Sunday, March 10, 2013

$7M grant gives birth to CMU business incubator

Nitsan Shai strums AC/DC's “Back in Black” on an electric guitar while he follows the notes on a website with his laptop.

If he misses a note, the program stops and an online maestro offers tips.

Shai, 18, a freshman at Carnegie Mellon University, is a part-time programmer at tunessence, a startup company founded by CMU alumni and faculty with the help of $50,000 from the McCune Foundation.

The money came from a $7 million grant from McCune, its largest ever, and the first in a series of “Big Ideas” grants, to provide financial aid for undergraduate and graduate students who are entrepreneurs and seed money for companies they and faculty establish... Read More»

By Bill Zlatos / Trib Live