Highlander Foundry Showcase Gives Students Opportunity to Present their Startups

After concluding their eight-week summer program, NJIT students presented their startups, giving them an opportunity to experience entrepreneurship and business creation.

The Highlander Foundry program is a summer startup incubator that helps NJIT students and alumni grow with the same techniques and strategies that launched many of the top startups today.

"We're really excited about this because this event is sort of a celebration, a culmination of their experience here in the incubator and the program," said Will Lutz, director of commercialization and co-director of VentureLink@NJIT. "These students start here and for some of them, it's their first exposure into entrepreneurship and creating a business."

All the students that presented received grant money to support them, and the program worked in conjunction with the Albert Dorman Honors College and NJIT's Undergraduate Research and Innovation program. All the university's schools were represented in the showcase.

"The expectation is, this is an entry point, this is an educational experience. Is this something that they might continue with in the future? Is this something that is a career? They're getting that first taste of what this is like, and entrepreneurship is not easy," added Lutz. "Doing it in this environment, where it's supportive and they support each other, and they get our staff to kind of help them figure this out. I find it incredibly rewarding."

The presentations ranged from hydroponic farms to air quality monitoring systems to a phone app that hopes to help you meet your fitness goals.

Johmary Adames, a junior industrial design major, presented her startup called DualTips, which is tied to her interests in the beauty and cosmetics industry. Before entering this summer program, she really didn't know much about entrepreneurship and business.

"Prior to the program, I had no idea about business, entrepreneurship, none of that," said Adames. "I got to talk to a lot of people, and we had a lot of guest speakers that already had years of experience in the field."

Another junior, Karim Salem, a computer science major, also took a lot from his time in the program, where he learned about consumer segments. His startup dealt with hydroponic farms.

"At VentureLink, they actually gave me the opportunity to try an interview, figure out and answer these questions I had - Would people buy this? What are the biggest concerns? What are the biggest problems? It only fed my passion and made it stronger," said Salem.

Through market and industry research conducted during the program, Salem realized that many appropriate segments have not utilized hydroponics, despite the technology being around for the past several decades. "There are so many industries it's not touching yet," he said.

Lutz is proud of the hard work the students showed in the eight weeks they were involved in the program and highlighted the significance it will have in them as they seek to shape their future careers.

"This is about celebrating and congratulating them and helping them move on or move into the next phase of this for them," said Lutz. "That's what I really love about what we do here with this program, it's incredibly supportive and positive."

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