MIT delta v Demo Day is TODAY, Friday, September 6 at 4:00 pm ET!

This is your chance to meet the next generation of world-changing startups …
If you’re on campus, join us at Kresge Auditorium; please register here. (Doors open at 3:30.) For everyone else, you can join us virtually by watching the Livestream link. You can also follow the Trust Center’s Twitter feed and the #MITdeltav hashtag.

A quick background … MIT delta v is MIT’s student venture accelerator providing a capstone educational opportunity for MIT student entrepreneurs who spend three months in the summer working in preparation to hit escape velocity and launch. Demo Day is the culmination of the program – the biggest day of the year for entrepreneurship on the MIT campus – so get ready to learn about the next wave of MIT startups that are ready to change the world!

Every summer we select the best of the teams that apply – students with an interesting idea or proof-of-concept – and we help them to create impactful, innovation-driven startups. For 2019, 17 teams worked full-time at the Martin Trust Center on MIT’s Cambridge campus, plus 7 teams that worked at the MIT NYC Startup Studio in New York City.

These teams were focused on:

• Team building, organization development, and dynamics
• Understanding their target market, customers, and users
• Learning the mechanics of venture creation (company formation, legal, financial, raising money, and more)

This year’s delta v teams are listed below, with a brief description and the companies’ web sites. At Demo Day, each team will have an opportunity to launch their company to the world via a short intro video followed by a live presentation from the founders. (You can also see more in-depth overviews of the 2019 delta v teams on our website with each team’s Demo Day presentation shared on our website after the event.)

delta v startups – 2019 cohort

Abound Early learning, without the screens https://aboundparenting.com/	Hardworkers A digital community for working-class Americans hard-workers.com	Ocular Technologies Diagnostics at the speed of sight www.ocular-tech.com
Acoustic Wells Intelligent IoT for the oil and gas market www.acoustic-wells.com	Haystack Ag Empowering a new generation of farmers www.haystackag.com	Precavida One-stop shop healthcare platform with a personalized navigator www.precavida.com.br
Alpaca Technology, Inc. Helping people find their homes www.rentalpaca.com	Haystack Health Intelligent chronic disease management platform https://www.haystack.health/	Quantifai We scale low-touch customer success with machine learning www.quantif.ai
Atem Helping people breathe easy https://www.getatem.us/	Insanirator Solving urban sanitation, now https://www.insanirator.com/	Season Three Boots for Humans www.seasonthree.com
auggi Building AI technology for better gut health management www.auggi.ai	Live Sports Markets Fantasy sports shouldn’t end when the game begins www.livesportsmarkets.com	SirMixABot Preferred drinks, preferred location https://www.sirmixabot.com/
CaroCare Personalized, on-demand care for new parents and their babies www.carocareco.com	Lynx Explore the city in a new way! www.lynxsharing.com	Spatio Metrics Enabling a future in which every building makes us healthier www.spatiometrics.com
Easel Flexible Childcare, because life happens! easel.care	Mantle Biotech Extreme biology, extreme impact http://mantlebiotech.com/	TireTutor Buying tires made easy https://tiretutor.co/
Elemen Skin care so personalized that it evolves with you www.skinelemen.com	Nextiles Smart apparel for superior workout www.nextiles.tech	Viridis Enabling financial inclusion through affordable and scalable data solutions www.viridisrs.com

As our 2019 teams have been preparing for Demo Day, I’ve been reflecting on my past five years as a leader of the program, and my current role as Executive Director of delta v. The program has evolved and changed during that time, and I believe it has gotten stronger each year.

My reflections on five years with delta v

My plan for the summer of 2015 was to take some time off, enjoy a little rest and relaxation, and figure out the next chapter of my life after serving as an IBM executive and completing my doctorate degree. I learned about MIT’s Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, which was a place where I could see ultimately merging two of my passions – education and entrepreneurship. That initial phone call from Bill Aulet, the Center’s Managing Director, meant my relaxing summer plans were ruined!

Bill talked to me about this accelerator program he had started and how he needed someone to run it for the summer. I had never met Bill, but his passion, energy, and approach to entrepreneurship was in sync with my experience, and his excitement was contagious – so I signed on for summer 2015.

Over the years, the program name has changed.

We’ve gone from the Beehive, to FSA, then GFSA, to delta v, a name that literally means a “change in velocity.” We believe delta v truly captures what happens to these students when they join us for MIT’s accelerator program. The venue for Demo Day at MIT has also changed as we keep growing and more people want to come and be the first to meet our teams!

We’ve experienced geographical expansion as well. After initially taking the Demo Day show on the road with invitation-only events in New York City and Silicon Valley/San Francisco, we’ve now completed the third successful year of the MIT NYC Startup Studio – a separate cohort run by Carly Chase. (Watch this NYC Startup Studio video for a quick overview.)

The teams are amazing, which has been a constant through the five years.  

Many teams from my first year (Sandymount, Woobo, Khethworks, Humon, Ori Systems, VS Particle, and Spyce) are still going strong and even growing by leaps and bounds. Each year we see delta v startups become successful; they gain funding, win awards, even get acquired.

Feedback from our students each year has helped shape the program along they way. They’ve let us know how they want to learn, what is valuable to them, and what is different from what they learn in their classes. The initial feedback was that delta v was too curriculum-based, and since MIT had a lot of entrepreneurship course work that students had previously taken, we pivoted and began bringing in outside subject matter expert speakers plus added the support of multiple Entrepreneurs-in-Residence (EIRs). The hands-on, experiential learning at delta v is what differentiates these successful startups.

Our board members are incredible.

The delta v teams are guided along the way by a mock board of directors. The board is made up of heavy hitters – business executives, entrepreneurs, faculty, and domain experts – who give generously of their time and talents. When I started in 2015, I reached into my community, particularly with The Boston Club and the Society of Women Engineers to increase the diversity and technical expertise on our boards.

We also familiarized the boards with our rubric, and the Disciplined Entrepreneurship vocabulary that is so central to our everyday discussions. Last year was the first where we added delta v alums to the board, allowing current teams to learn from their peers who had gone through the same process.

We’re constantly improving our storytelling.

The best startup idea in the world will fall flat if you can’t explain it effectively. Each year, we realize more and more how communication – within delta v, with the board members, and ultimately at launch – is just as essential as a team defining its target market or raising funds. This year we used more video, put a greater emphasis on storytelling for Demo Day, and introduced Entrepreneurship Confidence and Communication as part of our program.

We have fantastic stories to tell and inspiring businesses to launch. Tune in to Demo Day 2019!