Anvita Vyas has spent most of her life dancing. She found her passion for dance at an early age. Her mother tells her that the “first thing [she] learned to do as a baby” was “moving [her] arms and legs and finding the best way to express [herself],” Vyas said.

Now a business administration sophomore at Cal Poly, Vyas is experienced in several styles of dance, including classical Indian dance, modern dance, hip hop and jazz.

Although Vyas has enjoyed her time as a dancer, her experience has also revealed a disconnect within the industry. Dancers, Vyas said, often struggle to find and connect with choreographers.

“Collaborating and being able to connect with others is not as easy as it seems,” Vyas said. “Having to commute to dance studios or workshops, it’s just not a convenient or feasible option for everyone.”

Vyas hopes to create a new — and easily accessible — place for dancers and choreographers to connect and collaborate with her startup Nritya.

Nritya is a digital platform working to bring together dancers and choreographers and catalyze growth within the dance industry. Vyas said while most dance-based applications are focused on improving skill or recording dances, Nritya is centralized on building community.

Vyas is building Nritya with the help of the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Hatchery, an on-campus resource designed to help Cal Poly students develop their startup ideas.

The Hatchery fosters a “very warm and welcoming community” and is able to connect students with entrepreneurs who can provide mentorship and offer advice on the startup process, Vyas said.

Vyas was familiar with Hatchery resources before she began working on Nritya — she also works for the CIE as a student innovation outreach coordinator. Vyas assists with the coordination and communication of student-oriented programs and events at the CIE.

Nritya was inspired in part by the innovation Vyas witnessed during the CIE Summer Accelerator, an intensive, summer-long program where Cal Poly students and recent graduates are given the resources needed to turn their startup ideas into real, scalable businesses.

“I was meeting nine startup teams who were receiving that guidance and going through that development, and that’s really when my eyes were opened,” Vyas said. “I realized I needed to act on my idea, to do what I can to make a difference.”

Vyas is currently working on customer development. She is reaching out to several dance organizations and using social media to connect with dancers who may be interested in Nritya.

She is also working to grow the Nritya startup team and find potential programmers as she graduates from the customer development stage to the prototyping stage.

Vyas said she hopes Nritya will one day become a valuable asset to the dance community.

“Right now, I’m really focusing on making sure [Nritya] can be something meaningful,” she said.

Thomas Soares was “talking trash” when inspiration struck. 

Soares wasn’t “talking trash” in the traditional sense. He was discussing the recycling industry and learning which materials are and are not recyclable. That is when he had the idea for Clear Bin.

Clear Bin is a mobile application working to reduce contamination rates for curbside recycling across the United States.

Curbside recycling is considered contaminated when a recycling collection contains materials “not accepted into residents’ curbside program” or acceptable materials with “unacceptable amounts of residue,” according to the Recycling Partnership’s 2020 State of Curbside Recycling Report. More than 30 percent of residential recycling is considered contaminated, according to the same report.

One contributing factor to this high contamination rate is residents not knowing which materials are and are not recyclable, Soares said. Clear Bin is attempting to resolve that issue. 

Clear Bin users can take a picture of an item, and the app will inform them whether the material is recyclable or not. It also informs users whether the item is of acceptable quality, and if it needs to be cleaned, dried or otherwise altered before it can be recycled.

Soares, an architectural engineering senior, is working with computer science seniors Ruhi Prasad and Jack Fales, to build the Clear Bin app.

Soares is also working with the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Hatchery, an on-campus resource designed to help Cal Poly students develop their startup ideas. The Hatchery connected Soares to the resources needed for both Clear Bin’s development and his own professional development.

“The Hatchery has definitely given me a lot of confidence to be able to put myself out there,” he said. 

Students do not need any prior business or entrepreneurship experience before joining the Hatchery. The program provides plenty of opportunities for students like Soares, who started Clear Bin with no formal business education or experience, to learn about entrepreneurship in ways that appeal to them.

“The Hatchery has done a great job of making this more about problem solving,” Soares said. “From an engineering perspective, I love the rational, practical thought, and the Hatchery has been able to break down entrepreneurship like this, in a way that I enjoy.”

The Clear Bin team is currently focusing on app development and working towards launching a program. Soares hopes to eventually help communities throughout the United States reduce their waste.

“There is a big divide with the understanding of what is and is not recyclable,” Soares said. “If we’re able to communicate and work with people and haulers and recycling companies across the United States, that’s when I’ll be able to sleep at night.”

Zander Sheffield spent his high school years purchasing shoes at department and wholesale stores, then reselling them online for a profit. He would then use his profits to buy more shoes.

“I was kind of like a shoe hoarder at one point,” he said.

Now a third year industrial technology and packaging major at Cal Poly, Sheffield is using his knowledge of the footwear industry to pursue a new business endeavor and build his own startup, Yardy Shoes.

Yardy Shoes is providing greater longevity for children’s footwear with an extendable shoe system that can be adjusted to several different sizes. It’s a cost-effective solution for the 65% of children who wear ill-fitting shoes, Sheffield said.

Sheffield’s began developing Yardy Shoes in 2020, when he discovered the Cal Poly Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Hatchery.

The Hatchery is an on-campus resource designed to help Cal Poly students develop their startup ideas. Sheffield stumbled across the Hatchery while looking through the Cal Poly website during quarantine.

