We’ve all had life drop misfortune and frustrations on our head. Every so often we wreck our cars, we break our phones, we lose our wallets, or we have our expensive things stolen. In these situations, it seems as if nothing is to be done but swallow our exasperation, deal with the taxing and financially draining consequences, and simply move one. After all, life happens.

But what if when life throws inevitable mishaps our way, we were prepared to handle them? What if when setbacks occurred, we could move forward without losing an immense amount of time, sanity, and money?

Ryan Taggart, a senior studying information management and technology at the School of Information Studies (iSchool), as a project for his major capstone, is creating a solution to the headache and hassle that occurs after valuable personal belongings have been stolen. His app, Itemize, allows users to enter their product information for expensive equipment such as laptops or cameras; so that they can easily and quickly share this information with the police if a theft occurs. The app also allows users to input their insurance coverage policy so that they can contact their insurance company as soon as they realize their belongings have been stolen. Itemize enables rapid response in both reporting a theft and attempting to uncover the crime and apprehend the perpetrator; because in detecting theft time is critical and each minute passed is a minute harder to find the perpetrator.

Taggart was inspired to create Itemize because he knows firsthand the complications and headache of being stolen from.  Taggart, who is an avid videographer and photographer, had just finished filming a promotional for a gym when his car was broken into.  His camera, lenses, computer, backpack, hard drives — all his expensive equipment that his business and source of income depended on — was gone. When he called the police, he realized he was not at all prepared to report the theft. In order to file an insurance claim and accurate police report he needed the serial numbers for each item stolen.  

Yet Taggart had no idea of what his serial numbers were or any distinctive identification for his belongings. “It took days. I had to go through debit card statements from years back.” The enormous effort he was forced to go through to even file reports motivated him to create a service so others wouldn’t undergo the same difficulties.

Itemize is not the first project that Taggart has developed or his first entrepreneurial endeavor. Since a young age the wonder of creating something new and the relentless drive to succeed motivated him to turn his ideas into tangible projects. When he was younger he created a global Skiing Memes Facebook page and developed a team of admins from all over the world.  “Just the little things like selling boy scout popcorn as young as ten years old and raising over a thousand dollars because I wanted to beat everyone in my troop [inspired me.]”  His enthusiasm and willpower to work persistently on his ideas is apparent in his creation of Itemize and his personal history of entrepreneurship.

Yet Taggart believes that he couldn’t accomplish his goals without the invaluable help of team members. Collaborating with others overflowing with bright ideas is to him the best part of entrepreneurship.  

For Itemize, he created a team pulled from the incredible talent Syracuse University has to offer. His teammates Jason Zhou, a junior in iSchool, and Zhen Xin Tan Ruan, a graduate studying for a computer science masters, are people he regards as invaluable to the creation of Itemize.  Every week they held creative meetings and interviewed potential users: something Taggart is immensely appreciative of and misses now that the current pandemic necessitates social distancing. “If you want your dream to come to life, you need a dream team.”         

He also is grateful for the help he received from the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at Syracuse University and credits it with driving his success. “I wouldn’t have made it this far without the LaunchPad. Working in an environment where people around you are so smart- it’s electric.”

Taggert’s ability to take an unfortunate event that caused difficulties in his life and turn it into a service that helps others avoid the difficulties he underwent speaks to his vision and motivation for creating solutions to modern-day problems. When he first began to work on Itemize, he wasn’t a master coder or an expert on user needs. He had never made an app before. For him, the essential skill for entrepreneurship is passion. His indomitable dedication to tackle new projects, learn new skills, and discover new solutions speaks to his wholehearted passion and to the ideas each of us can produce if we, too, let passion drive our projects.

Story by Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow Claire Howard   Photo supplied

In a world where gender equality is a championed ideal and girls are urged to break glass ceilings and defy stereotypes, it may be easy to assume that inequality is an archaic misfortune of the past. Since our society has transformed into one where there are no legal or institutional barriers to women’s careers, we might think that women’s opportunities and successes are unlimited.

Unfortunately, in many fields today, equality of success is still only an ideal.  For example, women in America are more likely to be in poverty than men. In trade fields such as plumbing, mechanics, and electrical work, there is still a large disparity between the number of male and female workers.

