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 | Current and alumni Swartz Fellows and Innovation Scholars visiting Accel with Dave Mawhinney, Namrata Banerjee, Meredith Grelli, Sonya Ford and Peter Clarke, Accel.
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The CMU Swartz Center Wraps Up Another Successful Entrepreneurship Trek
Each year, the Swartz Center holds its annual Entrepreneurship Trek to California's Bay Area the week before the start of Carnegie Mellon University's Spring semester. Led by CMU Swartz Center Executive Director Dave Mawhinney and Sonya Ford, Program Manager, this year's Trek was held January 6-10, 2025 and was attended by twelve graduate James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows and twelve undergraduate Innovation Scholars. The Trek aims to immerse the students into the startup and venture capital landscape of Silicon Valley, while they network and continue to build strong relationships with their fellow student cohort.
An important goal of the Trek is for the students to connect with the vast CMU alumni network and engagement with alumni founders who have made similar journeys. The students are also encouraged to search for summer internships at a startup in their space of interest. A highlight of the Trek is the annual networking event hosted by Accel, founded by Jim Swartz, MSIA '66, which was held on Thursday, January 9.
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|  |  | Visiting Mach 9 Robotics with Swartz Fellow alumnus and CEO/Founder Alex Baikovitz
| |  | Visiting VentureBridge startup, Addy AI with CEO/Founder Michael Vandi
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In addition to visiting alumni startups, the students also visited various venture capital firms including the annual visit to Accel and others such as Sequoia Capital, Pear VC, Google Ventures, Matrix Partners and Root Ventures. New this year was a special Family Business Leadership Speaker Series talk featuring Bart (MSIA 1981) and Barb O'Brien, owners of O'Brien Estate Winery, which was organized by CMU's Meredith Meyer Grelli and held on January 8 in San Francisco.
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| CMU Alumnus Bart O'Brien and Wife Barb Share How
They Created A Successful Winery at the Family Business Leadership Series Talk in San Francisco
During the recent Swartz Center Entrepreneurship Trek in California, the current cohort of James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows, Innovation Scholars, and CMU Rales Fellows, along with several CMU alumni, attended a special Family Business Leadership Speaker Series featuring Bart (MSIA 1981) and Barb O'Brien, founders and owners of O'Brien Estate Winery. The two have endured the ups and downs of building a profitable business, eventually shifting their focus to a romantic business based on passion and love. During their spirited talk, both spoke about the challenges and rewards of owning a winery capped with samples of their delicious wine.
The talk was moderated by Dr. Shubhaa Chawla, CMU MIIPS student, 2024-26 Swartz Fellow and DEIB Fellow.
The Swartz Center would like to thank sponsors George Tong, President of Gemini Food Corp, James Minor, CFO at Swank Construction Company and Helen Hanna Casey, CEO of Howard Hanna Holdings, for their support of the Family Business Initative.
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|  | Ayushman Srivastave (left), Ethan Hilton (right)
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Tepper School Undergraduate Student Makes History as Third-Youngest Funded by Y Combinator
Caseflood.ai, a rising star in the legal tech world, is transforming the way law firms handle client interactions. Founded earlier this year by Ethan Hilton, a freshman business administration major at the Tepper School of Business, Tolen Schreid from Purdue, and Ayushman Srivastava, a recent CMU Masters graduate in Information Systems Management, Caseflood.ai is an AI-powered inbound system that takes people from incoming callers to engaged and informed clients. Caseflood.ai was recently accepted into the YC Winter 2025 batch.
“Carnegie Mellon’s vibrant community has been invaluable to us. This year we were able to set up a dedicated workspace in the CMU Swartz Center, which was extremely helpful,” Hilton said. “This immersion in the university's entrepreneurial ecosystem has helped us to turn our vision into reality.”
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Niche Acquires Goodkind to Modernize How Colleges and Schools Connect with Students
Education connection platform Niche has made its first acquisition, Toronto-based Goodkind, a communication platform connecting colleges and students. Previously backed by notable startup accelerator Y Combinator, Goodkind's platform provides colleges with video messaging, Whatsapp automation, chatbots and other tools. CMU alumnus and Niche CEO Luke Skurman initially met representatives for the company at a trade show, and after connecting at subsequent events ultimately decided an acquisition was the best way for the two to collaborate.
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SWARTZ CENTER SUCCESS STORIES
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The Swartz Center has provided growth and financial resources for hundreds of students, faculty and alumni who have created great companies that positively affect the way people live. To celebrate, the Swartz Center interviewed six startup founders in 2024, as part of its 'Success Stories', who talk about their journey to founding their companies and give advice to CMU Entrepreneurs.
Leah Lizarondo founded 412 Food Rescue as a direct response to the disconnect between food waste, hunger and environmental sustainability.
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| Innovation Scholar and Swartz Fellow Women In
the Spotlight!
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|  Ekaterina Demenkova (2024-26 Innovation Scholar) and Jemal Velihanova, two students from Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar (CMU-Q), won in the tech transformation category at Qatar Innovation Hackathon 2024. Read more.
| |  Tepper MBA, 2024-26 James R. Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, past Architect and Consortium, Forté Ashwini Karanth, featured in Poets&Quants. Read more.
