Success as a musician is not an easy feat. It requires relentless hard work, unwavering dedication and, more often than not, connections to an established professional in the music industry. 

Senior computer science major Matthew Lawler is looking to change that with Venue, a mobile application that makes the music industry more accessible to small musicians. 

Venue connects musicians to local venues looking to showcase new talent.

“Musicians can bootstrap their careers, and venues can find new and promising talent that helps draw a crowd to their business,” Lawler explained.

The idea for Venue originated when Lawler was in high school and watched his classmates struggle to use their passion for music to earn revenue that could put them through college.

“They didn’t really have the same opportunities that people who were well-connected did,” said Lawler. “I wanted to see if there was a way I could help empower these smaller musicians to give them the same opportunities as those at the top.”

Lawler began developing Venue about three years ago. This past year, he and his co-founder, senior software engineering major Rohan Ramani, began to expand their focus from product development to business development, working with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) to turn Venue into a full-fledged startup.

The Hatchery, a CIE program that helps Cal Poly students turn their innovative ideas into viable startup companies, has played a key role in the growth and development of Venue.

“The Hatchery has been invaluable in helping us learn how to actually run a business,” said Lawler. “We’re all technical founders, so we can do all the coding and the programming, but we don’t know much about marketing or sales, so we need the Hatchery’s support in all the other aspects of our business.”

The Hatchery has acted as a guiding force for Lawler throughout his first entrepreneurial endeavor. The program’s resources have provided him with not only the business expertise needed for his startup to succeed, but the morale needed for Lawler to succeed as an entrepreneur.

“The Hatchery has done everything they can to learn about who we are as individuals and what we want to do with this company,” Lawler said. “They’re really willing to invest in you as an individual, and you’re going to learn a ton of skills that you won’t learn in the classroom.”

With the first rendition of the Venue mobile app set to launch within the next month, Lawler and his team are working with the Hatchery to grow their customer base beyond their minimal number of prospective users. They also have a goal of participating in Innovation Quest, a prototyping competition hosted by the CIE in spring.

While Lawler personally hopes to one day see his startup succeed, he is just as excited to witness the success of small musicians who have inspired his creation of Venue.

“Right now, 50 percent of musicians are undiscovered, which means that they can’t actually make a living off of it,” Lawler explained. “I would love to see that number drop significantly so that we can have a lot of new talent entering the market.”

To keep up with VENUE and other CIE startups, follow us on social media.  Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

Giving the perfect gift is far from an easy task. In fact, an estimated $15 billion is wasted on unwanted gifts each year, resulting in hundreds of tons of additional waste in landfills and incinerators.

Sophomore business major Julie Arnette has set out to remedy this issue. She and Juan Pèrez have created Celebrate, an online platform that makes it easier than ever to give purposeful gifts.

“I’m actually a terrible gift-giver,” said Arnette, one of Celebrate’s two co-founders. “I never know what to buy and I always wait until the last minute. I think [gift-giving] is so difficult— and kind of unnecessarily difficult— but I love giving gifts. That’s kind of where this idea started.”

The fix? Personalized interest boards which friends and family can view to find a gift idea that the recipient is guaranteed to love. 

Arnette and her team have been working on Celebrate for just over a year. In that time, they have won the audience choice award at the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship’s (CIE) annual Elevator Pitch Competition and joined the CIE Hatchery.

The Hatchery, a CIE program designed to help students develop their startup ideas, has been an extremely beneficial resource in building Celebrate. According to Arnette, the guidance offered through the Hatchery has been paramount for Celebrate’s success.

“The mentorship is super valuable,” Arnette said. “They [mentors] provide so much feedback and a different perspective to your business than you can come up with on your own.”

The Hatchery has also introduced Arnette to a community of student entrepreneurs who have acted as a support network through the highs and lows of building a company.

