Freshmen start think tank to foster campus entrepreneurship

TCO Labs, a new student-run think tank focused on promoting entrepreneurship at Hopkins, plans to bring startups and entrepreneurs to campus, starting with its upcoming fall 2016 conference. The acronym stands for technology, creativity and opportunity.

Freshman Anthony Garay, TCO Labs’ executive officer, explained the ultimate goals of the group and its different plans to benefit the Hopkins community through entrepreneurship and business.

“We’re a think tank focused on fostering entrepreneurship on campus, so one of our main goals is the fall conference, which is going to be some time in September,” Garay said “We’re going to bring in speakers. We’re going to bring in startups.”

Garay and his team have been working with Lawrence Aronhime, a professor at the Center for Leadership Education, to devise regular programming for the club.

“The way I see it, there are going to be three different components,” Garay said. “There would be a networking session — just a casual get-to-know-people-from-startups. Then we would also have a pitching-off session where you’d be pitching your idea to a crowd of different people, and they’d help you build up the idea. The big event is the symposium, which we’re working on with TedxJHU, that would be entrepreneurs and speakers talking on a variety of topics ranging from networking to team building to time management to product and finance — all the different aspects of creating a startup.”

Garay described TCO Labs’ name and origins as well as how its creation was an entirely team-driven, creative effort.

“I messaged on [the Class of 2019 Facebook page] and asked, ‘Does anybody like entrepreneurship? We can make a group chat,’” Garay said. “What ended up happening is we did the group chat, and 12 of us kept continuously texting and chatting. I called it ‘The Crazy Ones’ after the Steve Jobs quotation, ‘Here’s to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels.’ We spent every waking hour talking about everything from business to entrepreneurship to just getting to know each other.”

Garay said that when he and his future cofounders of TCO Labs arrived on campus last fall, they saw a need for an entrepreneurship club that was focused on inspiring students and giving them the necessary skills and courage to start their own ventures.

“I saw different clubs but nothing quite piqued my interest, so I texted [the group chat] asking, ‘What if we start our own student group? Something like a think tank, something that focuses on entrepreneurship and technology?’” Garay said. “We went through a lot of different names and then we landed on TCO Labs, which stands for technology, creativity, opportunity and in the end is a nod back to the original ‘crazy ones.’”

Freshman Colin Muraika, TCO Labs’ networking officer, discussed how the club plans to focus on a greater outreach into the community and to other universities.

“We’re not trying to do all this on the Hopkins campus,” Muraika said. “Our goal is to eventually work with other universities, even high school students and eventually spread out beyond this community.”

TCO Labs is currently in talks with companies such as EntreQuest and UNCUBED to realize its vision of bringing entrepreneurs to Homewood.

“We’re working together with EntreQuest, which is an incubator in downtown Baltimore. They’re considering sponsoring the [fall conference], and they’re working really closely with us,” Garay said.

Freshman Andrew Wong, the think tank’s operating officer, spoke about the role that New York City-based UNCUBED will play in partnering with TCO Labs.

“UNCUBED in New York City is a company that does a lot of job fairs, career fairs and tech talks in New York, Chicago, L.A., all these big cities,” Wong said. “We’re working with them to get startups here to teach students how to get started with entrepreneurship but also to inspire them to start their own venture.”

Muraika elaborated on the relationship that TCO Labs is building through these partnerships as the team prepares for their fall conference.

“Everything right now is focused on our fall conference, and the funding we get is more of a mutualistic relationship with the companies that are willing to sponsor us,” Muraika said. “It’s kind of like a give-and-take for what we’ll get out of these companies — UNCUBED, EntreQuest — and what they can give to us.”

Garay believes that while the process of launching TCO Labs has not been easy, the overall experience has been rewarding because of the close-knit team of ten people and the club’s greater mission to impact communities outside of Hopkins.

“In the end, doing it with people you really get along well with and care about — when it all comes together like that, it’s a great thing,” Garay said. “We want to connect with all these different universities and put Hopkins on the map to say that this is a university that is known for its medicine but is also known for its entrepreneurship and innovation.”