Jeremy Mingtao Wu and his company, BikeRules, took top prize at the Syracuse Student Sandbox Demo Day pitch competition.
By: Diane Stirling
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A GPS for a bicycle? And safety, convenience, economic, and sustainability features to boot?
That multi-faceted concept was the winning combination at this year’s Student Sandbox Demo Day event, as BikeRules took top place and a $1,000 prize in the student entrepreneurship competition.
As founder/designer and College of Engineering and Computer Science graduate student Jeremy Mingtao Wu explained in his pitch, by connecting Bluetooth technology to a smartphone, the BikeRules device, a pair of handlebar-mounted turn signals, will automatically light up when the biker needs to make a turn by using a GPS routing system. The navigation device for bicycles uses low-energy technology and a solar-powered rechargeable battery to “take you to your destination, safe and sound, at any time for more than a week.” Wu manufactured the prototype himself using 3-D printing technology. The circuit board interior was designed by a friend, as was the website. He’s now seeking $70,000 from investors to take the prototype to market, and his goal is to do that in 18 months, he told the Demo Day audience.
Wu described how focusing on the sustainability aspects and taking his idea to the Sandbox helped him come up with a workable idea. “It’s a small problem,” he noted, “but no one has solved it yet. I looked at it as a simplified design.” He said he had good feedback about his idea at his own school, and when he approached Student Sandbox staff about developing the app, they were positive and welcoming. The Sandbox’s intensive buildout environment helped Wu “generate more interest, meet more people, and get more teaching about mobile app design,” he said, allowing him to “finally get the design to the beta stage.”
Wu’s professor, Dr. Young B. Moon, helped inspire the concept, Wu said. Other team members are Chenchen Shen, Xinyu Wang, and Jason Zhu.
Top Presentation
A food and event-focused company earned the $500 prize for top trade show workspace presentation. Roux, a pop-up dining experience, creates “intimate and interactive dinners to evoke excitement with food, through design.” The creators are School of Visual and Performing Arts students Rohan Thakore and Ryn Adkins.
iSchool Student Contenders
Several School of Information Studies (iSchool) students were involved in the Student Sandbox and the Demo Day competition. They included Nata Barbosa, an exchange student from Catholic University of Brazil, who’s been at the iSchool for the past couple of semesters. He presented his idea for 196Sense, an experience-driven travel and tourism network allowing students to connect with peers based on travel experiences and recommendations.
iSchoolers also were part of the team for Bilin. The Chinese term reflects the concept of a warm welcome, and finding a neighbor in a distant land. iSchoolers Yueming Sun (IM), Dexi Kong (IM) and Yaqing Xu(IM), along with additional team members Ying (Joy) Tang and Wei Liu, presented their idea for a mobile app that provides a way for Chinese international students to find a roommate, get a ride, purchase second-hand household furnishings, and post social and informational messages within a familiar and comfortable cultural network.
What’s Demo Day?
It’s pitches; every five minutes, with ideas floated for a new app, tech company, or invention. It’s assessments; and all-important feedback from audience members who are potential users. It’s accolades for the idea-makers; from an audience that truly recognizes how hard it is to come up with an idea and make it happen in the course of a 12- week semester.
This is the sixth year of Demo Day, noted Student Sandbox director and entrepreneur-in-residence John Liddy, an adjunct professor at the iSchool. He described this year’s Sandbox residency and competition concepts as more disparate in their focus than in the past. He said the groups also seemed “a more coachable cohort; they took advice and implemented it, but not without evidence of proof. Once validated, they acted on it,” he reflected. Eleven teams presented their startup ideas at Demo Day this year.
Other concepts presented at Demo Day included:
Fresh Auto, which “make[s] dreams come true, getting you behind the wheel of all your favorite cars;” Contact, a company that creates products that immerse users in their virtual environment using haptic devices; MeowSense, designers of a litter box for cats to further the treatment of diabetes in household pets; SparkCharge, a charging company for electric car owners that allows them to travel all they want for $45 a month; Wynd, “changing the way you drone;” Inspiration, user experience consulting for app developers; Prey, which leverages 3D capacities to produce innovative fishing lures.
In addition to iSchool students, Student Sandbox classmates participated from other schools, as follows:
College of Engineering and Computer Science: Hannah Gardner, Tom Buchanan; Tim Meyer; Ben Marggraf; Jeremy Mingtao Wu; Xinyu Wang; Alexandria Bonner; Brittney Pethel;
David B. Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics: Aldrine Ashong-Katai and Kanisha Ffriend;
College of Arts and Sciences: Arron Budnick and Josh Aviv;
SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry: Alden Morris, Casey Lennon, Kean Clifford.