Nancy Wang, a senior studying finance and public relations with a concentration in financial and investor communications in the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, is passionate about narrowing the gap between genders in trade industries and supporting women in these fields. Because of her commitment to seeing women in trade fields succeed, she started Girl Power, a platform which connects female technicians with women who need their services. Girl Power not only seeks to support and give business to female technicians, but also gives women the ability to choose female technicians to help them feel safer and more comfortable.

Wang first began to notice this gender disparity growing up and observing her father’s work in construction development.  She noticed how few women there were working in these fields, which motivated her to find solutions for this problem and support the women who were in these fields.  She first created the idea of Girl Power during a business pitch competition in high school. Though she didn’t develop it into a product at the time, this past year she was inspired to turn her hopes of strengthening women’s success into a tangible service when she and her roommates needed to hire a technician in their apartment. She realized that while she currently lived with her roommates; if she lived alone, she would feel more comfortable hiring a female technician due to safety concerns.  Her desire to provide this safety to other women combined with her passion for supporting women in trade fields inspired her to turn Girl Power into a marketable platform.

One of Wang’s main obstacles in launching Girl Power has been one of the very reasons why Girl Power’s work is critical. She’s struggled with finding numerous female technicians to partner with because the number of them is so few, which has been discouraging.  In Wang’s eyes, this is a serious issue because women have the opportunity and ability to enter these fields, but traditionally do not choose trade programs due to the lack of knowledge about them. She referenced a program at her high school where students who did not want to go to a traditional college could attend a trade school program to train for skilled jobs. While the men went into plumbing and welding programs that opened the doors to well-paying jobs and stable careers, most of the women went into cosmetology, which did not pay as well as the other technical fields. “It used to be that women couldn’t do these jobs because there was a lot of heavy lifting and other barriers, but now there’s technology that makes it accessible — it’s just the stigma behind it.”

Wang hopes that by supporting women who are currently in trade fields, it will empower more women to go join the field and ensure their long-term success, despite the stigma that may be associated with it.  Her experience in finding few women in technical fields has fueled her passion for making sure these fields are accessible to all and contributing to the careers of female technicians. 

“It makes the cause more important to me. If I can support the few female technicians there are, I can create a sense of community around the subject and empower women to want to do it—then I will feel like I’m making a difference around that field.”

Story by Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow Claire Howard   Photo supplied

The importance of coding in today’s tech-based world cannot be denied. We live in an era where business, information, communication and data storage are utterly reliant on systems of software created by lines of code. If we had not realized it before, the COVID-19 epidemic where our work and social contact have continued only because of technical and virtual world we have built has opened our eyes to the importance and power. Coding is a skill that many argue is now as important as reading and writing.

However, not everyone has access to coding education and the ability to gain this valuable skill for themselves.  Although it seems as if the campaigns to get students interested in coding are innumerable; it’s simply not the case that everyone is able to learn coding. In many communities, such as communities of color within cities, there is a reality of a ‘coding gap’ where computer science is not taught and students have no opportunity to learn it.

Mohammed Ali, a sophomore studying information technology, hopes to change that unfortunate reality. “Coding is an essential skill that everyone should know. Learning to code isn’t accessible for individuals in urban communities.”

In order to bridge these coding gaps, an issue that Ali believes is of utmost importance, he started an organization in 2017 called Urban Coders, which is a computer science education platform for students in elementary and middle schools.  In the past, Ali used his free time to volunteer teaching students in classroom coding; and the inequalities he discovered within coding education inspired him to create an organization to increase access. 

Ali taught New York City middle school students after their classes were over and helped them learn how to code. It’s these students he was teaching, Ali said, that are often left without education of important skills such as coding. He understands the value of coding because when he learned to code at a younger age knowing that skill helped him grow professionally and pave the way for his future career.

Urban Coders hopes to reach and educate these students through hosting coding camps in cities. This past winter, the organization partnered with a nonprofit to host a computer science camp in South Bronx over students’ winter break.  This summer, they’re partnering with two nonprofits focused on empowering students of color to host a series of coding camps in New York City.

