Y-Labs Ventures Wraps Up Program with Demo Day presentation Finale
Demo Day occurred on August 7th, 2020, where our six teams competed for Grand Prizes from our partner sponsors: GSVlabs, Alchemist Accelerator, and Wiase Capital.
Demo Day showcased Y-Labs Fellows in six teams building social enterprises ranging from microfinance platforms for businesses affected by COVID-19 to health-tech to improve neurological tests.
Fellows come from a diverse range of countries including Nigeria (Ogun and Lagos), Brazil (Rio de Janeiro), and Pakistan (Faisalabad), as well as several states including, California, New York, Virginia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts.
Grand Prize Award
NEQuest | Fellows: Phoebe Nabua, Janice Hu, Talal Muzaffar
NEquest aids virtual neurological diagnosis and education, guiding patients through doctor-selected neurological exams to generate quantitative databases for doctors to personalize patient care.
Runners Up Award
VRMed | Fellows: Raveera Toqeer and Gabrielle Carillo
VRMed leverages virtual reality to deliver medical emergency preparedness training to high school teachers. Starting with a high-in-demand CPR certification program, teachers will become better equipped to attend to students in medical emergency situations.
Audience Favorite Award
WeHope | Fellows: Jessica Gao, Vincent Lo, Michelle Chen
Project WeHope aims to help Bay Area nonprofit WeHope to more effectively serve Bay Area’s homeless population through delivering free healthcare, non-perishable foods and clothing. The team created a comprehensive proposal for WeHope to implement in order to strengthen its current offering and scale WeHope’s mission sustainably.
Rob Chesnut Engagement Award
Awardee: Neel Chattejee
Awarded to Fellows who have actively participated in our curriculum, Speaker Series, and other initiatives. Fellows who have been highly invested in our program are given this award.
Other Teams
SB Funds | Fellow: Amy Zang
SB Funds is a credit system that connects small businesses in need of liquidity with favorite clients who are willing to provide credit in exchange for interest payments in the form of gift certificates or store credit.
Evergreen Therapy | Fellows: Neel Chatterjee and Sana Aliminati
Evergreen Therapy provides online access to mental health resources and professional therapy sessions to teenagers at affordable costs. Through leverage personality tests and matching algorithms, professional therapists are matched to people requiring mental health support.
Project Second Harvest | Fellows: Bianca Louis-Jacques and Gabriela Frajtag
The team worked with Second Harvest to develop Discover UBI, a platform dedicated towards creating awareness and excitement among youths about Universal Basic Income (UBI) and building momentum towards mass adoption and implementation of UBI in government programs.
Speakers
Y-Labs is pleased to host two incredibly inspiring speakers on Demo Day. First Keynote Speaker, Venture Capitalist Tom Kosnik spoke about the importance of community in entrepreneurship. While Silicon Valley congressman Ro Khanna, representative of California’s 17th district, gave an engaging speech to Fellows about the importance of cultivating and retaining young business talent in Silicon Valley.
Judges
Our Demo Day Judges are top professionals in their fields. We invited a range of innovators from Silicon Valley and elsewhere to evaluate our Fellow’s social enterprise projects like they would a real-world pitch.
Darius Teter, Executive Director, Stanford SEED. Formerly led international development at Asian Development Bank, Oxfam America, and Millennium Challenge Corporation.
Justin Padinske, Head of Partnerships, Alchemist Accelerator . Also Co-founder, Awesome Foundation, which supports social impact projects with micro-grants.
Allen Thornton, CEO, Grant Source. Contributor, Forbes Business Council and entrepreneur, NewMetro Developments.
Susan Nash, Director, AAPG, The American Association of Petroleum Geologists, an organization which has over 40,000 members in 129 countries.
Ike Adeyemi, Senior Director, The Clorox Co. Harvard Law graduate and former Head of Legal at BHP.
Ishaan Misra, Strategic Initiatives Manager, GSVlabs , an organization that supports entrepreneurs across the world.
What’s Next for Y-Labs
Stay tuned for future announcements about Y-Labs as we introduce future programs to support social innovation and technology entrepreneurship among young people!
Partners
GSV Labs is a startup accelerator based in Silicon Valley as well as Boston MA. Their organization specializes in providing new startups with tools to make their ideas a reality, from finding co-working spaces, providing enterprise technology tools, and access to GSVPassport, which allows startups connect with investors and mentors.
Alchemist Accelerator is a program similar to ours, just focused on adults in the tech space. Alchemist provides a highly selective program that gives students the fundamentals of creating an enterprise-facing company, and that connects companies with early adopter customers, with fortune 100 companies ready to accelerate customer development and validation.
Wiase Capital is a venture philanthropy and impact investment firm based in Palo Alto. They focus on creating impact through investments by funding companies that show promise in affecting the global landscape. They provide a large network of vetted investors for their companies, composed of top-ranked VC’s in Silicon Valley.
About Y-Labs
Y-Labs is selective entrepreneurship, venture design, and social innovation program for talented teenagers who have demonstrative potential in STEAMS (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts, Mathematics, and Sports). Our mission is to accelerate the talent and passion of young people for innovation-led entrepreneurship that leads to real social change within their communities. Our network of experienced Silicon Valley professionals provides mentorship and coaching to Y-Labs Fellows. We are dedicated to promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Learn more about Y-Labs here.
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