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.”