“When COVID first broke out, we all got sent home, and I just didn’t know what to do with my time,” Sheffield said. “I was going through the Cal Poly website and found the Hatchery. I’d always had an idea for a shoe business, so I just thought, ‘Why not?’ and applied.”

The Hatchery introduced Sheffield to the basics of entrepreneurship and provided opportunities to learn and network.

Sheffield also found mentorship through the Hatchery program. CIE director of student innovation programs and Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business lecturer Jose Huitron connects Sheffield to resources that can help grow Yardy Shoes.

Other student entrepreneurs like Alexandra Joelson and Samuel Andrews, co-founders of Intego Technology, a startup creating the most durable and sustainable footwear on the market.

The Intego Technology team began participating in CIE programs in 2019, when Joelson won the CIE Elevator Pitch Competition (EPC). They joined the Hatchery shortly after their win at EPC. 

Now, the Intego Technology team is able to share their experience with new CIE entrepreneurs, like Sheffield.

“They’ve been a big help, especially when I first started out,” Sheffield said. “I had no idea what a patent was, I didn’t know the steps that were needed to make a shoe business. Sam and Alexandra have been a big help mentoring us.”

Sheffield’s team also includes computer science junior Arden Ozdere, general engineering junior Vincent Corella, entrepreneurship sophomore Erin Powers and materials engineering junior Chris Murray.

The startup team is currently working to generate prototype ideas and assess the viability of those ideas. Once their prototypes are completed, they plan to reach out to potential customers — parents whose children can wear the shoes and test the product.

The Yardy Shoes team hopes their product will eventually “change the world in a positive way,” Sheffield said. 

Shoes put, on average, 30 pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, according to Sheffield. Yardy Shoe’s extendible shoe will reduce the overall number of shoes needed, and therefore reduce carbon output.

“Long term, I just want to create something that’s good for the world,” Sheffield said.

John Shaw’s interest in 3D-printing began when he got his first car.

Shaw drove a Nissan Altima, a model of car with a rubber strip that commonly loosens and disconnects from its place on the underside of the vehicle. The same problem happened to Shaw’s car, but when he approached a mechanic looking to repair the piece, he was told the auto repair shop did not keep those parts in-stock.

Shaw decided to literally create his own solution to the problem, and 3D-print a replacement part. The project was simple and successful and helped Shaw realize 3D-printing could help streamline engineering and manufacturing industries. 

Now a fifth-year aerospace engineering student at Cal Poly, Shaw is working to improve the capabilities of 3D-printing in order to accelerate innovation within the manufacturing industry.

Shaw is founder of Hedron Design, a startup digitizing the supply chain to transform manufacturing into a platform. This is accomplished “by integrating quality control, automation and things like distribution in enterprise resource planning into [manufacturer’s] workflow,” Shaw said.

Shaw later brought the startup to the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE) Hatchery, an on-campus resource designed to help Cal Poly students develop their startup ideas.

The Hatchery provided Shaw with an introduction into entrepreneurship — a very different discipline than engineering. 

“Being an engineer, everything is about the solution, and there’s usually only one set way to do things, and you’re expected to find a complete answer at the end,” Shaw said. “But with entrepreneurship, you can take so many different avenues and approaches to solving a problem.”

Shaw is also working alongside Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) student Adam Heymann to build Hedron Design.

The Hatchery connected Shaw and Heymann with mentors who can help them navigate the startup process. CIE director of student innovation programs and Cal Poly Orfalea College of Business lecturer Jose Huitron has been a valuable resource, Shaw said.

Huitron advises the Hedron Design team and “not only helps bounce ideas around, but validates that we’re doing the right things at the right time,” Shaw said.

Shaw said he hopes Hedron Design can create a greener manufacturing industry. Traditional manufacturing methods require large machines which cut down a base material into the shape of the part. 3D-printing, meanwhile, begins with fine materials which are built upon until the part is created, so “there is significantly less waste material,” according to Shaw.

Hedron Design has the potential to increase access to 3D-printing, creating a greener manufacturing space.

“The benefits of 3D-printing are not only economically awesome, but also benefit the environment,” Shaw said. “I want to see the future of manufacturing being greener, and I think what we’re doing with Hedron Design can genuinely help with that.”

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

Here at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE), we do a lot of work with teams and companies to help get their venture off the ground. This work includes on-campus programming in The Hatchery, the Summer Accelerator and the two-year Incubator. The cornerstone to all of our programs is mentorship.

We have over 140 mentors working with the CIE who bring a wealth of knowledge and experience to all of our teams and companies. The CIE mentor program includes entrepreneurs from high tech, venture capital, big retail, niche products and more. From San Luis Obispo, Bay Area, Los Angeles and out of state, we have mentors who provide guidance for multiple business types and help young entrepreneurs build, grow and sustain their businesses.

During the past Summer Accelerator, we had over 30 mentors come through the building to host workshops, meet with teams’ one-on-one and lead round table discussions. In addition to this, each of the eight teams had a Lead Mentor who met with them every week as they set milestones, worked through issues and grew their business.

Our amazing mentors make it possible for the CIE to provide a wide range of resources to teams and companies. We are so grateful for all of the time each mentor has given to the program, and look forward to the future!

If you, or someone you know is interested in mentorship, please fill out an application here.