CONGRATULATIONS TO OUR 2021 WINNERS
Evera Technologies
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Commercial Enterprise - Gold Medal Grant Winner and TECH Outstanding Undergraduate Founders Prize awarded by the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard in the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with support from the Lumry Family Endowment for Technology and Entrepreneurship
ShoulderTap
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Commercial Enterprise - Silver Medal Grant Winner
Keto Kind
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Social Enterprise - Gold Medal Grant Winner and TECH Outstanding Undergraduate Founders Prize awarded by the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard in the Harvard Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences with support from the Lumry Family Endowment for Technology and Entrepreneurship
Debate Spaces
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Social Enterprise - Silver Medal Grant Winner
2020 WINNER UPDATES
ADVENTUS ROBOTICS
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Commercial Enterprise – Gold Medal Grant Winner $10,000 cash grant
“Adventus Robotics operates at the cutting edge of AI based self-driving technology for wheelchairs, and is backed by the Allston Ventures fund, the Harvard Center for Technology and Entrepreneurship, and Amazon Web Services. In partnership with leading hospitals, airports, and consumer groups, Adventus is enhancing the quality of life people at work and at home around the world by improving accessibility for all. We were fortunate to receive a $10k grant from the Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship to continue building and scaling through COVID. We are continuing to pursue clinical trials in Canada for our technology.” ~Maya Burhanpurkar
GLOBAL ALLIANCE FOR MEDICAL INNOVATION
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Social Enterprise – Gold Medal Grant Winner $10,000 cash grant
“Now more than ever, we see that there are inequities that persist in regards to access to healthcare around the world. Our business, the Global Alliance for Medical Innovation, aims to bridge that gap by providing physicians in low-resource areas with low-cost, portable technological solutions. More specifically, our team designed a low-cost corneal endothelial tissue imaging software system combining both smartphone-based technologies and novel deep learning techniques to make high-quality ophthalmological care a reality for all. Winning i3 is not only such an immense honor, but it is also a major stepping stone in helping our business advance forward to achieve our mission of addressing the most pressing health issues in low-resource settings. With the opportunity that I3 has given us, we are now able to clinically validate our software system with the goal of deploying our device in the near future to those in need. We’ve found a partner at Mass Eye and Ear and are currently in the process of submitting an IRB for our clinical trial.” ~Annie Miall
More Information:
www.harvardgami.org/@harvardgami
STRADA
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Commercial Enterprise – Silver Medal Grant Winner $5,000 cash grant
“Strada Routing builds AI to match freight and route deliveries with respect to real-world constraints. We are dedicated to eliminating the inefficiencies of the trucking industry—saving time, money, and the environment. Through i3, we received insightful feedback, access to a network of innovators and opportunities, and funding to boost our growth in the coming months. Most importantly, we learned that others share our vision for a world in which shipping is clean, fast, and easy, and the optimal path can be found with the click of a button.” ~Landon Smith
IMMIGRANTS LIKE US
The McKinley Family Grant for Innovation and Entrepreneurial Leadership in Social Enterprise – Silver Medal Grant Winner $5,000 cash grant
“Immigrants Like Us is a legal-tech nonprofit delivering free immigration help to disadvantaged immigrants including low-income and humanitarian cases. Our core product is a TurboTax for immigration where people can prepare their paperwork and get it reviewed by an expert for free. We are so grateful for i3's support and mentorship. The feedback we got on how to pitch was invaluable, and the people i3 can connect us to makes it all the easier for us to fulfill our mission. [i3] was really useful for sustaining full-time team members when we were launching a web triage system vs. the mvp phone triage system” ~Mary Gao
2019 WINNER UPDATES
BREAKTIME
“Breaktime is opening Breaktime Cafe at 170 Portland Street in Boston in 2020. Our work has been featured in the Boston Globe, NBC, WCVB News and more and Breaktime has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars to support our mission. Our grant through i3 enabled us to run a six month pilot program in 2018 employing 5 young adults experiencing homelessness. Following the program, 4 of our employees were placed at long-term higher paying jobs. We are using our learnings from this pilot program in the launch of Breaktime Cafe in 2020.” ~Tony Shu
More Information:
Breaktime is a non-profit social enterprise that launches the careers of young adults experiencing homelessness through transitional employment and empowerment.
www.breaktime.us/@breaktimeboston
LORO
“We finished building Loro 1.0 and are now completing our pilot tests. We will launch Loro this summer. We've raised half of our seed round and have developed meaningful positions with partnering organizations. Through i3, an angel investor contacted us and made a significant investment in our company. This served as a wonderful launch pad and introduced us to an incredible network of mentors and investors. i3 also gave us a platform on social media to promote our business.” ~Lin Zhu
More Information:
Loro is building a smart companion device for wheelchair users that enhances connection, communication, and control.
