Tuesday, November 5, 2019

RedMarlin Raises $10M To Fight Counterfeiting With AI

Fraud prevention and phishing detection startup, RedMarlin, recently secured $10M in Series A funding co-led by Thomvest Ventures and Crosslink Capital, with participation from Cyber Mentor Fund, Nexxus Venture Partners and Rain Capital.

A participant in the CMU Swartz Center's VentureBridge accelerator program, RedMarlin co-founder, CEO and CMU alumnus Abhishek Dubey said the new funds will be used to grow the company's engineering and sales teams while furthering its go-to-market strategy.

Read more at VentureBeat.

Monday, November 4, 2019

Goldman Sachs Leads $50M Investment in CMU Credit Card Startup Deserve

Deserve, a credit card startup founded by CMU Tepper School of Business alumnus Kalpesh Kapadia, has raised $50M in a new round of Series C funding led by Goldman Sachs. Deserve helps young people establish themselves and is also a cloud-based, credit card platform for businesses.

Read more at TechCrunch. Read more at CNBC.

Monday, November 4, 2019

Kimodo Takes First Place at CMU's Hack-A-Startup

This past weekend, Carnegie Mellon's US-China Innovation and Entrepreneurship Association (IEA), the Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Association (UEA) and the Graduate Entrepreneurship Club (GEC) hosted the annual Hack-A-Startup business competition at the Tepper School of Business and CMU Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship.

The participants, a combination of CMU undergraduate and graduate students, created business plans for judges to evaluate for a chance to win cash prizes. The students were challenged to effectively communicate with their teams of 4-6 members to create innovative ideas that challenged the conventional.

First place of $500 cash went to Kimodo, a data analytics platform that revolutionizes the municipal bond industry. Over $1K in prizes was awarded to the winning teams.

Friday, November 1, 2019

CMU Startup GT Entrepreneurs Closes Its Third Deal

GT Entrepreneurs ("GTE") has announced the closing of their third deal. CMU Tepper School of Business alumnus Gabriel Chick, a GTE Operator-in-Residence, has completed the final paperwork to acquire Service-Tech Corporation (STC), a Cleveland, OH based HVAC and industrial cleaning company.

GT Entrepreneurs works out of the CMU Swartz Center and is also a Project Olympus PROBE.

Read more at GTE.

Wednesday, October 30, 2019

CMU'S Zensors Helps Take Stress Out Of Holiday Travel at Pittsburgh International Airport

Pittsburgh International Airport and Manchester-Boston Regional Airport are amongst the first airports that are relying on Artificial Intelligence (AI) to reduce the stress of the holiday rush.

CMU startup Zensors, founded by CMU alumnus and professor Chris Harrison and alumnus Anuraag Jain, is helping airports by providing travelers with real-time wait estimates at Transportation Security Administration (TSA) checkpoints to give passengers an idea of how much time they can expect to wait in the security queue. Passengers can access security wait times on airport websites before they leave home, allowing them to manage their time and eliminate worries.

Read more at Yahoo Finance.

Monday, October 28, 2019

CMU'S TALENT IPO MAKES POETS & QUANTS LIST OF THE MOST DISRUPTIVE MBA STARTUPS OF 2019

Co-founded by Tepper School of Business MBA students Aashay Doshi, Michael Lai and Ayush Luthra, Talent IPO recently made Poets & Quants list for the most disruptive MBA startups of 2019.

The company is a platform that connects students seeking to raise money for their educational expenses with impact-driven university-affiliated investors via an Income Share Agreement. In short, these investors fund students’ educational expenses for a percentage share of their future income for a set period of time.

Read more at Poets & Quants.

Friday, October 25, 2019

Registration for the 2020 McGinnis Venture Competition opens Friday, November 1, 2019!

The McGinnis Venture Competition, a platform exclusively for Carnegie Mellon University's community of student entrepreneurs, brings together CMU's best and brightest student entrepreneurs to compete for $60K in investments. All participants receive crucial interaction with alumni entrepreneurs and venture capitalists, an opportunity to raise capital and valuable feedback about their ventures.

Applications open on Friday, November 1, 2019. The final live round will be held at the Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship at Carnegie Mellon University's Pittsburgh campus in March, 2020.

Find out more.

Monday, October 21, 2019

Idelic Announces Partnership with Keep Truckin

Idelic, a Pittsburgh-based data and analytics platform for improving safety in the transportation industry, has announced its partnership with KeepTruckin, a leader in modern fleet management solutions.

Founded by CMU Tepper School of Business alumni Hayden Cardiff and Nick Bartel (Swartz Fellows), Idelic will now offer KeepTruckin’s platform as the preferred solution for customers to run safer and more efficient fleets. 

Read more at Businesswire.com.

