From Pitch to Product

Laura Bilal, E'21, and Meghan Quon, E'22, bioengineering, are founders of KLIP Tech.

photo by Mathew Modoono

FOR LAURA BILAL, E'21, AND MEGHAN QUON, E'22, BIOENGINEERING, their thirdplace finish in the 2020 Husky Startup Challenge, taking home $1,000 in funding to pursue their venture, was inspired by their own daily habits and needs. The “challenge” is part of the Entrepreneurs Club—Northeastern’s venture incubator and start-up pitch competition.

The pair’s invention, KLIP Tech, offers an app connected to a rechargeable device that clips onto clothing and can be activated with either one or two clicks in situations where the wearer may be in some form of distress and unable to quickly access their phone. One click sends a message warning of the wearer’s situation and location to a list of personalized emergency contacts, uploaded in the app, and two clicks sends a message to law enforcement to prioritize the wearer’s safety. The app also contains a community aspect for users to share their stories of harassment anonymously.

“KLIP Tech sparked out of a personal need because we’re both runners in Boston. Meghan’s on the club running team, I’m on the club basketball team, and so we go for runs often and you kind of hear about stories of people feeling unsafe or about things that have happened in the community,” says Bilal.

“Online we’ve read tons of testimonials and stories of women who’ve experienced street harassment, both verbal and physical, and it’s crazy how few solutions there are out there to make an individual feel safer. It’s not something that we should have to deal with,” says Quon. “But it’s a reality, so we were really inspired to work towards helping women feel a bit safer, including ourselves.”

Quon and Bilal cited the amount of time invested, the Startup Challenge’s boot camps, and the mentoring of former Startup Challenge winner Jaison Patel, E'22, mechanical engineering, as key to their success with KLIP Tech.

After so much positive feedback on KLIP Tech following their third-place finish, Quon and Bilal shifted their focus to developing their physical product through capitalizing on Northeastern’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. They received prototype funding through the student club Origin and were selected by Generate as software and hardware clients.

Generate is a student-run product development studio that is part of the Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education. Generate software engineers are working on prototype interfaces and their interaction with APIs, while the hardware engineers are doing mechanical testing, electronic schematics, and comparing the competition. Quon and Bilal have also brought on board a brand designer and are starting business development efforts such as developing a website.

“If you have an idea and you have a passion and want to pursue it, anyone should feel like they can. The Mosaic [entrepreneurship] community at Northeastern is so welcoming, and it helps to get past that mental barrier, which once you do is such a rewarding experience,” says Bilal.