A Launchpad for Innovation
As a key partner in the NY I-Corps Hub, Columbia Engineering is launching the next generation of tech.
The next generation of new tech startups is being built right now at Columbia Engineering thanks to the NSF I-Corps.
Columbia has been running the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps program for a decade and has helped hundreds of fledgling startups prepare themselves for the next level.
“The goal of I-Corps is to help bring technology out of the lab and into the marketplace,” said Ivy Schultz, senior director of entrepreneurship, innovation, and design at Columbia Engineering and an instructor for the I-Corps program. “We’re the gateway program where students — any kind of students — can join and test the market.”
Schultz works closely on I-Corps with Columbia Engineering Professor Ioannis (John) Kymissis, who serves as the PI of the program at Columbia.
One of I-Corps’ signature productions is The Start Me Up bootcamp, a quarterly program that gives a class of early-stage entrepreneurs and startup teams a path to better understand the market for their products.
Each session, Schultz said, generally sees 20 to 25 applicants (more in the summer and January sessions), 10 to 20 of whom are selected for the bootcamp. Projects cover the spectrum of technological advances, from consumer goods to medical devices to battery and sensor technologies.
All the teams participate in a two-week session focused on helping them better and more thoroughly understand where their product fits in the current landscape and what their potential customers are looking for. Talks and presentations from established industry experts cover topics like new AI tools, fundraising, legal needs, and strategic partnerships.
“A lot of the mentors we have are alumni,” Schultz said. “Alumni really love interacting with startups and young students, which is great.”
Teams are also given a stipend of up to $3000 to help conduct market research in the field for firsthand feedback.
“We interview all teams, emphasizing that they need to be able to listen to the market, and pivot if necessary, and adjust as they understand more,” Schultz said. “All we really ask is that they come in with an open mind, and be ready to listen to their customers and stakeholders.”
Out of the lab
Kathedra is one of the startups that’s gotten a major acceleration forward through I-Corps’ Start Me Up bootcamp.
Launched when co-founders David Faes ’24GS and Oliver Davila Chasan met in a Columbia reading group for Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Kathedra is developing an AI-guided robotic upholstery system that brings innovation to the $180 billion upholstered furniture market.
While sales and demand for upholstered furniture are projected to rise globally, Faes said factories see skilled labor shortages as a major issue, throttling production and keeping costs high. The training period for new upholsterers is lengthy and expensive – as much as $100,000 over three years – and the job is physically punishing. Kathedra’s robotic system is designed to take some of the physical pressure off of workers by automating some of the most arduous steps like fabric stretching, gluing, and stapling.
In September of 2024, the Kathedra team joined Columbia’s Almaworks accelerator, and after completing the program, Faes said further refining their market through the Start Me Up bootcamp in January of this year was the perfect next step.
Listening first, building smart
Using the travel stipend, the team returned to North Carolina’s furniture making centers with a refined list of questions and even A/B designs to present to factory partners for real-world feedback on their technology.
“We learned so much about things we had never considered,” Faes said. “We know now where we need to go, and really nailed down and fleshed out the hypothetical business model.”
Start Me Up’s emphasis on listening to real-world needs has been invaluable in setting Kathedra’s path, he added.
“What Start Me Up does really well is [highlight] that you need to get out and find a real problem that people need solved now. We might have a big dream and a big reach goal technologically speaking, but for now, because we did this customer discovery, we can modularize it to create a beachhead market that makes immediate impact to make workers’ lives better, increase factory revenue, and cut costs.”
The connections have paid off: Kathedra has secured two Letters of Intent from manufacturers in the U.S. who will pilot the system once it’s ready for testing, and the team is working on creating its first prototype in its Brooklyn offices.
Kyle Cash, who joined Kathedra’s five-person team as a designer and builder for hardware prototypes, is still a Columbia Engineering student. Balancing finalizing his Columbia coursework with creating a new business has been challenging, but Cash, a senior majoring in mechanical engineering, said seeing the project come to life is incredibly rewarding.
“I’m very tight on time all the time now,” he said. “But I’m finding a way through this, and I’m really enjoying working alongside the team and working on what we’re working for.”
Schultz said making those close need-to-innovation connections is exactly what I-Corps aims to do.
“Start Me Up teams complete 20 interviews, and then most realize they need to keep doing more interviews — or go back to the lab and then do more interviews,” she said. Whether the next steps for Start Me Up teams is seeking funding, refining the design, or even going back to the drawing board, Schultz said they’re always better prepared for their next steps —and that’s the idea.
“Teams come out with a better understanding, and more confidence in their decisions and with better plans,” she said. “We have a lot of teams come back and say, ‘Now we’re ready to dive deeper or dive into a different market,’ and that’s a really good signal to us.”
Lead Photo Caption: The Kathedra team, left to right: Kyle Cash, David Faes, Oliver Chasan, and Jordan Zeeb
Lead Photo Credit: Kathedra