Tag Archives: women in tech

MIT delta v 2017: Ready to Change the World!

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demo day pic 2017Are you ready to be inspired? MIT’s student venture accelerator, delta v, revealed itself to the world at our 2017 Demo Day on September 9. It was a fantastic culmination to this year’s program and our students are ready change the world with their startup companies.

I want to thank the students, our speaker Shireen Yates from Nima, the staff at the Martin Trust Center, and our live and online audiences at Demo Day. I invite you to watch the video and view the entire program to see our entrepreneurs pitch their startups.

This year, delta v hosted the largest cohort to date with 21 teams.  In addition to bringing a wide range of skill sets to the program, our 2017 cohort was the most diverse in gender and ethnic background, and had a worldwide perspective with representation from many different countries. This had a tremendous benefit in terms of networking and the teams helping each other solve challenges, supporting the philosophy that diversity fuels innovation. The teams took their skills in science, technology, design, management, and entrepreneurship to tackle everything from fresh water scarcity, climate change, and different ways of producing energy to the opioid crisis, soaring healthcare costs and gender inequality in healthcare to global financial transparency – all big problems in need of innovative solutions.

At delta v, our goal isn’t to tell the students how to do things, our goal is to lead them to their own conclusions. We are looking for students with the “heart of an entrepreneur” who are looking to solve the world’s really hard problems. We give them the opportunity to fail and get feedback in a safe environment. Plus, they learn from each other. Our value add is to help guide students who are ready to positively impact the world.

demo day 2Here’s a brief overview of each startup that presented at Demo Day (in alphabetical order). Remember them. It’s likely you’ll be able to point back and say, “I saw them when they were just a startup at MIT…”

 

 

Alba

Focused on empowering women to achieve their goals, Alba is a care giving marketplace for parents in Latin America.

Biobot Analytics

Biobot’s mission is to equip cities with data to build healthier and safer communities. Biobot Analytics’ first application is generating a new type of data on the opioid epidemic. (See recent coverage of the team in Boston Magazine.)

Blockparty

Blockparty tackles food insecurity through fun, engaging cooking classes where young professionals can learn a new recipe while also providing meals to our neighbors in need.

Bloomer Health Tech

Bloomer Health Tech is transforming heart health and quality of life for women suffering from, or at risk of, heart disease. Bloomer delivers effortless and comfortable medical-grade sensors embedded in a woman’s bra to monitor multiple biomarkers using patent-pending advanced fabrics and algorithms.

Divaqua

Divaqua is committed to making water scarcity yesterday’s problem. They are developing and commercializing higher performing, safer, and more cost-effective technology to treat wastewater.

InfiniteCooling

Power plants, the US’ largest water consumer, use 139 billion gallons of fresh water every day, which amounts to 50% of total US freshwater withdrawals. Infinite Cooling captures water in evaporative cooling tanks and reintroduces it into a powerplant’s cooling cycle.

Klarity

Klarity’s vision is to provide widespread access to concise and trustworthy legal advice through intelligent technology using machine learning to reduce the time spent on contract review.

Mayflower Venues

Mayflower Venues enables customers to create one-of-a-kind weddings and events while helping preserve unique open spaces across New England.

Mesodyne

Mesodyne is bringing portable power to those who need it most. Its breakthrough technology enables ultra-portable, reliable, and affordable energy generation for the military and beyond.

Octant

Octant’s data curation platform uses deep learning to accelerate autonomous vehicle (AV) development. Equipped with Octant’s solution, innovators can spend less time collecting and managing data, and more time improving the future of mobility.

Pine Health

Pine Health helps patients follow through on doctor’s orders by using patient data to trigger conversations with an AI-augmented health coach.

ReviveMed

ReviveMed is a precision medicine platform that aims to improve people’s health by unlocking the value of metabolomics data, allowing the right therapeutics to be delivered to the right patients.

Roots Studio

Roots Studio is a for-profit social enterprise that curates, digitizes, and markets culturally iconic artwork from indigenous and isolated artists to a global marketplace.

