It’s nearing 5:00 P.M. on July 28, and a steady stream of students begins to file into the Evans Way /Tudbury Auditorium. They settle into groups, huddled around laptops, delivering presentations to the walls. The room is anxious. Tonight is important. As part of Wentworth’s inaugural Accelerate program, a new student-business startup competition, student teams have the opportunity to tell a panel of judges about their game-changing idea and potentially walk away with thousands in funding to get it off the ground.
The lights are lowered, and the pitches start. There’s a team that wants to start a kind of Netflix
for moving boxes, offering Boston’s massive collegemarket the ability to rent durable, stackable crates rather than the traditional, more expensive, less environmentally friendly cardboard boxes. Another group has plans for a new portable speaker system that would offer both a rugged body and clear sound. There’s even a team that wants to revolutionize the modern pedicab—those human-powered, three-wheeled bicycle rickshaws.
The pedicab team, made up of Eric Crouch, BMET ’12, and John Pelkey, BIND ’12, takes the stage with a presentation they’ve been fine-tuning for weeks. Pelkey does the talking. First, an intro to the world of pedicabs. (“This is the most fun you can have in Boston, I’m telling you.”) Then he walks through the big advantages of their new, improved model: reliability, aesthetics, ergonomics, cost-effectiveness. He talks about how 28 of the cabs ordered by the company he works for needed repairs within their first year of operation and how the new drivetrain he and Crouch developed will save thousands of dollars.
A few months ago, Crouch and Pelkey’s new pedicab was an idea for their senior design studio—a cool project, but one whose ultimate purpose was academic. Now it looked like something that could live beyond the walls of Wentworth. Something that could meet a market need. Something that could make money. Pelkey and Crouch aren’t just thinking like students anymore—they are thinking like CEOs.
Every Accelerate team that takes the stage is some variation of the new dorm-room to board-room version of the American Dream—a hopeful narrative inspired by the success of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and Stanford grad school tinkerers-cum-Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Schools across the country are increasingly seeing the untapped potential on campus: the National Business Incubation Association reported this year that about one-third of the 1,250 business incubators in the United States are at universities, up from one-fifth in 2006.
Monique Fuchs, associate vice president of innovation and entrepreneurship, and Fred Driscoll, dean of the College of Engineering and Technology, had long believed that Wentworth students had the necessary appetite for entrepreneurship. Fuchs spent many days in late 2010 perched outside the Beatty Hall cafeteria coaxing 1,100 students into filling out surveys that covered everything from their technology use to who influenced their decision to attend Wentworth, giving the Institute a better understanding of the student mindset and learning attitudes.
But she and Driscoll were particularly interested in how students answered question 22: “What size company do you prefer to work for?”
Most responded that they preferred a mid-size company or that it didn’t matter. But 21 percent said they were planning on starting a company at some point in their career.
“That’s when we said, ‘OK, let’s test it out,’” says Fuchs.
She and Driscoll had been talking for some time about creating some kind of entrepreneurship and innovation program on campus and answering the Institute’s call for more interdisciplinary, project-based learning. “How can we make this happen?”
Their answer was Accelerate: a student startup competition focused on interdisciplinary collaboration (each team must include students from at least two majors) and informed by the Boston tech ecosystem—one of the country’s most active communities of startups, funders, and engineers. (This year, the National Venture Capital Association ranked the city second only to the San Francisco/Silicon Valley region in its list of top cities for tech startups.)
“Students here can excel when we ask them to take something and build it,” says Driscoll. “This program has them ask should you build it.”
By mid-April 2012, Driscoll and Fuchs got the go-ahead to launch. With only two weeks before the start of the summer semester—which meant that only one-third of the typical student population would be on campus—their expectations were guarded.
“We thought that if we got ten people interested, that would be cool,” says Fuchs.
They had 50.
For the student teams, the Accelerate program resembled an entrepreneurship boot camp. Co-op advisor Sean Smith, BCOS ’12, would lead them through a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis, talk shop, and help them refine their idea. Ten late afternoon workshops featuring startup veterans, intellectual property lawyers, and Boston tech gurus offered the students field-tested advice and training.
“I think that was really good for the students—they see these people who have gone through similar problems and have experienced it,” says Fuchs. “They know what they are talking about. They share their failures.”
