Haas Student Startups Snag Dean’s Seed Fund
UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business recently published an article about this spring’s round of Dean’s Seed Fund grants, which awarded 11 student startups instead of the usual ten.
The $100,000 Dean’s Seed Fund was an initiative spearheaded by Dean Rich Lyons in late 2015, which aims to “enhance entrepreneurship support for current Berkeley-Haas students” by offering $5,000 toward research and development, along with free work space at the Berkeley-Haas incubator.
Spring 2017’s teams include students from all three of Berkeley-Haas’ MBA programs, along with partnerships with students from UC Berkeley’s Schools of Law, Information, Public Policy, Public Health, Engineering, Forestry and Natural Resources, and Education:
- AndaBar is a nutrition bar that combats obesity developed in partnership with the Children’s Hospital of Oakland Research Institute.
- Liverty helps differently abled individuals live independently by helping them “find and manage assistance anywhere and at any time.”
- Sierra BlueFlame Woodworks harvests wood from trees killed by bark beetles into lovingly made furniture.
- HomeSlice creates opportunities for groups of people to jointly purchase real estate.
- InnoWaste makes recycling more efficient using a digital platform.
- OmSchool uses positive psychology to foster social emotional classroom learning.
- Oishii Farm aims to “bring agriculture production into the 21st century.”
- Ikanos connects “the world’s top executives with the most renowned and credible educators from top-ranked global academic institutions.”
- Lyme.Dot enables Lyme disease patients to “track and store health data, match with patients experiencing similar symptoms, and share the data with their healthcare practitioners.”
- Flourish uses mobile games to motivate young adults to save more money.
- Markt connects farmers and consumers “through a transparent, online farmers market.”
About the Author
Jonathan Pfeffer
Jonathan Pfeffer joined the Clear Admit and MetroMBA teams in 2015 after spending several years as an arts/culture writer, editor, and radio producer. In addition to his role as contributing writer at MetroMBA and contributing editor at Clear Admit, he is co-founder and lead producer of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. He holds a BA in Film/Video, Ethnomusicology, and Media Studies from Oberlin College.