As he teaches these coding camps, Ali is also planning to expand Urban Coders. For the camps this summer, he’s created an original curriculum to teach from. He’s also looking to expand his team—in the past he has planned and taught all camps but now he’s working to add more teachers to his team so he can focus on outreach and managing his organization.  He’s passionate about his mission of increasing computer science education and helping students. Not only has Urban Coders contributed social change and positively impacted students’ lives, but it has also grown immensely. Originally it started out as Ali’s idea for a way to help students’ lives, but due to his hard work it has since grown into a successful company that Is part of the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at SU Libraries.

Especially now that we are, even temporarily, living lifestyles that are have almost wholly turned virtual; the necessity of educating our future generation to understand, maintain, and help create these technologies is paramount. Coding is the language our world today is built upon, and students should have access to learning that language. Organizations such as Ali’s Urban Coders are playing an essential role in educating the next generation and creating a progress-oriented world.

Story by Claire Howard, Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow Photo supplied

VR, which stands for Virtual Reality, is one of the hottest new technologies that most people aren’t hearing a lot about right now. According to statista.com, in 2018, there have been just about 171 million VR users, of which about 114 million users were early adopters. Comparing this to just about 3.8 billion cell phone users in the same year, it is evident the VR isn’t as popular. This can mostly be attributed to the current applications of VR technology. Companies like Oculus and Microsoft have found success in VR by developing them for primarily gaming reasons. While this provides a phenomenal and immersive gaming experience, it has over time subverted the true capabilities of this truly fantastic technology. A young entrepreneur by the name of Matt Shumer is changing that.

Matt Shumer is a sophomore studying Entrepreneurship at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University and a Rubin Family Innovation Mentor at the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at SU Libraries. He is also the founder of Visos, which is a company most known for working towards applying VR technology for the healthcare industry.

Shumer describes Visos as a “company building the first VR headset designed specifically for healthcare and medical VR use-cases.” Shumer, who has been an entrepreneur since he was twelve, had his first VR experience a few years ago when he was in high school. “I was at the mall by my house with some friends and I tried an HTC VR headset. I was fascinated by the level of immersion, and I went home to find out that the VR industry is very primitive.”

Shumer cites this experience as the spark which led him to explore more about the VR industry. He realized that although there were quite a lot of incumbents in the industry, they were all primarily serving the gaming industry. He also realized that the current VR technology that exists is quite advanced and in all respects of the word, fascinating. However, despite the recent advances in VR technology, Shumer notes how this piece of technology is far away from being used by the average daily user due to its limited applications. After conducting some research on his own during his senior year of high school, which only fascinated him more, he decided to design a VR headset himself.

“I literally, just walked into the LaunchPad with the idea for a VR headset.”  From there, he virtually lived in the LaunchPad, working on building Visos.

From the onset, Shumer’s goal was to “make something with no friction between the technology and the user” and to expand the use-cases of VR. Initially, he started off by marketing multiple use-cases to a variety of potential users, but eventually he landed on the healthcare industry. Shumer discerned the vast possibilities for this technology and its potential benefits in the healthcare industry. 

One of the biggest problems that Shumer and his team have had to overcome is designing a working physical prototype. As an entrepreneur who prefers working with software, it was difficult for Shumer and his team to secure initial funding and build a working prototype with integrated software. However, at this stage, Visos is a couple of months away from having a commercial product ready for shipping.  One of the reasons why building the hardware component was challenging is because the VR industry in and of itself is quite primitive. This means that there is a lack of understanding regarding the technology, particularly when it isn’t being used for gaming related content. Visos overcame this by being “very scrappy and not spending a lot of our initial capital on frills.” However, Shumer maintains that the applications for VR in the healthcare field are huge and the benefits are tremendous. The technology has scientific basis for preventing Opioid addiction, combating Alzheimer’s, and improving rehabilitation. VR can also be used to mitigate the effects of several mental health disorders and can aid in psychotherapy.

Originally from Long Island, NY, Shumer first started an online retail venture when he was twelve years old. Since then, he started various other ventures and even created online platforms to help regional suppliers organize their inventory and a marketplace for buyers and sellers of products to transact. He credits his personality for his drive and enthusiasm for entrepreneurship. He explains that he enjoys challenging the norm and reinventing existing processes.

