SpartUp empowers innovation and ideas

The San Jose State’s Office of Innovation hosted the SpartUp Incubator Program Speaker Series, an event where successful entrepreneurs participated as panelists, on Thursday inside Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library.

SpartUp Incubator launch director Michael Ashley said the event is the third of a four part speaker series.

He said the series themes are designed as “four pillars” which include ideation, prototyping, startup planning and pitching.

“The reason pitching is the last pillar of the incubator is because there are a lot of pitch competitions coming up for the startups,” Ashley said. “People who have been working

By Jennifer Yin STAFF WRITER SPARTUP

on their startups all year long are now ready to talk to investors.”

The event showcased Forward Inception founder and CEO Alora Frederick, ParkStash founder and CEO Sameer Saran, Inquis Medical Inc. CTO Jason Fox and Quency Phillips, executive director and CEO of Lighthouse Silicon Valley shared their experience with startups in the Bay Area.

Each panelist had the opportunity to input their own ideas on conversations ranging from building technologies, understanding the market, creating capital and business planning. Saran shared a personal anecdote regarding the importance of marketing.

“I had a seven slide deck and that’s all I had.

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Kickoff

Continued from page 1 practicing ballet for 17 years and also teaches dance classes to youths at her studio and church.

African American studies junior Kiara Johnson performed a rendition of “Fight for You” by H.E.R., written for the 2021 film “Judas and the Black Messiah.”

The lyrics address racism, police brutality, and equality.

“I’ve been singing since preschool and I love jazz and R&B, which are the two main genres that I sing,” Johnson said.

Johnson said she is also a member of the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. and that her sisters

Spartup

Continued from page 1 were at the event supporting her.

“The sisterhood was a big part of why I joined. It is empowering to be around strong and caring Black women,” Johnson said.

Johnson said Black History Month is about celebrating Black joy and to be proud of the history and culture.

BLOC Program Coordinator MyShaundriss

Watkins reinforced the overarching theme of “Existence is Resistance.”

“We exist here and now in this very moment. Today, we are here to uplift and center our collective rights to freedom,” Watkins said.

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Protest

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He said they reached out to the Black Leadership and Opportunity Center but was not met with a response.

I had zero product but I had an idea of what the customers might need and that was my first contact with them. In that first call we gave them a presentation and one week later, we had a check in the bank,” said Saran, “They said, ‘we need your product.’”

During the event, conversations and ideas ranged from building technologies, understanding the market, creating capital and business planning sprang to and from.

Frederick focused on the analytics of starting a startup, Saran explained how to garner the attention of investors and consumers, Fox gave legal advice and Phillips added how self identity and preservation is important in navigating through the industry.

SpartUp also worked with founders of Xircle Inc. Seema Vora, Surabhi Gupta and Isita Bagayatkar in hosting their second Founder Fiesta.

Xircle is a student-based app that connects students that go to the same university to hangout, study or do different activities around campus according to the Xircle Inc. website.

“The plan for the Founder Fiesta was to try to connect founders and cofounders and learn how to work together to find a cofounder for their own startup so they’ve been fantastic. I hope you [the guest] got some benefit out of the Founder Fiesta,” said Ashley.

Vora said the first speaker event they hosted had six people while this second one has 34.

Max Rothe, mechanical engineering senior and event moderator, said the success of Founder Fiesta was due to Xircle Inc. changing their prompts and activities, helping maintain new student engagement.

Bagayatkar, who is also co-founder and CEO of Xircle Inc., said, “My thoughts on [Founder Fiesta] is the vibe, I got was a lot of people are in the same place that I was in my sophomore year before Xircle Inc. They’re interested in the space but maybe they don’t have an idea, team or know what the next step is going to be. There are common questions, is it risky and there’s a recession. I think our next Founder Fiesta is to help them on how to get started.” more regressive,” Currie said. “Someone out there who’s a part of the Black community went up there and gave her voice and it felt like they didn’t listen to her.”

SpartUp is also preparing for future competitions and conventions.

Ashley said he stresses that SpartUp is not just for students or alumni, but also welcomes faculty, staff and community members to join their program. He also said SpartUp is working on building their international affairs with founders from Saudi Arabia, South Korea and Eastern Europe to talk about centralized challenges they face in their country.

The program has garnered 271 incubators and 25 startups working with real companies in the span of seven months.

SpartUp is scheduled to host its next speaker series on March 2, in preparation for the Sunstone CSU Startup Launch Competition on May 5, at SJSU. SpartUp is expected to host 18 out of the 23 CSU’s, where each university will choose its two best startups to compete for over $200,000 in awards.

Currie, who is a member of SJSU Black Student Union, said they felt as though they didn’t give Black students a voice.

“There’s so many Black organizations they could have partnered up with and I’m pretty sure they would be happy to protest something like this,” Currie said.

History junior John Duroyan, who was

Emerald Green, program director of the Black Leadership and Opportunity Center, declined to comment.

David Almeida, former president of SJSU Student for a Democratic Society, said the lack of Black students in the protest was their biggest mistake.

“I completely self criticize on behalf of the organization,” Almeida said. “Next time if we consider doing anything like this again, we will definitely involve the input of Black student voices and leaders of Black student organizations here on campus.” one of the group’s speakers at the protest, spoke about the importance of making minority communities heard but understands the criticism of the lack of inclusion in their protest.

Duroyan said the protest was held nationwide amongst other Students for a Democratic Society groups as part of their “national week of action.”

He said planning began on Monday and that if given more time they would have reached out to more Black student groups on campus.

“We get orders from national SDS and they do this stuff on very short notice,” Duroyan said. “I think if we had more time to plan protests like this, then we would have gathered a lot more people and gotten a lot more Black voices.”

After the protest, members of organization and Black students discussed what could be done in the future so Black students can feel as though their voices are heard.

“I feel like next time they’ll do a better job of reaching out and better planning, especially when it comes to Black issues,” Currie said. “Although they messed up, how you fix it or how you react to the mistake that you made describes you as a person.”

Correction

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On Thursday, Feb. 2, the Spartan Daily published a story “SJSU provides on campus medical abortions” in which we misquoted Catherine Voss Plaxton about the price of abortion pills, she did not mention pricing.

The Spartan Daily regrets this error.