. A few years ago, she saw that “technology, consumerism, and then regulation were all forming a perfect storm” where she could make an impact. Wellthie was born. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

You need to deck out a new home--you need Snowe. Founder Andres Modak, WG'12, G'12, has sourced luxury essentials and priced them way below fancy department stores. Here's his elevator pitch: "Snowe is first and foremost, a vertical brand. We're building the home goods destination for the contemporary consumer. What we do is, we simplify shopping for the home by providing, designing, and selling the perfect luxury quality home essentials at attainable prices. So, what does that mean? We're primarily an e-commerce platform, but we are our own brand. We design and develop and sell luxury-quality linens, bed linens, bath linens, glassware, flatware, dinnerware -- all of your basics, all of your foundational goods. And we do that directly to the consumer online. All of these products are designed and developed to be absolutely exceptional, but at very disruptive prices. We're able to achieve that through innovative product design, cutting out middle men and markups, and selling directly to the consumer. " See aca

Karl Ulrich's Elevator Pitch of the Month for January is The One Health Company, founded by Penn and Wharton alum Benjamin Lewis. Here’s Ben's elevator pitch: “The One Health Company is changing the way that animal testing is done. We’re totally turning it on its head, from something that hurts animals to something that actually benefits animals. Rather than taking animals in the laboratory that are otherwise healthy, giving them a disease, and then testing on them, what we do is we work with pet parents whose dogs and cats are naturally sick, and we pair them into pharmaceutical trials in an effort to try to make them better. The best part is, we actually pay for everything, and these pets are being seen by the world’s best veterinarians. And it turns out that this data ends up saving pharma a tremendous amount of money on the back end.” See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Here’s founder Ben Lewis' elevator pitch: “The One Health Company is changing the way that animal testing is done. We’re totally turning it on its head, from something that hurts animals to something that actually benefits animals. Rather than taking animals in the laboratory that are otherwise healthy, giving them a disease, and then testing on them, what we do is we work with pet parents whose dogs and cats are naturally sick, and we pair them into pharmaceutical trials in an effort to try to make them better. The best part is, we actually pay for everything, and these pets are being seen by the world’s best veterinarians. And it turns out that this data ends up saving pharma a tremendous amount of money on the back end.” Not only does The One Health Company offer more ethical animal testing, and give “pet parents” the chance to enroll their sick animals in clinical trials with cutting edge treatments—but the data from these tests is significantly better. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out inform

Possibly the worst part of healthcare is the sheer incomprehensibility of the bill. Is it right? Is it wrong? With all those codes, and back and forth with the insurance company, who can tell? As it turns out, people mostly just don’t pay healthcare bills. According to Chris Wolfington, founder of FinPay, “in 2016 there were $460 billion, with a b, in out of pocket expenses for consumers. Only 19% paid their bill.” Chris explains why this happens: “People don’t pay things they don’t understand, people don’t pay things that aren’t simple, and people don’t pay things where they don’t have a variety of options on how to pay…. Health care doesn’t do any one of those things.” FinPay does. Imagine sitting down with someone, before you get that knee operation, and understanding what you’re going to pay for it, and figuring out a payment plan. No confusion, no anxiety when an unexpectedly huge bill arrives. That sure sounds a whole lot better than getting an incomprehensible bill in the mail 30 days later. Better for

If you can lead soldiers into battle, you can cold call 140 investors. Neuroflow founder Chris Molero, WG’17, is a veteran, and he’s seen the effects of PTSD. As he reminds us, “20 veterans a day commit suicide, on average.” Neuroflow is his way of fighting back. Neuroflow uses wearables to measure the physical effects of stress, and quantify them in a way that is useful to therapists who are treating people for severe anxiety and stress. For the first time, therapists can use quantifiable measurements to see if their therapies are working—and adjust for maximum effectiveness. Listen to hear how Chris and Karl talk about fundraising--and how Neuroflow ultimately raised $1.25 million, after talking with 140 investors. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.