Start-Up Engine

Evan Spiegel is just 24 years old. Don’t recognize him? Not to worry. His isn’t a household name. But you’ll probably recognize the billion-dollar business he co-founded and chairs: Snapchat.

Now only four years old, this enterprise is the result of a class project that Speigel undertook at Stanford University. The company’s meteoric success and that of other college-spawned products has prompted universities across the country – including the College – to follow suit, establishing innovation labs, tech accelerators and entrepreneurship programs. But few of those initiatives can match the unique approach that the College’s ICAT program takes to offer students a hands-on experience in product development and entrepreneurship.

The ICAT program (short for Interdisciplinary Center for Applied Technology) – a collaboration between the School of Business (where it is housed) and the Office of Economic Development – brings together undergraduates from diverse academic disciplines and groups them into three-person teams (one student from business, one from computer science and one from the liberal arts). The students work together to develop globally scalable technology companies. At the same time, they earn academic credit: Two courses comprise ICAT – one in computer science and one in business administration. Mentors from the Charleston business community guide the students’ work, and the program includes built-in financial incentives to support and further product development.

Chris Starr ’83 from the Department of Supply Chain and Information Management is the co-founder and first director of this program. He describes it as unique among tech accelerators at U.S. institutions: “The first semester of ICAT included 25 students, of which eight were business majors, eight computer science majors and nine others who ran the gamut from English to political science to biology and music. What’s truly unique is that our ICAT cohort included not just seniors, but five freshmen, eight sophomores and six juniors as well. So it’s unlike most programs elsewhere, which are usually just for business or tech majors, and almost strictly for seniors or graduate students.”

Two other characteristics distinguish ICAT, says Starr: “The projects that our students work on must be globally scalable, so the teams have to consider foreign markets in the process of developing their products. That international element is missing in many other programs. In addition, our students work with two mentors, one from the tech sector and one from the business sector. That’s quite rare among university accelerators.”

Starr is keen to point out that the College does not take an equity position in any of the ICAT startups.

“The students retain all of their intellectual property,” he says. “In addition, they learn to follow the Lean Startup model popularized by Stanford University. It emphasizes the concept of failing fast. If a given team’s product isn’t viable, those students have learned to move on quickly. In that sense, our program teaches these students to persevere in the face of a setback. And that means that resilience becomes the new norm.”

It’s not surprising to learn that each of the eight teams participating in ICAT produced actual software that was beta tested by potential customers.

“That’s quite a feat in just 10 short weeks,” says Starr, “but that’s very much the business strategy that we teach in ICAT. It’s about execution and obtaining traction in the market.”

All of this is prelude to the scene that played out on Charleston’s Footlight Players stage in April. The ICAT teams were invited to pitch their fledgling products to a panel of judges assembled from the Charleston business community (as well as to an audience of 150). A grand prize of $10,000 was on the line – along with the potential of angel investment from individuals in the audience. So, one by one, each team gave a three-minute pitch, followed by four minutes of questions from the judges.

Illustration by Nathan Durfee

“That was surreal,” says English major Ben Hintz ’15 afterward. He and his teammates – computer science major Adam Sugarman and business administration major Andrew Gordon – developed a GPS-enabled app that informs its users in real time about what’s happening regarding the nightlife around a specific location. “Sleeping was not really an option for us over the past 10 days. I was on the street several hours a day pitching our app to anyone who would listen. We wanted to win so badly, and we knew we’d have to prove our product’s value by way of the number of downloads that we’d generated (more than 700) in order to convince the judges. That required us to be the first team to get into the app store, which meant we had to outwork a class filled with extremely smart, hardworking and talented individuals.”

Yawper, as Hintz and company call their product, was selected as one of two top winners by the judges.

“I was shaking when they announced the winners,” says Sugarman, “but it’s such a relief to know that all of our hard work paid off.”

When the tie for first place was announced, the moderator initially explained that the top prize would be split between Team Yawper and Team SpotIt (an app developed by Anna Baginski, Liza Hendriks and Joye Nettles ’15 that enables drivers to reserve a parking spot convenient to their destination). Then one of the judges, Tommy Baker of Baker Motor Company (and a member of the School of Business’ Board of Governors), conferred with the moderator, and a revised plan was announced. Baker contributed $10,000 on the spot so that both teams could walk away with the top prize.

Nettles, a computer science major, was thrilled: “I’m so glad that I did this program because I discovered that I’m an entrepreneur at heart. I got such a rush from being up there on that stage, and it convinced me that developing products like this is what I want to do the rest of my life.”

Even before the semester was over, several ICAT teams had secured venture capital to support their endeavors.

“That’s not surprising,” says Starr. “These are all potentially viable products and these students have gotten great grounding. We’re convinced that ICAT alumni will be ready to step into tech companies after graduating no matter what their major. Even more exciting is the strong possibility that many of them won’t need to apply for jobs because they will have created their own companies.”

And given that, don’t be surprised if Yawper, SpotIt or any of the other student-developed apps from ICAT actually become household words.