www.loro.xyz
RETHINK
“Since winning i3, ReThink has accelerated as a social enterprise. As of this January, we've reached 5 million students. We've also won numerous awards and recognition, including Harvard University's President's Innovation Challenge. Finally, we've made progress towards taking ReThink international, and making it available in a dozen languages. i3 accelerated ReThink's growth by providing both 1) the funding, as well as 2) connections to build our brand and support our work. i3's funds were used to bolster our team, so that we could gain access to the experts we needed to take ReThink global. i3 also put us in touch with several mentors, many of whom are now helping guide/support ReThink's vision. We are so grateful for i3!” ~Trisha Prabhu
More Information:
ReThink is an award-winning, innovative, nonintrusive, patented technology that effectively detects and stops online hate before the damage is done.
www.rethinkwords.com/@rethinkwords
2018 WINNER UPDATES
NUMINAR
“Numinar has matured by leaps and bounds since winning i3. We raised an angel round, built an MVP, and generated initial traction revenue from 10 pilot campaigns over the summer of 2019. In 2020, we raised a seed round, served 70 campaigns, and made over $500k in revenue! Our team is now up to 12 members based out of our DC office and we're still hiring! The money we won from i3 helped finance our first summer of developing the MVP. We used it to pay for our Airbnb in Arlington VA. Without it, we would not even have been able to get Numinar off the ground!” ~Will Long
More Information:
Numinar is a software platform that gives state and local-level political candidates voter targeting and outreach tooling to win modern campaigns. It provides a comprehensive voter file, predictive preference and turnout models, and automated outreach tools including social media, text, and direct mail.
www.numinar.com
Unspoken Rules
“Since winning i3 in 2018 with Chat with Frank (www.chatwithfrank.com), a mobile, text-based career coach, I’ve developed and piloted a next-generation prototype. After discussions with advisors, however, I decided to turn my user and market research into a book first. I have since secured a literary agent and publisher and am on track to publish the book in spring of 2021. My plan is to return to Chat with Frank after launching my book. i3 connected me with like-minded entrepreneurs, provided me with funding to prototype my product, and gave me the validation and encouragement to keep going.” ~Gorick Ng
More Information:
“The Unspoken Rules: Secrets to Succeeding in Your First Job” (Harvard Business Review) is a forthcoming book that helps new grads navigate their first jobs / internships, step-by-by-step using tips sourced from interviews with 500+ professionals across industries and job types. It will be published April 27th, 2021.
www.gorick.com / @gorick.ng
2017 WINNER UPDATES
ENTYDE
The McKinley Grant was the catalyst we needed to start seriously developing an easy-to-use, reliable, and reusable intubation verification sensor, offering a more affordable option for small, underfunded EMT teams. Our vision is to build a sensor that detects the rate of change of CO2 being exhaled by the patient to set off a binary indication light that glows green or red to indicate whether a patient is breathing properly.
Coming into the competition, we had our very first prototype which was a basic proof-of-concept. We are proud to share the great news that we are finishing the second prototype of a sensor device that interfaces with an endotracheal tube, which we wouldn’t have been able to do without the generous grant from the McKinley family. We’ve used the grant funding on parts for the device of the second prototype.
In other updates, we’ve continued our market research, evaluating options such as a direct go-to-market approach or working with research institutions.
Next semester we plan to be be residents at the Harvard Innovation Lab, where we will have access to the Da Vinci 3D printing lab, which will allow us to work on future iterations of the product.
DOORBELL
It’s been an exciting past 6 months for Doorbell; we've doubled the number of units we're powering with the Doorbell platform around Metro Boston!
Since receiving the McKinley Grant in April we have added 485 apartment units, rebuilt our entire software stack, hired 7 more full time team members, and have expanded our product to include exclusive local discounts with local partners.
The update I'm most excited about is how awesome our team is! We've been growing on both engineering and community ops and are now 8 full-time and 2 part-time in what is truly a dedicated and passionate team building communities in apartment buildings across Boston and Downtown Worcester.
We also had a nice feature in Forbes just the other week and VentureFizz a few weeks before.
Winning second place at i3 allowed us to hone in on our value prop with essential feedback from judges. The prize also helped us expand our engineering team and build brand new naive experiences for our iPhone and Android-using residents. Thanks to i3 we have invested in our growth, learning, and impact potential.
