Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (JHTV) is a University organization that provides funding and support for undergraduate entrepreneurs. This semester will mark the second year of one of JHTV’s programs, The Ralph S. O’Connor Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Fund.
Kasim Ahmad is the Student Venture Coordinator for JHTV, making him the main point of contact for any students seeking help with their entrepreneurial endeavours, including the FastForward program.
“Tech Ventures includes many entrepreneurial opportunities. My job is to help students navigate resources at Hopkins and within the greater Baltimore area,” Ahmad said. “We do our best to help student entrepreneurs move forward given their goals. This includes everything from ‘I have this awesome idea, so what next?’ to ‘I built this technology, so how do I obtain my first round of venture capital?’”
Along with FastForward and other JHTV programs, Mr. Ahmad is also involved in helping develop and improve the O’Connor Fund.
“The O’Connor Fund provides grant money for undergraduates who have a company or project, with a clear entrepreneurial focus. The fund provides $5,000-$10,000 of non-diluted grant funding for any undergraduate entrepreneur,” Ahmad said. “The undergrads will work with a mentor to develop their programs in order to reach necessary goals.”
According to its website, the fund was made possible through the generous gift of a Krieger School of Arts and Sciences (KSAS) alumnus, Ralph S. O’Connor.
During the fund’s first year it provided support for five companies: Aezon, Clean Air Pillow, BHEST Medical, Forte Health and FitMango (formerly ShapeU). In order to receive funding and support from the O’Connor fund, applicants must go through a selective application process.
First, potential applicants meet JHTV staff, who give team advice on application development. Proposals are then sent to a committee who decide how to move forward with the projects.
Senior Neil Rens, a team member of Aezon, one of the companies in the O’Connor Fund’s 2015 cohort, noted the significant support provided by the O’Connor Fund and JHTV’s receptivity to improving the program for this year’s recipients.
“Aezon is a team of undergraduates building a system that enables patients to self-diagnose fifteen diseases. The money from the O’Connor Fund was instrumental to our product development and helped us submit our system into the final round of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE competition,” he wrote in an e-mail to The News-Letter. “When we received the grant, other resources like mentorship were not included. However, Kasim and the rest of Tech Ventures were very receptive to our suggestion to provide O’Connor recipients with more of a cohort experience.”
Another recipient is senior Jordan Matelsky, a cofounder of FitMango with Seal-Bin Han.
“Seal-Bin Han and I cofounded FitMango (formerly ShapeU) with the intention of making health and wellness more accessible to the general public,” Matelsky wrote in an email to The News-Letter. “FitMango is a web-app and mobile-app platform that matches users with other like-minded individuals with similar fitness goals for group-training sessions in order to make personal training more affordable and more personalized.”
Matelsky feels positively about how the University has improved in supporting student entrepreneurship since he was a freshman. Specifically, he welcomes the added mentor and communal support that this year’s O’Connor Fund recipients will receive.
“The O’Connor Fund is proof that the University is on the right track, and I think we owe a great deal of gratitude to the O’Connor family,” Matelsky wrote. “When we joined the Summer 2015 cohort, the O’Connor Fund was simply a grant, and the budgeting and spending of that grant was largely at the discretion of the recipients. The board selected some spectacular applicants, and one of the greatest opportunities the Fund afforded us was the opportunity to connect with these innovative teams.”
The first few weeks of this semester offer a number of opportunities for undergraduate entrepreneurs on campus.
On Feb. 5, Y-Combinator will be giving a talk in Hodson 110 at 5:30 p.m. about innovation and start-ups in 2016 giving students an opportunity to network, and Feb. 12 marks the application deadline for the O’Connor Fund.
Y-Combinator, a startup fund, has funded startup companies including Reddit, DropBox and AirBnB. Y-Combinator Partner Dalton Caldwell and Hardware Specialist Luke Iseman, also from Y-Combinator, will be on campus.
Before their talk with a Q&A session, they will host office hours from 2-5 p.m. for students to talk to them about some of their ideas.
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