In all, the teams had four weeks of preparation, training, and coaching—all leading up to a final, critical challenge for their new business: selling it.
On that nervous July night in Evans Way/Tudbury, each team is given five minutes to make their case and then five minutes to answer questions from a panel of four judges—architecture professor Charlie Cimino, AET ’68, AE ’74, who sits on the board of directors for international design firm Design Continuum, Inc.; Jerry Cotellessa, CHT ’86, head of software quality assurance at data analytics giant Opera Solutions; Stefania Nappi Mallett, a serial high-tech executive with extensive startup experience; and Aaron O’Hearn, the cofounder and director of the Boston Startup School. 
After each presentation, the judges fire away.
“How will this make money?”
“How are you different from your competitors?”
“Have you tested this?”
When the pedicab team of Crouch and Pelkey—working under the team name Pelkey Design—is asked how they’ll make money, Pelkey tells them they are planning on just building a production model and then selling it to an existing company. One of the judges wonders if that puts them out of business, then. Yes, essentially, that’s right, Pelkey says. The judge wonders if the team shouldn’t be thinking bigger.
When they get offstage, they’re unsure of how it went.
“It was hard to get all the business stuff in there,” says Pelkey.
The judges deliberate immediately after the pitches wrap up. The next day, an email announces that five teams will be funded for a total of $29,000. Pelkey Design is the biggest winner, taking in $10,000 to help build a prototype for their new pedicab. To Pelkey and Crouch, it’s another step closer to their dream of reinventing the pedicab. To Fuchs, the money is an educational investment.
“In the end, we really didn’t fund for the product,” she says. “We funded the learning experience.”
On a sunny day in late August, John Pelkey steers a new 
pedicab prototype onto Wentworth’s West Lot. Crouch sits in the carriage. Pelkey turns sideways in his seat and points out the carriage’s step, which is about eight inches off the ground—about half that of the typical pedicab.
“Now my grandmother can get in,” he says.
As Pelkey banks right in front of Wentworth Hall, Crouch notes the lack of crunching gears—something that also plagues the old model. They’ve improved the ergonomics, decreased the weight, and removed the ill-placed carriage bar that used to leave their heels pocked with injuries.
“There’s not a component on this thing that hasn’t been analyzed,” says Crouch.
Fuchs and Driscoll have similarly high ambitions for Accelerate.
“It’s a game-changer,” says Driscoll
They want to increase the program’s visibility in Boston and start working with other schools to develop a deeper network for student innovation. Someday, they’d like to see something like a Super Bowl of student innovation, where winners from local colleges face off. Fuchs also wants to be sure that they are on Boston Mayor Tom Menino’s radar for space in the city’s new Innovation Center, scheduled to open in early 2013. On campus, the goal is to continue making entrepreneurship feel like part of the education. A kind of natural extension of the learning model, Fuchs says, where the lifespan of a good idea isn’t measured in semesters.
—Dan Morrell
THE FUNDED
A look at the five teams that received financial support in Wentworth’s inaugural Accelerate program:
Pelkey Design ($10,000)
Eric Crouch, BMET ’12, John Pelkey, BIND ’12
A total design reinvention of the modern pedicab—with better support, structure, and standards.
The Doormen ($7,500)
Justin Kearnan, ARCH ’13, Scott Bradrick, BCOS ’13, Logen Johnson, BELM ’13
Unreliable ID checkers at the bar? This iPhone peripheral can scan the back of licenses and nail the fakes.
Awesome Products ($7,500)
Matt Shrago, BSCN ’14, and Eric Warncke
A salve for frustrated songwriters: A simple, user-friendly music composition application for your smart phone or tablet.
LL Enterprise ($2,000)
Thomas Liveston, BCET ’12, Kyle Lapatin, BCOS ’12
This duo’s invention automates soil analysis processes that are typically done by hand, saving valuable hours of labor and producing more precise data.
Pneumatics Underground ($2,000)
Chris Hashem, BELM ’13, Craig Curtis, BELM ’13, Ben Nadeau, BELM ’13, George Lioio, BCET ’13
Goodbye, garbage trucks: The big idea from this foursome is a system of underground tubes that can move trash out of your home using compressed air.
