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November 20, 2020

Wishing you and your familes a safe and happy Thanksgiving!
The next Weekly Bulletin will be published on
Friday, December 4, 2020.

Registration Is Open!

2021 McGinnis Venture Competition

The McGinnis Venture Competition, a platform exclusively for Carnegie Mellon University's community of student entrepreneurs, brings together Carnegie Mellon's best and brightest student entrepreneurs to compete for $60K in investments. All participants receive crucial interaction with alumni entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, an opportunity to raise capital and valuable feedback about ventures.

This multi-round competition kicks off in early January, starting with two virtual rounds and culminating in a final live round celebration in March, 2021. Find out more and register.

IN THE NEWS

Xinyuan (Luciana) Ma Takes First Place and $5K in the Vitro Challenge

Carnegie Mellon Master of Architecture student and Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellow, Xinyuan (Luciana) Ma, and her Heinz College partner Sky Zhang, recently won first place and $5K in the Swartz Center's Vitro Innovation Grand Challenge for their startup project, CarePorte. The product provides quarantine space in existing senior facilities to protect seniors and caregivers while enabling flexible service modes. Held this past October, the Vitro Challenge is a CMU-wide competition open to all students and alumni to generate innovative ideas for its premier glass production company.

RE2 To Develop Autonomous Casualty Extraction System
For the U.S. Army

RE2 Robotics, a CMU spinoff and leading developer of intelligent mobile manipulation systems, has announced that it has received $1.1M in Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding from the U.S. Army Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center (TATRC) to develop a mobile robotic manipulation system that will allow combat medics to remotely assess and extract injured soldiers on the battlefield. Read more.

CMU Team Wins Second Place at Hack-A-Startup

Carnegie Mellon University held its annual Hack-A-Startup event, sponsored by the CMU Graduate Entrepreneurship Club (GEC), on November 13-14, 2020. The event allows hustlers, hackers, designers and researchers across CMU to collaborate and work on a startup idea, pitch the idea and compete for prizes. CMU students Ishaan Jaffer (Innovation Scholar), Rob Miller (Swartz Fellow), Anik Shah (Swartz Fellow) and Harshal Vakhariya won second place and $500 for their idea, Outbound, an IRL streaming optimized for the viewer and creator.

CMU alumnus and LeanFM Co-founder Xuesong (Pine) Liu, Ph.D., FMP selected as an IFMA 40 Under 40 finalist

CMU Tepper alumnus Kofi Ampadu chosen as one of the Business Insider's 100 rising-star VC's

LittleMoochi becomes a finalist in the LiftOff Pgh Ideathon Pitch Competition

Corporate Startup Lab Spring 2021 Project Course

Are you a current CMU graduate student interested in joining an interdisciplinary team to explore a corporate startup idea for credit? The Corporate Startup Lab project course will help you do exactly that while you learn best practices and tools to help you lead innovation after graduation. The companies participating in the course this year include Bosch, Optum (part of UnitedHealthcare), Microsoft and numo (PNC’s fintech accelerator). Each of these companies has a new product or service they are looking to explore with a student team this Spring (there are no “classroom projects”).

This full-semester (12 units) course meets Tuesday nights (6:30pm-9:30pm).
Find out more and apply!

CONNECTS/START SMART LAW Seminars

The CONNECTS/START SMART Law Seminars have ended for the Fall semester. The seminars will resume at the start of the Spring semester.

See the full Fall 2020 schedule here.
Can't make a CONNECTS seminar? Watch on our YouTube channel.

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. Please visit and find out more.

CMU ENTREPRENEURSHIP CLUBS

CMU TECH & ENTREPRENEURSHIP

CMU Tech & Entrepreneurship focuses on connecting the community, building an entrepreneurial culture, and providing resources for our community to succeed. There are multiple region-based chapters within the group. Find out more and see
upcoming events.

SWARTZ CENTER SPOTLIGHT

A Message From the CMU Swartz Center

The CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship acknowledges the horrific and tragic killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and the many other Black and African-American men and women who have lost their lives due to systemic racism that unfortunately exists in our society.

We are in support and reaffirm Carnegie Mellon University’s commitment to working to dismantle systemic racism and continue to welcome and treat equally all students, alumni, staff, faculty and visitors who either work out of our space, visit or partner with us. We will do our part to ensure a better tomorrow for all.

HOW TO WORK OUT OF THE SWARTZ CENTER

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.

Project Olympus Incubator Program

The Swartz Center's Project Olympus incubator program welcomes all students, faculty, staff and alumni from all schools at any stage, including social enterprise and life-style business ideas. Find out more. Sign up for Expert Office Hours.

COMMUNITY OPPORTUNITIES/RESOURCES

Office Hours

Chatham University Center for Women's Entrepreneurship

AlphaLab; AlphaLab Gear; Innovation Works: Sign up for office hours

Laconia Capital Group (Venture Capital Fund): Sign up for office hours

Jobs/Resources

Join the CMU Entrepreneurship Slack

99 Tartans: Connecting CMU Alumni Investors with CMU Founders

Optum Startup Studio Space for CMU Startups

Chatham's CWE FREE online counseling to assist with COVID-19 loan programs

Apply for CMU's Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club I-Fund

Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club launches Build Your Own Startup (98-309) during Spring semester: Contact Arleen Liu, Vivek Raghuram or Harvey Zheng with questions.

Pittsburgh startup community newsletter

Apply for jobs with Pittsburgh startups

Engineering and Management Positions at RE2 Robotics

Events

12/1
Osage University Partners webinar: Angel and Accelerator Funding for University Startups

12/1-12/16
LiftOff Pgh 2020

12/2
SBIR and STTR Webinar: Everything You Need to Know

12/5
CMU Venture Capital Investment Competition (VCIC) (for CMU graduate students)

12/9
PDMA Pittsburgh: How Inclusion Drives High-Performance Product Teams

12/10
TiE Pittsburgh 7th Annual Startups Awards

Kickstarter Campaigns

Elemental, Force of Nature: A lite-strategy party game (Tepper MBA, Christopher Wendt) - Support the project through December 17

Check out more events on the Swartz Center calendar

Application Deadlines

Apply to the New Stack Ventures Junior Venture Fellowship Program

Apply to the LifeX Labs Spring 2021 Accelerator

12/11
Apply for the VentureWell E-Team Grant (up to $25K)

12/13
Founder Institute Early Application Deadline

1/8
SXSW 2021 Pitch Application Deadline

1/17
Rice Business Plan Competition

Ongoing
SBIR/STTR Federal Application Deadlines

PROGRAM SPOTLIGHT

The Swartz Entrepreneurial Fellows program develops the entrepreneurial potential and leadership skills of CMU first year graduate students through hands-on experiences, networking, mentoring and courses in entrepreneurship. The program's core is a mentored summer internship with a top-tier, VC-backed startup in Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Read more.