The Entrepreneurship & Innovation Association, the largest club of its kind at NYU-Poly, had its first Summer Incubation Program (SIP), a 12-week long entrepreneurship marathon that concluded with Demo Day on August 22nd. Five student startups pitched to a panel of judges made up of VCs and alumni, many of whom funded SIP.

Falcon Helmet Engineering & Design, an NYU startup that’s building the first wrestling headgear designed to protect, took the prize. Falcon won free legal help, a paid intern, office space at the DUMBO incubator, advice and mentorship, among other perks.

 SIP is more than a competition. Through 12-weeks of lectures, workshops, and one-on-one mentoring sessions, all the teams learned everything about the business of starting a company. Each event drew about 50 people from around the NYU and NYC entrepreneurial community; Demo Day drew over 120 people. Stay tuned for SIP 2013.

Mario Mercado, the CEO of Falcon, founded his company around his love of wrestling. Falcon went through SIP, learning customer validation, prototype design, and is now starting to build their product. Through their dedication and hard work, they won the prize and are now on they’re way to becoming a successful venture that has already made its impact in the entrepreneurial community. Congratulations to all Falcon team members on their perseverance and dedication.

Falcon Helmet Engineering & Design

Mario Mercado, CEO, Sports Management/NYU, 30 years of wrestling experience

Richard Walker, Chief Design Officer, Industry eyewear expert in manufacturing and design/Florida

Daniella Patrick, Senior Designer, Mechanical Engineering/NYU-Poly

Marawan Aziz, Designers, Mechanical Engineering/NYU-Poly

Avery Moe, Designers, Mechanical Engineering/NYU-Poly

Konstantinos Papadopoulos, Senior Researcher, Biomedical Engineering/NYU-Poly

Wai Tak Leung, Senior Researcher, Biomedical Engineering/NYU-Poly 

NCIIA is pleased to announce a NEW E-Team Program, starting in fall 2012. The program provides early-stage support and funding of up to $75,000 for young entrepreneurs working on market-based technology inventions.

Since 1995, our E-Team grants have been funding collegiate student/faculty teams in moving ideas out of the lab and classroom and into the marketplace. The 2012-13 E-Team Program enhances this opportunity by providing expert entrepreneurial and venture coaching, experiential workshops, and a potential investment opportunity to help realize the commerical success of the technology inventions and innovations that come through our organization.

Successful E-Team Program applicants may be invited to exhibit their technologies at Open Minds, the annual showcase of breakthrough technologies from NCIIA’s top student teams. The 2013 Open Minds exhibition will be held at The Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

E-Team Program stages

Stage 1 provides funding of up to $5,000 to attend a three-day strategy mapping workshop. The intensive hands-on workshop is based on NCIIA’s successful VentureLab format. The focus of Stage One is to evolve a sustainable business strategy and create milestones.

Stage 2 provides additional funding of up to $20,000. A required, intensive workshop based on the VentureLab format helps teams further refine business strategy. Tactical coaching from NCIIA follows the workshop, guiding the team to successful completion of milestones.

Stage 3 is an investment opportunity of up to $50,000. Selected E-Teams will attend a VentureWell invitation-only networking event in which they will have the opportunity to connect with potential investors.

Click here to view a video on the VentureLab workshops.

What’s an E-Team?

NCIIA defines an E-Team as a multidisciplinary group of students, faculty, and industry mentors working together to bring a technology-based invention (product or service) to market. The “E” stands for entrepreneurship.

Upcoming E-Team Program submission deadlines:

• October 5, 2012
• February 1, 2013
• May 10, 2013

Program guidelines

Read the guidelines before you apply!
The answers to most of your questions are in the program guidelines—program details and deadlines; how to apply; examples of eligible technologies; selection criteria; information about how to apply, and more.

Is the E-Team Program for you?

Students and faculty from NCIIA member institutions (US-based colleges and universities) are welcome to apply. Funding is awarded to institutions (not directly to individuals or teams). Submissions are evaluated by external panels of reviewers and will be judged on the following:

• Technical feasibility
• Business model and market potential
• Team makeup, expertise, and institutional support
• Social impact and/or positive environmental impact

How to apply

Click here to apply. Detailed instructions and information about the application process can be found in the program guidelines.

You may preview a PDF of the online application here. 
PLEASE NOTE: this PDF includes screen shots of NCIIA’s five-step proposal process. The proposal content shown may vary slightly from the E-Team Program proposal, but steps for the application are the same. This PDF is for preview purposes only.

Have an idea but not sure whether it’s a fit with the E-Team Program? Send a 1-2 paragraph summary to grants@nciia.org and we’d be happy to review it and provide you with feedback. Please note that due to high volume, we are unable to guarantee replies to last-minute inquiries made less than two weeks prior to the proposal deadline.

Contact us

Questions? Contact us: grants@nciia.org or call 413-587-2172.

What makes an entrepreneur?

An entrepreneur must play the part of capitalist and philanthropist.  For his creation, however bold and good intentioned, will hurt the established industry.  And thus there will be jobs lost.  Thus the true entrepreneur must accept that risk and reward are tied.  The onus is either on you or on someone else, but either way, eggs will be broken.  I have seen start up culture, create new friendships, break old ones, change lives, and give people hope.  But you must be prepared for the bad days.

Every single successful entrepreneur has had these and knows what I am taking about.  It is the day you run out of money, out of time, and let everyone down.  I will speak on two examples: Fred Wilson and Steve Jobs.  Both experiences this most extreme pain and they pulled through.  That more than anything is what makes an entrepreneur: fortitude and unrelenting will.  If you give up when the times are worst, then you do not belong in the start up world, because the bad times will come, and come often enough.

We must all disabuse our selves of this notion that we know what will happen next. For all our modeling, for all the pattern we see, we cannot see into the probabilistic possibilities in the future. The spaces of culture and change intersect and interweave, as they should, for the survival of the human race. Cultural values shift. Things we would find unthinkable were carried out regularly hundreds of years ago. This is an easy snapshot. And yet it is telling. One must accept the change that is coming and simply move with it. Because it’s that or death.

Thus, you must be ready for the “worst” as well as the “best” of outcomes.

The following exposition details the necessary skill set of an entrepreneur:

• Networking
• Product development
• Time management

These are the skills necessary to lessen the blow of “defeat” that comes to all entrepreneurs.  Nothing happens in a vacuum and each of these skills focuses on the ability to work with others and on deadlines.  In the start up world you are either growing or you are dying.  And there is no in-between.

However, nothing matters more than fortitude.  If you cannot be bold, you will fail.  Thus, courage under pressure informs each of these skills and determines the course of your entrepreneurial career.  But more than that, you need to be right.  Over the coming year I will teach you how to be correct.  Who am I?  I am Eric Schles.  A founding member of the entrepreneurship and innovation association.  I served as its president.  During that time I brought the club to notoriety while traversing a graduate degree in computer science, a subject I knew little about.

I have worked on several projects, too many in fact to name.  I believe in big ideas and big change.  I believe that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society of complacency. I believe in innovation and courage under pressure.

I have worked on the following projects:

Adverysis (CTO):  A company dedicated to optimizing pricing in the online advertising space.

Gigi (lead developer): A company dedicated to curing the healthcare industry

Skim.me (data miner): A company dedicated to helping people survive the information overflow of the internet

GreenTechworks(advisor): A company dedicated to green engineering and environmental sustainability.