By Vasisht “Guru” Prasad

I had the pleasure of visiting various startups and incubators during my startup trek to Boston, as a part of the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Rochester.

It was wonderful to see that Global Silicon Valley (GSV) Labs had set its office there in Boston. It was a privilege to meet Seth Hauben, who is the Managing Director there. He mentioned a very important factor which is why Boston is the place chosen for the GSV labs: it’s the closeness to the customers that makes a difference.

Having a personal interaction with Eric Wisch, a partner with ADL Ventures, was invaluable, as he gave us a picture of how much of a risk being an entrepreneur takes; not only in terms of money, but also in terms of other resources, such as time. We understood how they managed to “weather the storm” by working with different venture capitalists, understanding the “fear of missing out,” playing the right cards, and showing commitment.

We then heard from Gemma Sole, the Co-founder of Nineteenth Amendment who along with Amanda Curtis, developed a platform that helps brands sell without inventory and produce quick-turn, sustainably.

A discussion with Jen Riedel and a session with Christopher Wolfel from TechStars opened us to a new set of industry jargon. They have the concept of “Mentor Whiplash,” in which the teams interact with all these mentors on a continuous basis, getting constant feedback, and developing their product and company. They work differently from a normal venture capital firm, as they do not pick startups that are in the beginning stages of their life. Instead, they work with reasonably established companies and then further help them accelerate to a much bigger scale. They have worked with close to 175+ companies, out of which more than 30 are now well-established.

We also had the chance to meet David Borrelli, who is a serial entrepreneur and a U of R alum with a set of interesting series of startups. His current venture is a platform for PhD students in the Engineering domain who have no knowledge of Data Science. This platform helps the students get the required knowledge and skills, and further helps them find jobs in the Data Science field as well.

Left: Duncan, Akram, Max, and Guru at Spyce (world’s first restaurant featuring a robotic kitchen, located in Boston). Right: Startup Trek group at GSVlabs.

I think it was a privilege to be a part of such an amazing experience, and to have interacted and gained a lot of experience firsthand with these connections in the industry.

Vasisht “Guru” Prasad ’20 (MS) is a first-year masters student studying Technical Entrepreneurship & Management (TEAM) at the U of R. Having worked for a couple of years in the Sales and Marketing teams in the Test and Measurement Sector, he is now working more closely with Computer Science and software fields, with areas of concentration in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.