What we did in 2017–2018

We notice that we get a lot of students asking: “What do you do at Bruin Entrepreneurs?” We decided that maybe this recap post would help answer this question. The 2017–2018 academic year was a great year for Bruin Entrepreneurs (BE), full of exciting new events and ideas. Here’s a recap of some highlights and a look at what we’ve got planned for the upcoming year. We’re really excited for the future, and we hope you’ll join us!

Fall 2017 Highlights

1000 Pitches Competition

A snapshot of our 3-week long campaign at Bruinwalk, where we handed free t-shirts for everyone who was willing to stop by and pitch for 30 seconds!

We kick-started the year with 1000 Pitches, a campus-wide competition where students pitched a new product/idea to win a free t-shirt. Starting from the Enormous Activities Fair until the end of week 3, we flagged down students on Bruinwalk and at our weekly meetings. We gathered nearly 1000 pitches. At the end of the 3-week long campaign, we selected 10 students with the best pitches, who then presented in our closing ceremony. Shout out to our sponsors, Boba Bear, Startup UCLA, and UltraPress for supporting us with this event!

The 1st place winner (Miranda Kim), pitching in the closing ceremony about her idea, Soulface Apparel — a clothing line made out of recycled plastics

Startup Fair

We partnered with Sigma Eta Pi, the entrepreneurship fraternity at UCLA, and Engineering Society at UCLA and hosted the annual Startup Fair, where we invited numerous startups to connect with students.

Students listening to a representative from Stratalux

Startup Labs: A New Cohort of Startups

Startup Labs got a new cohort of student startups and spent the quarter teaching them about the startup process and introducing them to resources such as guest speakers. For example, we introduced our student startups to the founders of Playfull, who have been involved with BE ever since they graduated UCLA. An interview with them can be foud on Startup Lab’s Medium page, right here. We also had a serial entrepreneur and founder at HomeHero, Mike Townsend, as a guest speaker this quarter.

Speaker Highlights

Hakuna Banana co-founders presenting to our members. They even brought samples of their ice-cream to try!

Hakuna Banana: We collaborated with Veg Bruins to bring in Hakuna Banana, a vegan ice-cream startup. Co-founders Hannah Hong and Mollie Cha revealed their story of how they started their business, explaining how to position a brand effectively in the market, and shed some light on the challenges of launching a startup in the food industry.

Pluto Money: A Startup Labs and Startup UCLA accelerator alumni, Pluto Money helps students manage their finances in college. We invited co-founders Tim Yu and Susie Kim to discuss their journey and their launch in the App store with us.

Winter 2018 Highlights

Speaker Highlights

Kenny Berlin | 12Twenty: 12Twenty is a software company based in Santa Monica designed to help career centers and students in recruiting. Founder Kenny Berlin joined us for a fireside chat where students learned about his experience leading the company and the risks he had to take to start this venture.

Erik Akutagawa: NFL Senior Program Manager and UCLA alum, Erik came to talk about his experience working in sports and entertainment, inspiring students to think outside the box and to never give up despite dealing with changes in career trajectory and other challenges. We ended the event by opening the floor to the audience for a Q&A session!

Startup Labs: Demo Day

Five teams presented at Demo Day in winter quarter: Vanth, Logos, Kadoo, Blockchain at UCLA, and All_EBT.

Vanth: Vanth is a socially oriented fashion commerce platform that connects customers to seamstresses for the creation of custom apparel. The goal of the project is to economically support seamstresses who are working in unfair conditions in the garment industry’s sweatshops.

Logos: Logos is a digital news platform that personalizes a user’s consumption of information. They are currently participating in the Blackstone Summer Accelerator Program at Startup UCLA, through which they’ve received $30,000 in funding and have grown to a team of 12.

Kadoo: Kadoo is a gift registry app that allows users to create a wishlist for their family and friends to refer to so that they receive useful and wanted gifts for holidays.

BE Book Club: The Four by Scott Galloway

We got together to discuss The Four by Scott Galloway — a UCLA alum and current NYU professor — to gain more insight behind the four “horsemen”: Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. We discussed how they rose to be the companies that are ruling the world and which might be the first trillion dollar company. We tweeted out out to the Galloway and received a shout out!

Currently we are reading Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore. We’re looking to delve deeper into the knowledge of books next year and are looking for suggestions — send us your favorite business and entrepreneurship books through our Facebook!

Spring 2018 Highlights

Designathon

Designathon was a day-long event co-hosted with Creative Labs intended to foster design thinking at UCLA. We had nearly 100 attendees who participated in breakout design workshops as well as a 3-hour design contest. We were featured in the Daily Bruin which you can find here if you’re interested! Thank you to our wonderful sponsors — Eat Sleep Work, Startup UCLA, Digital Operative, TBWA\Chiat\Day, and Vertebrae for making this event a success!

One of our participating teams at Designathon in the midst of working on their project

Entrepreneurship Networking Night

Students networking with professionals in the entrepreneurship space

We teamed up with UCLA Alumni and USAC Office of the President to host a mixer for students to meet CEOs, founders, investors, and professionals from all industries to learn about the entrepreneurial spirit and the different pathways to success. We wanted to promote innovative thinking and also UCLA One, a unique networking site exclusive to Bruins and a great way to find mentors and mentees. Thank you UCLA Alumni for providing the venue, food, and beverages!

Startup Labs: 20/20 Entrepreneurs Dinner

Students conversing with Tim Groeling, one of the co-founders of Startup UCLA

The 20/20 Dinner brought 20 professionals, faculty, and founders together with 20 aspiring student entrepreneurs to network and exchange ideas. We got great feedback and are looking forward to doing this again!

Startup Tour: SnackNation

Some of our board members with the founder of SnackNation

Members of the Bruin Entrepreneurs board got the opportunity to tour the office of snack delivery service SnackNation — one of LA Business Journal’s Best Places to Work 2016. Thank you SnackNation for showing us around!

Speaker Highlights

Erik Huberman | Hawke Media: A Forbes 30 Under 30 entrepreneur and the founder of Hawke Media, Erik talked about his previous companies and how he built Hawke Media from his experiences as well as the trials and tribulations along the way.

Behind the scenes: the team with Erik Huberman

Deloitte Technology Consultants: Bruin Entrepreneurs’ Startup Labs and UCLA’s Society of Women Engineers co-hosted two female guest speakers from Deloitte: Rujul Gupta, a UCLA alum with experience in entrepreneurship who currently handles the functional roles in her projects, and Arezu Aghaseyedjavadi, a Berkeley alum with expertise in user experience (UX).

Rujul and Arezu sharing about their experiences as tech consultants

To summarize our year…

We’ve met and learned from CEOs and founders in varying range of industries — from food, to technology, to media, to sports & entertainment. We also met a lot of incredible students through our big events such as 1000 Pitches and Designathon. We’re super excited to host more events like these in the future — starting with our second annual 1000 Pitches competition and our annual Startup Fair this fall!