Sigma Ratings

Sigma Ratings is the world’s first non-credit risk rating agency and helps companies more effectively and efficiently navigate increasing regulatory challenges.

Sophia

Sophia connects patients with the right therapists for them using a data-driven matching process, creating stronger therapeutic relationships.

TradeTrack

TradeTrack aims to improve personalized customer services in the fashion industry. Their solution increases brand loyalty and helps to improve customer retention.

W8X

W8X helps athletes to become their best and strongest selves with strength training equipment that adapts to their specific needs. Inspired by robotics, W8X has developed a weight lifting system that creates resistance electrically.
Waypoint

Waypoint uses augmented reality (AR) to help frontline workers rapidly capture, access, and scale expert knowledge.

The delta v teams also present to alumni and investors in New York City and San Francisco – quite the exciting month!

See more coverage of Demo Day in the MIT News and MIT Sloan Management newsroom.

demo day 1

It’s a Wrap: MIT’s Educational Accelerator Demo Day 2016!

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mit-gfsa-demo-16

Congratulations to all of the teams that presented at our Educational Accelerator Demo Day! We kicked off MIT’s campus-wide t=0 celebration of entrepreneurship and innovation, which will continue through September 18.

If you couldn’t join us, this post gives a quick recap; and you can catch all of the presentations on video as well. For an overview of the companies presented, check out this BostonInno article – “These are the 17 Startups MIT Kept Hush-Hush this Summer.”

First of all, in my last post I had let you know that our Global Founders’ Skills Accelerator (GFSA) would be changing its name. We are now MIT’s delta v accelerator.  Why the name change? The derivative of velocity is acceleration!  Hence, the MIT Acceleration Program delta v.

delta v literally means a change in velocity, and we believe this truly captures what happens to these students when they join us for MIT’s accelerator program.

The delta v Demo Day is focused on MIT students, and students filled the auditorium and were even sitting in the aisles. Our Managing Director Bill Aulet kicked of the program and explained how these startups have reached “escape velocity” and have been “kicked out of the house” so to speak.

Bill was followed by keynote speaker Dharmesh Shah, the CTO of HubSpot and an MIT grad. He talked about increasing the success for these student startups – how to get started, why you should avoid stealth mode, why speed matters, how to find a co-founder, attract amazing people, and give yourself crazy ambitious goals. He tells students to take advantage of all your classes to hone your skills… and he says he has never heard of a single entrepreneur who regrets taking a shot at a startup (even if it failed).

Governor Charlie Baker also joined us at Demo Day, and spoke about the amount of wizardry that comes out of MIT and the staggering contribution that MIT has made to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, the country and the world.

It was then on to the student presentations. Fourteen startups made it through to Demo Day, and their company ideas covered topics from mental health to virtual reality.  We saw compelling videos from farmers whose lives have been changed because of MIT students, transportation in Rwanda and Mexico that will reduce costs for carriers, a way to make freight transportation more efficient and increase the income of truck drivers, and several ways to improve the environment.  We learned about innovations could change the lives of families dealing with cancer treatment and students in Africa.

Interested in learning more? Check out the companies that presented. They are listed below, in alphabetical order, along with links to their websites.  And, if you have a bit more time, check out the teams presenting in our Demo Day video recording.

Alfie
Armoire
Deepstream
dot Learn
Emerald
Factory Shop
FleteYa
Hive Maritime
kiron
Kumwe Logistics
Lean on Me
Leuko Labs
perch
Rendever
ricult
Solstice Initiative

I think everyone who attended Demo Day was inspired and impressed by the power of entrepreneurship at MIT. Now, we’re onward and upward, with t=0 this week with a full schedule of activities every day. Later this month, the delta v teams will be heading to New York City and San Francisco to meet with alumni and investors.

We hope you are inspired too!