Shumer also credits the Blackstone Launchpad powered by Techstars for the success of Visos. He says, “This company would not be here if it wasn’t for the LaunchPad.” He believes that the LaunchPad provided him with significant guidance, resources and mentorship, all of which were necessary to accelerate Visos to where it is today.  The LaunchPad also helped him connect with investors and important strategic advisors.

Shumer also greatly benefitted from the LaunchPad’s partnership with Techstars.  He participated in the LaunchPad Techstars Propel program last fall, as well as the LaunchPad Lift program powered by Techstars.  His Techstars mentor has brought strong technical capacity to his team. Visos expects to be fully operational very soon. Within the next few years, Shumer expects to have headsets in hospitals across the nation, all of which would explore the vast untouched potential of VR technology.

Story by Blackstone LaunchPad Global Fellow Krishna Pamidi ‘22

The usual entrepreneurial story goes something like this.  A user is passionate about something, a product, service or technology.  A user then spends some time getting familiar with the ins and outs of the ‘thing’ that they are passionate about.  A user finds a glaring inefficiency in the process of making or distributing that ‘thing’ and then creates a way, either by a new product or service in order to close the gap. While this may not be every entrepreneur’s journey, but it is safe to say that many follow a similar journey to varying degrees. Case in point: Neil Blumenthal & Dave Gilboa of Warby Parker, Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines, Chip Wilson of Lululemon etc. One other thing that some of these entrepreneurs have in common is that they started exploring entrepreneurship around college at the earliest.  Alexandra Cianfarani ’22 has a slightly different story to share.

Cianfarani studies information studies at the School of Information Studies (iSchool) with a minor in EEE program at the Martin J. Whitman School of Management, and is a member of the Blackstone LaunchPad. She is also the president of the Syracuse University Entrepreneurship Club.

She started in high school selling glow necklaces at the Massachusetts firework events. “I would buy glow necklaces in bulk and travel to Massachusetts events and sell them, particularly around the 4^th of July.”  She realized that there was a market for them and saw expanded demand.

While at Syracuse University, she was first exposed to formal entrepreneurship training, when she represented Syracuse University at a Tech Stars Startup Weekend In Los Angeles.  From there, she came back and helped create the first ever Syracuse LaunchPad Startup Week in fall 2019. “Startup Weekend is basically a weekend long competition to build a team, and design and pitch a product to pitch to a panel of judges.” She describes this event as ‘educating.’

Cianfarani’s first idea came to her during the fall of 2019. After interning at CORE Higher Education Group, and spending her time curating educational modules for pharmacy school students, Cianfarani came up with a similar idea but for the business/entrepreneurship student demographic. She pitched the idea, but due to a mismatch of markets for CORE, she could not pursue the idea just yet. She did, however, spend her own time designing and developing an idea.  “I added small entrepreneurship videos around three minutes about how to run a meeting, or how to create a pitchbook, and so on.” She spent her time modelling her platform on the CORE structure but because of various barriers, was forced to shelve the idea.

Entrepreneurs turn every experience into a new path forward. So Cianfarani’s next idea ‘Clubmatch’ is her new venture. Clubmatch is essentially designed to be a platform that pairs students with countless clubs and extra-curricular initiatives on any campus. She had initially come up with the idea during her freshman involvement fair at Syracuse University. “There are only about 100 clubs present, but there are over 600 other clubs on campus which aren’t event present at the Involvement fair.” This forced Cianfarani to develop a platform that would use software to match student candidates and their interests to specific clubs that could best cater their interests. The goal is an incredibly effective service that Clubmatch is. With over 3,800 freshman students admitted each year, it is quite baffling how a service like Clubmatch doesn’t yet exist.

Cianfarani is working with one other team member to design the platform and expects to launch a prototype by the end of summer 2020. “The plan would be to start here with a beta test, and then expand to other colleges.”

Cianfarani is passionate about software. Having spent most of her time after school in her father’s software company, she has developed a genuine interest and appreciation for software and wants to open her own company one day. “I think it’s so cool that you can start and scale more quickly than developing hardware where it is much harder.”