Thursday, October 17, 2019

Pendo Raises $100M at a $1B Valuation

Pendo.io, the product cloud company, announced this week that it has raised $100M in Series E funding led by Sapphire Ventures to help more Saas companies and digital enterprises become product led.

Co-founded by CMU alumni Eric Boduch and Todd Olson, Pendo has now raised $206M and will use the new funds to accelerate global expansion and drive product development to meet the growing demand for software that makes digital products easier to use. The company’s valuation is now $1 billion.

Read more at Pendo.io.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Headstorm Extends Senior Leadership Team and Opens Office in Pittsburgh

Headstorm, a digital product and engineering firm headquartered in Dallas, is growing its leadership team with the addition of Alex Cherones as Partner (Dallas), and CMU Tepper School of Business professor of Entrepreneurship Adam Paulisick as Senior Partner and Chief Product Officer (Pittsburgh).

Headstorm helps fast-growing startups to Fortune 500 companies develop clear product strategy, deliver data-driven experiences and engineer solutions that are stable, secure, and scalable.

Read more at PRLOG.org.

Tuesday, October 15, 2019

Little Moochi Wins First Place at Chinese Association for Science Technology Global Innovation Summit

Tepper MBA student, Swartz Fellow, NSF I-Corps participant and Little Moochi founder Summer Xia, won first place at the 2019 Chinese Association for Science Technology Global Innovation Summit (CAST), which took place on October 11-13, 2019 in Pittsburgh, PA. The startup won $3K and another $500 for the Most Marketable Solutions award.

Read more at Chinese Association for Science and Technology.

Monday, October 14, 2019

TALKMEUP Launches Online Pitch Competition

TalkMeUp, the AI based communications training software platform founded by CMU Tepper School of Business alumna JJ Xu, has just launched an online pitch competition. Participants are eligible to win $500 cash after submitting a 30-second self-introduction from their phone or computer camera. The competition ends on November 1, 2019 at 12PM PDT.

TalkMeUp recently closed its pre-seed at $600K and has launched a fully automated 1.0 SaaS product that supports interview and professional presentation training for individuals and organizations.

Friday, October 11, 2019

Little Moochi Releases Beta Version

Little Moochi, the startup focused on helping children form healthy eating habits through interactions with a virtual pet, has released its beta version, which can be downloaded through TestFlight, an Apple store supported beta distribution tool.

Little Moochi is founded by CMU Tepper School of Business MBA, Summer Xia, who is also a Swartz Fellow and a participant in the NSF I-Corps program with the CMU Swartz Center. Little Moochi also won $10K at the 2019 Forte Power Pitch Competition.

Wednesday, October 9, 2019

CMU's Teratonix Among Winners of 2019 CleanTech Open Northeast Accelerator

Cleantech Open Northeast, the Northeast division of Cleantech Open, the world’s largest cleantech accelerator, announced its four 2019 regional winners, which include CMU startup, Teratonix, developer of a maintenance-free power source that replace batteries.

Each of the companies will receive $10K in cash, plus additional in-kind services and will go on to represent the Northeast at the Cleantech Open Global Forum in Los Angeles in November.

Read more at New York citybizlist.com.

Monday, October 7, 2019

CMU's Delta Trainer Launches New App and Brings On Trainers and Clients

Co-founded by CMU senior and Undergraduate Innovation Scholar Matt Spettel, Delta Trainer, the app for tracking strength training in the gym, has released its new app and has recently brought on eight contracted and one full-time trainer. The platform, which initially only supported traditional strength training, now works with various types of exercises including yoga and cardio.

To use Delta Trainer, users download the app, fill out a survey and are paired with a personal trainer. The user can then video chat with the trainer to talk about goals, injuries and preferences, before the trainer develops an initial set of workouts.

Read more at The Pittsburgh Business Times. This article requires a subscription.

Friday, October 4, 2019

CMU Swartz Center and Venture Bridge Startup Presents at TechCrunch's Battlefield Startup Competition

When CMU Tepper School of Business alumnus and T4 co-founder Maks Khurgin was working at Bain and Company, he ran into a common problem for analysts looking for market data. He spent too much time searching for it and felt there had to be a better way. He decided to build a centralized market data platform himself, and T4 was born. The company competed in the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Startup Competition, Battlefield this week.

Maks was also a participant in this summer's Venture Bridge Summer Accelerator Program in Silicon Valley.

Read more at Tech Crunch

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

Carnegie Mellon University Student and Alumni Make the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 List

• Ishaan Jaffer, ECE junior and 2020-21 Undergraduate Innovation Scholar, has been named a Forbes 30 Under 30 Scholar.
• Emily Kennedy, CMU alumna and co-founder of Marinus Analytics, has been chosen for the Social Entrepreneurs category.
• Troy Demmer, CMU alumnus and co-founder of Gecko Robotics, has been chosen for the Energy category.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019

CMU's Digital Dream Labs Reaches $25K Crowd Funding Goal