October 11, 2016
Blast Furnace, the University of Pittsburgh Innovation Institute’s student startup accelerator, has selected 18 student teams to participate in the Fall 2016 cohort.
With the new cohort, Blast Furnace will have fostered 55 student startup teams in a little over one year of operation. The selection process for the current cohort included the largest and most competitive application pool to date, comprised of students from all University of Pittsburgh schools and departments across the campus and at all levels, from undergraduate through postdoctoral. Also included in this Cohort are students teams form the College of Business Administration who have participated in a special, for credit version of the Blast Furnace.
“After an extensive review process, we are now excited to announce the 18 teams that have been selected into the Blast Furnace Fall 2016 cohort,” said Greg Coticchia, Director of the Blast Furnace. “Each of the teams has been assigned an experienced business mentor and will have the opportunity over the next eight weeks to put their ideas through a rigorous Lean Launchpad process that will help them discover who their customers are and what the value proposition is for their minimum viable product.”
The teams for the Spring 2016 cohort are:
| Team Name | Team Members | Description |
| Aeronics | Mark Spitz, Blake Dube, Alec Kaija | Portable oxygen device |
| Brighton Road Coffee | Cynthia Clark | Concept coffee house |
| Food Runner | James Bock | Personalized meal planning for athletes |
| Inreach Automotive | Austin Ables | Concierge car buying service |
| KS Consulting | Lindsey Snyder, Marissa Kurzirian | STEM consulting for small and mid-size businesses |
| Network Now | Benjamin Wilt, Brian Wilkinson, Josh Friedman, Woo-Young Chang | Professional networking app |
| On Target Running | John Schneider, Joseph Thaman, Joseph Schneider | Running app with coaching and fitness testing |
| Paper Plane | Bradly Cole, Steven Brash, Max Polec | Social media platform |
| Pentach | Anthony O’Brien, Reed Hostrander | Mechanical pencil |
| PerQ | PUneeth Shridhar | Coronary artery catheter to avoid bypass surgery |
| Poseidon Energy | Adrian Reitars | Energy production from ocean dredging |
| Power Drive | Deepan Chandru Kamaraj | Virtual reality gaming for in-home rehabilitation |
| Publier | Michelle Fitzhugh | Publishing platform |
| Queble | Jackson Wang, Anthony Acquaviva | Social platform for college campuses |
| ShopDock | Raanan Gurewitsch, Joshua Friedman, Ryan Scheuer | Smartphone dock for phone charging at retail locations |
| Habitat (formerly Sportify) | Cyrus Basseri, Farhan Farooqui | Social platform to boost student engagement |
| STiLERT | Mathew Vendeville | Mobile application for sexual history tracking |
| Student Connect | Amy Johnson, Jie Song, Hanwei Cheng, Chen Su, Kyle Wyche | Device for reporting physical assaults |
Blast Furnace brings together business domain experts, successful entrepreneurs and investors familiar with early stage markets to create a learning platform for student innovators and their startups.
By drawing on the Blast Furnace’s large network of successful professionals, business experts and entrepreneurs, students involved in the program are guided toward creating successful companies that can establish market leadership positions. The program concludes on December 8, 2016, with a Demo Day where the students will pitch and demo their ideas to an audience of VIPs from Pittsburgh’s startup scene.
Investors, partners, and future applicants are encouraged to attend Demo Day and meet the spring cohort to experience the energy and breadth of ideas put forward by Pitt students.
To find out more go to the Blast Furnace web site, and check out Cohort 4 in more detail at: http://pittblastfurnace.com.