“Whoever invented the burger was smart, but the person that invented the cheeseburger was a genius.” – Matthew McConaughey
I’ve realized that inventing “hamburgers” is hard. So, during the past few years I have found myself keeping an eye out for the opportunity to put some “cheese” on a juicy “burger”. Towards the end of 2019, I began to pursue an idea that I thought might be a “cheeseburger”. I brought the idea to my teammate Kumar Vijayendra and we began working on our business venture, BestCity, five months before the 2020 Randall Family Big Idea Competition.
*Spoiler alert*: BestCity failed (miraculously, in our opinion) and about two months ago we moved on to a different project.
The BestCity team: Kumar Vijayendra '20 (left) and Gil Dreyfuss '20 (right) during the 2020 Randall Family Big Idea Competition's Meet Your Mentor program for Randall finalist teams.
Kumar and I are unlikely friends -- and that is not just because of our ten-year age gap. We only met because Fortore Energia, an Italian renewable energy company, wanted to enter U.S. markets. I was lucky enough to be an undergraduate analyst on Kumar’s MBA consulting team. From this project, not only did an endearing friendship form, but more so an alignment of views, interests in innovation, and, of course, a love for whiskey and jazz music was realized.
After this project, we joined forces, leveraged the potential we had, and put our heads together on our original startup idea BestCity. With the ongoing support from the University of Pittsburgh’s Big Idea Center, we were able to actively pursue our passion for innovation and entrepreneurship.
In BestCity’s situation, the “hamburger” was 311 Response Centers, government agencies aimed at resolving non-emergency requests from residents, and our “cheese” was going to be a technology based solution aimed at triaging certain civic requests and service issues to non-governmental organizations (NGOs), nonprofits, and other community organizations, with its goal to provide both cost benefits and opportunities for socially responsible community engagement.
After the 2020 Randall Family Big Idea Competition, Kumar and I moved on to the Big Idea Center’s Blast Furnace Accelerator program.
Our time in Blast Furnace was focused on diligent customer discovery. After over forty conversations with city and government officials, 311 managers, NGO owners, and other key stakeholders, we were at a point where our startup’s roadblocks were hard to ignore and pressures from COVID were affecting not only our potential customers and end users, but our team as well. At the end of Blast Furnace, the challenges our team faced with BestCity sadly started to boil over, and, if I’ve being honest, at times Kumar and I felt lost.
Gil Dreyfuss (left) and Kumar Vijayendra (second from right) placing during an MBA Consulting Team project at the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business.
Putting an end to our journey with BestCity was not easy, but after many thoughtful and strategic discussions, Kumar and I were okay with it. In reality, it was easy to put an end to (or shall we say set aside) this idea because it was easy to comprehend how much we gained, learned, and grew from pursuing BestCity through the Big Idea Center.
Later, Kumar and I were lucky enough to be accepted into the Big Idea Center’s Forge Incubator program, and with BestCity on the bench, we completely pivoted, and started to pursue a completely different idea.
This new idea might seem more like a “hamburger”, but it’s really just a “cheeseburger” in my opinion. Curieye is aimed at bringing telepresent robot technologies to museums, art attractions, and other amusements to allow users to have fully immersive and tailored experiences remotely, from wherever they might be.
Gil providing a demo walkthrough of Curieye.
As an aspiring entrepreneur myself, it feels great to be able to share a story of failure with such confidence. It truly is amazing how much you can learn from giving something your all and realizing it won’t work out the way that you had wished. Recently, these experiences have also reminded me that “hamburgers” and “cheeseburgers” are both worth pursuing -- and so are vegan burgers and veggie burgers. Point is, that idea YOU have is worth going after!
With the support of the Big Idea Center, we’re grateful to have the opportunity to continue our pursuit for innovation and entrepreneurship. Curieye now has a larger team with myself as Founder, Kumar as Co-Founder, Dominick Gurnarni as Technology Lead, and a few others by our side, including our Big Idea Center mentor, Rhonda Schuldt.
Please feel free to connect with any of us on LinkedIn and stay tuned for more updates on our new project, Curieye!
Connect with Gil Dreyfuss ‘20 on LinkedIn
Connect with Kumar Vijayendra ‘20 on LinkedIn
Connect with Dominick Gurnarni ‘19 on LinkedIn