“Having that support and knowing that there are other people going through the same exact thing that you’re doing, like figuring out what you want your business to be and how you’ll get there — I think that’s important,” Arnette said.

Celebrate has recently launched their new landing page, which provides what Arnette describes as “a snapshot of the company in a few pages.” Through the site, users can sign up for Celebrate’s limited beta testing or register to receive their company newsletter.

Now, with their landing page up and running, the Celebrate team is shifting their attention to prepare for Innovation Quest, a prototyping competition hosted by the CIE. They are also continuing to develop their product and enhance their knowledge of Celebrate’s customer base.

“Our mountaintop is getting to the place where we understand exactly when people are having those rough days or when their birthdays are coming up, using data to figure out when they could use a little pick-me-up gift and communicating that to their gift-givers,” Arnette explained. “That way, people are giving the right gift at the right time.”

Learn more about Celebrate at celebrategifting.com and follow the CIE on social media to keep up with all things entrepreneurship and innovation on the Central Coast. IG | FB | LI | Twitter

The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in an economic downturn that has caused a rapid increase in unemployment and homelessness throughout the United States. But in the midst of these challenges, student entrepreneurs have found inspiration. 

Communications studies seniors Maureen Turnbaugh and Marissa Soza saw the obstacles posed by the pandemic as opportunities to encourage togetherness and instill a sense of community in San Luis Obispo. Along with classmates Connor Haitfield (Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies), Alejandro Quintero (Interdisciplinary Studies in the Liberal Arts) and Kenzie Rutherford (Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies), they founded PolyVolunteers, a startup company with a mission to make finding volunteering opportunities easier than ever. 

The PolyVolunteers team is utilizing the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Hatchery program to create an app that will connect users with local organizations seeking volunteers and resources.

“We want to be that middle party that can connect people in the community with volunteer groups that they’re actually interested in,” Soza said. “Kind of like a matchmaking app.”

PolyVolunteers originated as a class project for the business and communication hybrid course BUS 458: Solving Big World Challenges. Each quarter, the class presents students with a social or environmental challenge specific to a local community — like the impact of COVID-19 on the San Luis Obispo community.

“From that course, we were able to identify that the homeless population is heavily hit by the pandemic,” Turnbaugh said. “We focused on how we could help and whether our solutions help the greater good. We needed to fine tune our ideas into a very specific position within the community and that’s when we really zoned in on volunteer work.”

BUS 458 professors Lynn Metcalf and David Asky suggested that PolyVolunteers take their idea to the CIE and connected Turnbaugh and Soza with CIE Director of Student Innovation Programs José Huitron. 

“We met with José and clicked with him and he told us everything that the Hatchery was about,” Soza said. “We just fell in love with it, so we decided to give it a go and so far it’s been very beneficial.”

The CIE Hatchery program provides student entrepreneurs with the tools they need to help their startups thrive. The on-campus program has connected PolyVolunteers with mentors to help them navigate the intricacies of entrepreneurship, as well as introduced the team to computer science and software engineering students who can help design the app. 

“You know, being a student and not really knowing how to create a business from the ground up, it’s really helpful to have people who are trained to coach you through it all,” Turnbaugh said.

Hatchery resources have proved extremely valuable in creating PolyVolunteers. 

Four of the five students involved in PolyVolunteers come from liberal arts backgrounds who, prior to their involvement in the Hatchery, had minimal experience with the startup scene.

“All of our team, besides our newest member, are liberal arts students, so we had no idea what goes into creating a business — or creating an app for that matter,” Soza said. “Being in the Hatchery has been very interesting and I think we have all found a new passion that we never thought we would even be interested in.”

PolyVolunteers is still in its early stages. According to Turnbaugh and Soza, their team is focusing on customer development, reaching out to the local community to ask what they would like to see in an app like PolyVolunteers. They’ll soon begin prototyping and hope to participate in Innovation Quest, a prototyping competition hosted by the CIE in the spring.