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Y Combinator @ the CMU Swartz Center
Date: Friday, January 24, 2025
Time: 2-3 PM ET
Location: Swartz Center, 4765 Forbes Avenue, Tepper Quad, 3rd Floor
No RSVP Required | IN PERSON ONLY!
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| 41239APPLICATION DEADLINES
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| Applications Open for the VentureBridge 2025 Accelerator!
Are you a CMU alumni working on a startup? Apply to the CMU VentureBridge 2025 accelerator in Pittsburgh, San Francisco, and New York for funding, 1:1 support, founder roundtables, weekly talks with VCs and introductions to mentors and advisors.
Attend an information session on February 3 or March 3, 2025.
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| CONNECTS/START SMART LAW SEMINARS
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| Can't make a CONNECTS? Watch on our YouTube channel.
Find out more and see the full schedule.
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|  1/21
REGISTER
What Every Startup Needs to Know About Privacy & Cybersecurity (John Funge, DataTribe)
| |  1/22
REGISTER
Raising Investment Capital for Your Startup (Christine S. Ferguson-Rau, Ferguson Financial Consulting, Inc.
| |  1/23
REGISTER
An Entrepreneur's Guide to Managing Legal (Dave Mawhinney, Craig Markovitz, CMU Swartz Center)
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The mission of 99 Tartans is to partner with the highest potential, early-stage CMU alumni companies and accelerate their success through access to capital and networks. Find out more.
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CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS
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| Click the images to see upcoming Club events!
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T&E Boston:
VentureBridge Info Session & Pitch Practice
Date: Thursday, February 13, 2025
Time: 6-8:30 PM EST
Location: Sense, 485 Mass Ave, #3, Cambridge, MA
Discover how VentureBridge, CMU’s premier startup accelerator, supports alumni founders with seed funding, mentorship and a powerful network. This session includes an overview of the program, details about the 2025 application cycle and a pitch practice session.
Interested in pitching? Let us know to reserve a spot!
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| The CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship group aims to build a bridge between CMU students and alumni across the startup and tech continuum. With main chapters in NYC, Pittsburgh, and SF, we offer a range of in-person and online events and programming in the form of panels, workshops, founder/investor engagements, startup support, and socials to foster collaboration, innovation, and networking opportunities.
Join 7,000+ Tartans on our Slack workspace and mailing list for resources and updates on how you can engage in the community and CMU entrepreneurial ecosystem. Find out more and
get involved!
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The following companies help directly support our programming and entrepreneurs.
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| Pillsbury and Steptoe & Johnson, PLLC are holding office hours for the CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship. The office hours are for any interested CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni interested in entrepreneurship or connecting with members of the Swartz Center network.
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Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP
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Legal Services Weekly Virtual Office Hours with Matt Kirmayer
Mondays 1:00-3:00 PM ET (10-12 PT)
Matt Kirmayer of Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, is offering office hours for newly established startup and emerging companies. Matt specializes in representing technology startups and emerging growth companies, assisting with entity formation, fundraising and overall growth needs. Startup companies with a founder who is a CMU graduate, undergraduate or alumni is eligible to register for
an appointment. Complete the Signup Form for a 30 minute session by the Thursday prior to your
desired appointment.
Contact Daria Stokes for office hours outside of these regular hours.
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| Swartz Center Patron PwC Kicks Off First CONNECTS Talk
of the Spring Semester
The CMU Swartz Center hosted its first CONNECTS seminar of the Spring semester on January 14, 2025 featuring Jen Wallner, CPA and Director of Assurance at PwC, one of the Swartz Center's patrons. During her talk, Jen discussed how to manage raising capital and the requirements that follow fundraising.
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PwC: Building trust for today and tomorrow
Our purpose—to build trust in society and solve important problems—is at the core of everything we do. It guides how we serve our clients, our people and the world. To help our clients build trust and deliver sustained outcomes, PwC provides professional services across two segments: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Within these segments we bring a range of capabilities to help organizations solve faster, solve more and realize more value. These capabilities include cloud and digital, deals, ESG, cybersecurity and privacy, governance/boards, risk, transformation, tax services and much more. Across our global network of more than 295,000 professionals in 156 countries, we are committed to advancing quality in everything we do.
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HOW TO WORK OUT OF THE SWARTZ CENTER
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Swartz Center Education and Resources
No matter what phase of the entrepreneurship cycle you're in, there are programs and resources at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship that will take your idea to the next level. Find out more.
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Project Olympus Incubator Program
Want more help with finding product/market fit, developing your business model, making connections and attracting funding? Project Olympus will team you up with a business coach to develop a personalized ‘roadmap. Find out more.
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COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES
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FIND OUT WHAT OUR PARTNERS ARE DOING
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Have startup news or opportunities to share? Have questions about the Swartz Center Weekly Bulletin? Send news, opportunities or questions to Sonya Ford, Program Manager.
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Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center For Entrepreneurship
5000 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 |
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