The Form and Function of Being “Designing” Women

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Footpath-Landscapes-Forests-1-1024x768Assuming that form does in fact follow function, the expanding number of women engineers is nearly certain to change the way that engineering operates. Some engineering challenges actually employ the idea of letting what I’m calling the “feminine presence” emerge naturally. When the University of Oregon changed its main pedestrian walkways in the 1960s, the designers hit on a unique approach to measure human presence. Instead of laying the usual brick footpaths and expecting people to “stay on the trail,” they planted grass and watched, for a year, where people walked. Sure enough, and often in defiance of what the original designs organically suggested, people “designed” foot paths and trails though the grass. Then, the engineers laid brick footpaths over the then worn footpaths.

Take, as another example, the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair. In many ways, the event became a watershed for what would become the “American Century” of engineering. The chief board of engineers did not have a single person of color or any women on it. It would be easy to view this as a prime example of how women were left out of the American engineering revolution. However, when we examine the presence of the few women engineers and designers at the event (instead of focusing on the scarcity of women at the event), we are able to see their collective influence and abilities. Notably, as the epic Chicago World’s Fair inched closer to opening day, only the “Women’s Exhibit,” staffed and creatively designed largely by women, was completed on time. In this example, form (i.e., a team of women working together) achieved a successful function.

In an earlier post, I mentioned legislative tools aimed at forcing the employment of women in top management. Please, don’t misconstrue what I’m saying.  Laws can, and should, address the quantitative problem of discrimination, promotions based on the “good ole boys’ network” rather than merit, for example.  In the 1980s, the earliest part of my career, I was one of a very few women who worked in the engineering field. By 1998, the number of women in this field surged to over six percent of all Fortune 500 senior positions. Yet, between 2002 and 2012 – a full decade –  the rate of increase in women executives nearly flat-lined, growing from 14 percent to 18 percent, according to demographic data. This occurred even though the participation of women in the workforce approached full parity with the participation of men in the workforce.

We fix problems only when we can deeply understand them.  Women must search for the reasons why historic predictions of equality in engineering, science, and leadership haven’t worked out as predicted.  The underlying (and I think largely incorrect) assumptions about the “roles” of big data professionals – as defined by men – threaten to overshadow the organic development of the field. Unlike the University of Oregon’s footpaths, women are still typically required to conform to following the brick paths laid by men, cutting themselves off from their natural creative, collaborative and problem-solving abilities.  Big Data is fundamentally a creative, collaborative, problem-solving enterprise: asking questions, seeking answers, communicating results, looking at the bigger picture.   To fully tap into its potential, we need to let go of pre-conceived notions of what “should” be and explore what really works, for women and men alike.

Examining Problems to Uncover Opportunities with Big Data

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Realistic vector magnifying glassFailing to fully analyze and understand a problem – to see all of its sides and angles – can prevent us from uncovering an opportunity. In World War II, the Allies believed that they needed to improve their ability to strike deep into Nazi territory without experience heavy losses of their bombers. It was thought that years and countless allied lives could be saved if only the problem of heavy losses from enemy anti-aircraft could be solved. For weeks, engineers inspected aircraft after they returned from their bombing runs. Engineers reinforced the damaged, shrapnel punctured hulls and then sent the planes back out. Losses mounted. Finally, an engineer looked at the planes that had returned and it hit him. They were looking at the problem backwards. He suggested reinforcing the planes in the places where they had not been hit. It worked. The planes that made it back to base didn’t need help in their obvious points of damage. After all, they returned despite that damage. The solution hinged on transcending the obvious.

Of course, I’ll admit that the obvious fix may often be the correct one. A broken window is a broken window. In the same way, the scarcity of women in corporate boardrooms says something about the treatment of women across America – in colleges and cafes, kitchens and presidential cabinets – and increasing the numbers of women leaders will do something to rectify this. But what about the less obvious benefits? The uncovered opportunities? The value of Big Data lies in its ability to provide us with  a new view of the world. It helps us to see things in entirely new ways. So too are women leaders able to contribute a perspective that has the potential to uncover exciting new opportunities for organizations.  Now think about women working WITH Big Data: it’s fresh perspective squared.