Turnbaugh and Soza envision a bright future for PolyVolunteers and hope to one day see their app used nationwide.

“We’re starting with Cal Poly and SLO because that’s what we know and what we’re close to,” Soza explained. “Big picture, we want to be able to take [PolyVolunteers] to other universities across the United States and across the world.”

As Turnbaugh explained, the fundamental goals for PolyVolunteers remain faithful to the startup’s core values: helping others and making an impact.

“Our overall hope is that this is a product that’s useful and bridges the gap between volunteer organizations and the students that want to give back.”

To keep up with PolyVolunteers and other CIE startups, follow us on social media.  Instagram | Facebook | LinkedIn | Twitter

Whether it’s 7 a.m. or midnight, the Intego Sports team can usually be found in the Hatchery. From Elevator Pitch Competition and Startup Marathon, to now being part of the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) on-campus incubator, Intego Sports CEO Alexandra Joelson is on a path to turn her innovative footwear idea into a viable company. 

“The top and bottom of cleats deteriorate at different rates,” she explained. “We are creating cleats with interchangeable soles, so you can just replace the part that wears down instead of buying a whole new pair of cleats.”

Joelson, a first-year business administration major, came to Cal Poly already passionate about solving this problem of quickly-deteriorating athletic footwear.

However, the San Diego native and her team didn’t make this idea come alive overnight. Joelson first took a slightly different idea she had started in high school to the Elevator Pitch Competition, winning the $1,000 prize. She then took her idea to Cal Poly Entrepreneurs’ Startup Marathon, where the all-freshman Intego Sports team was formed.

“There seemed to be a lot of traction for it and people seemed to like the idea, so I got involved in the CIE,” Joelson said of her original idea. “After talking to all of the advisors [in the Hatchery], we came up with a better solution and since me and part of my team play soccer, it was something we were all passionate about. We really want this problem to be solved.”

Joelson stressed how important it is to have a team of people with a common goal but diverse perspectives, even if that poses challenges. 

Intego Sports consists of a business student, aerospace engineer, electrical engineer and a physics major, so their thought processes often differ. However, Joelson says having different minds come together is what helps them progress and grow.

“I think the biggest thing is making sure you’re solving the right problem and then making sure you have the right people to help you do it,” she explained. “As a CEO, I’ve been trying to make sure everyone is motivated and the advisors put us on the right path to get us to the right goals.”

Now that the Intego Sports team has come together and established their place in the Hatchery among several other student startups, what’s in store for them?

First, prototyping at the CIE’s on-campus Innovation Sandbox and filing for a provisional patent. 

Then the team has plans to compete in Innovation Quest to win from $30,000 in cash prizes to help fund their startup, as well as apply for the HotHouse Summer Accelerator. Basically, Joelson and her team are ready to launch their business as soon as possible.

“We’d love to have inventory in our dorm rooms and be running a company out of yakʔitʸutʸu,” she joked. “But we’re all living in the [Cal Poly] Lofts next year as well. We all want to live together and take the company off the ground so we can be college grads with an income. That would be fantastic.”

Until all these future plans come together, though, the team is soaking up every moment in the Hatchery by taking advantage of their access to industry professionals, experienced entrepreneurial advisors and an inspiring community.

“Most people don’t have advice and advisors like this. Either you have to pay someone to do it or do a ton of research to find someone you actually trust, but everyone here truly cares about us and our success,” Joelson explained. “I get to meet a lot of great people and it’s a great place to work and a great environment.” 

Joelson says that anyone with an entrepreneurial aspiration should apply to the Hatchery program because there aren’t any downfalls — just tons of resources and support in a program she dubs “the entrepreneurship hub.”

To stay updated on Intego Sport’s progress, visit https://www.integosports.com/ or find them on Instagram at @integosports. If you’re ready to get after your startup goals and learn more about the program, visit https://calpolycie.wpengine.com/prepare/hatchery/.