Although not committed to a single idea, she intends to continue pursuing software design, taking this time as an entrepreneur to explore. When asked about her role models, she says,” I want to be just like my mom and dad. It’s kind of cool to look up to them you know. I want to have their career.” She appreciated her parents and views them as hard workers who have shaped her to be what she is today.

Cianfarani also notes how the Blackstone LaunchPad powered by Techstars at Syracuse University contributes to her journey as an entrepreneur. Having gone through the Startup Weekend experience, she notes how she has learned so much about the challenges and of entrepreneurship.

Story by Blackstone Global Media Fellow Krishna Pamidi ’21

It’s a wonder how simply our delicately complex bodies do everything for us. We don’t even notice as millions of tiny mechanisms operate together to breathe, grow, repair, and maintain.  We don’t notice, for example, how every time we eat food our body transports the energy or glucose from that food out of our blood and into our cells. This tiny task, one that sounds fairly easy for our intricate bodies, if not accomplished leads to serious health problems including heart disease, vision loss, and kidney disease.  Yet millions of people struggle with this very problem. Diabetes, a condition where the pancreas fails to produce the insulin to lower blood glucose, affects 10% of the U.S. population.  The substantial numbers of people living with this condition might appear to signify medical technology has advanced to make diabetes easy to manage and live with. However, the current practices of monitoring glucose levels throughout a day and injecting insulin when needed place a taxing strain on living an ordinary life. Russell Fearon ’20, a mechanical engineering major in The College of Engineering and Computer Science, knows too well the struggle of living with diabetes.

Two years ago, after feeling ill for a couple months, he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. So far-reaching are the effects of diabetes on his life that he can cite the exact date of his diagnosis: March 5, 2018.  A particular pain point for diabetics is monitoring glucose levels. For an individual with type 1 diabetes, glucose levels must be checked several times a day, because of how quickly levels can fluctuate and injection of insulin is needed. The current practice for checking glucose levels is through a device called a blood sugar meter, which takes a drop of blood and measures the glucose in the blood. This drop of blood is obtained through manually pricking a finger. Unfortunately, this method is painful. “Pricking your fingers hurts, you’re using them all the time, especially when you’re on your phone texting, or working on a computer keyboard.”  It also makes social situations harder to navigate. “I have to go and hide when I take my blood sugar and inject the insulin.  Often, I’d have to go run to the bathroom and then come out so I could eat.”

That’s where Russell’s venture idea, SugEx, comes in. SugEx is a smartwatch that automatically monitors glucose levels. Throughout the day, mechanisms in the watch prick the skin on the wrist or forearm, assess levels of glucose in the blood, and notify the wearer of levels and whether or not they need to take an injection of insulin. Skin on the forearm is far less delicate than skin on the fingers, so it wouldn’t be as painful and wouldn’t affect the functioning of hands. The automatic mechanisms of the watch turn the process from a visible ordeal into a discrete procedure where an individual doesn’t have to stop life at all to know glucose levels.

Russell is passionate about SugEx because he knows firsthand the burden diabetes can place on a life.  “It’s so many different things: mentally, emotionally, feeling isolated, the feeling that I’m the only one who has this.”  After his diagnosis, he sought to create a product that would make life with diabetes easier to manage and help others with diabetes feel more capable and equipped to live a life free from disruption or emotional burden.

Last summer, he participated in Syracuse’s Invent@SU program, which helps students learn how to design and protype their own original ideas. There he originated the idea of a glucose-monitoring watch and through support form Invent@SU and the LaunchPad, he’s been working to turn that dream of creating an easier life for those with diabetes into a tangible product.

“I want to help people. I really appreciate being able to affect somebody’s life positively. Because without that help, maybe they wouldn’t be living, or they wouldn’t be living the same quality of life. “  

Though his path of learning how to manage diabetes has not been a smooth one, Russell’s commitment to taking his experiences and transforming them into definitive tools to positively impact his community speaks the depth of his dream to help people. Living with diabetes is no easy undertaking, but Russell’s company SugEx hopes to help those who must undergo it live with a better quality of life.

Story by Blackstone LaunchPad Global Media Fellow Claire Howard ’23