Baiada Institute Companies Recap an Impressive Fall Quarter
From September through Startup Day and beyond, companies in the Baiada Institute have much to celebrate as they look ahead to 2015.
December 18, 2014
by Zach Epstein
The fall kicked off as the second crop of Entrepreneurship Co-op students discussed their successes, failures and next steps — impressing all with how much progress was made in just six short months.
215 Marketing made news, as partner Edward Reybitz shared his journey from Brazil to the Baiada Institute. We bid adieu to the entire 215 team in November, as they moved on to an office all their own in Northern Liberties — but not before taking a look back.
Then came Startup Day, where Scholly was crowned the winner of the 2014 Incubator Competition, and three new companies — Skeletix, Backyard Beds, and Millennial Investment Group — were welcomed into the Baiada community, as each company joined the incubation space this month.
As Baiada's companies look ahead to 2015's challenges, they highlighted their most memorable accomplishments from the fall quarter.
Booksmart
- Processed and directed Drexel’s Fall Fest featuring 2 Chainz. It was the largest student event in Drexel history, with 5,500 attendees.
- We expanded our development team, adding team members from both Drexel and Penn.
- Booksmart completed its beta run with five recognized tour managers, including our first national headlining tour.
- 15 national touring artists have been added and are ready to use Booksmart at launch.
Eventuosity
- Placed third in the Baiada Institute Incubator Competition.
- Eventuosity was selected to the "Great 8" out of more than 150 entries in the Startup Maryland Pitch Across Maryland competition.
- Voted a finalist in the Carroll Biz Challenge hosted by Startup Local.
- We launched new product features, including budgeting and expense management.
- We have started working alongside Skyless Games in support of the Mayor's Office of Education's inaugural STEM event for students city-wide in March. Eventuosity is the planning application being used and Skyless is playing a pivotal role in organizing the event.
Skyless Games
- Won the Marcum Innovator of the Year Award in the Emerging Technology category.
- Skyless generated its first revenues, for a game about the need for vaccines in developing countires. The revenues from in-game purchases will go toward providing vaccines to children.
- Executed a successful first user acceptance test of AssembleIt, played by a group of children with autism.
- Featured in Technically Philly roundup for hosting and mentoring a young game designer with autism.
- Finished writing grant proposal for Follow the Money and began distributing it to potentially interested parties.
- Began developing StrokeVision rehabilitation app as part of Penn's AppItUp challenge, helping one of the competitors to prototype their idea.
Kompact
- We are closing on our first pilot.
- Designed the first version of our iOS app.
- Met with several leaders in the Philly startup community.
Scholly
PurpleCloud Technologies
The past few months have been really incredible for our team.
In September, we successfully completed our 6-month pilot with an incredible five-star hotel, The Rittenhouse Hotel. The Rittenhouse became our first official customer in October. Our pilot hotel's ownership group loved the value we provided during our pilot, and asked us to begin implementing our program at several more hotels within their portfolio.
A hotel group has also asked us to begin an implementation within their hotel portfolio in January. The PurpleCloud team is excited to begin working with our next hotels, and we can't wait to see what 2015 has in store for us!
Aahana
- Founded a dialogue series entitled "Angles of Awareness," tied to the eight United Nations Millennium Development goals.
- Aahana is working to create a broader network with other organizations working with disabled children in other regions of Gujarat and around India.