North Star Creations is a startup founded by Maryland Smith graduate student Mat Parsons, MBA ’22, and his wife Elaine Parsons. North Star Creations creates products for parents to teach their children how to recognize and understand emotions. These tools will equip their children with self awareness and relationship skills to navigate through life. North Star Creations was a part of Terp Startup Accelerator in summer 2021, won the Grand Prize for the Fearless Ideas Track at Pitch Dingman Competition 2021, and won third place in the Main Street Track at Pitch Dingman Competition 2022. Upon his 2022 MBA graduation, Parsons became a member of the Dingman Center’s Young Alumni Founders Council.
North Star Creations has been chosen as the recipient for the 2022 Jason ’96 & Jamie Cohen Entrepreneurship Fund Award. Parsons will receive $1,000 to further accelerate his startup, selected due to the perseverance, level of engagement, and growth potential he has shown over the course of the year. According to Parsons, the funding will be put towards developing a toy face that children can use to express how they are feeling in a fun way.
Congratulations to Mat and Elaine Parsons of North Star Creations!
The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship is wrapping up a busy semester of events and programs. We are pleased to report that our students are excited to engage with us in person while we are continuing to offer some virtual options. We are proud to see our enTERPreneurs continuing to thrive, and look forward to the exciting work that will come out of the Terp Startup Accelerator cohort this summer.
Join us in looking back over our spring 2022 semester…
Signature Events & Programs
Dingman Fridays
This semester, we continued using a hybrid model to deliver Dingman Fridays where the first Friday of each month was held in person at Van Munching Hall and following Fridays were held virtually over Zoom. Each week the Dingman Center hosted a series of experienced entrepreneurs as well as a legal advisor who gave students, alumni, staff and faculty practical and actionable feedback on business ideas. If you’re interested in participating, sign up for the Dingman Fridays newsletter to be notified when we bring back Dingman Fridays in the fall.
Feb. 23 – Being Black in Entrepreneurship Event
To celebrate Black History Month, The Dingman Center partnered with Southern Management Leadership Program to organize our third annual Being Black in Entrepreneurship event via Zoom. Panelists Audrey Awasom ‘18, Founder & CEO at Noble Uprising and André Blackman ‘05, Founder and CEO of Onboard Health, were joined by moderator Sydney Parker ’18, CMO of Aurora Tights as they discussed their contributions and experiences as Black entrepreneurs.
Mar. 15 – Terp Marketplace
Dean Konana visiting Terp Marketplace venture, The CP Thrift Shop.
This semester, 37 students startups got to test the market by setting up tables in Van Munching Hall and selling their products and services for Terp Marketplace. The turn out was huge as vendors sold an array of products and services like sustainable clothing, delicious treats, custom candles, and more.
Apr. 26 – Pitch Dingman Competition
The three top Quattrone Venture Track teams pose with their winnings.
After two years of being virtual, the Dingman Center held Pitch Dingman Competition 2022 Finals in person at Stamp Grand Ballroom. The event was bigger and better than ever with over 300 in-person and over 500 virtual attendees watching the six student start up finalists pitch to judges Shark Tank style. While all of the finalists did an outstanding job presenting their business and ideas, this year, Edwin Djampa ’22, founder of Omega 3, won the grand prize for the Main Street Track and Sanketh Andhavarapu ’23, founder of Vitalize, won the grand prize for the Quattrone Venture Track.
Terp Ladies First Founders Class
Ladies First Founders is the Dingman Center’s signature course for female and non-binary students interested in entrepreneurship. This semester, 13 students worked to build soft skills for overcoming gender biases in entrepreneurship. Unlike previous years, students did not need to have launched a venture, as the focus of the course was on demystifying entrepreneurship.
To learn more about the course and why these students took it read here.
Fearless Founders: New Venture Practicum
New Venture Practicum is another one of the Dingman Center’s signature courses where students experiment with business models, revenue streams and go-to-market strategies. After developing their business throughout the semester, students end the course by pitching for seed funding.
This semester’s cohort included:
Build Bigger – Jonathan MacGregor ’22
Easy Park – Sarthak Patel ’25
Em G Art Design Studio – Emily Garcia ’24 (Studio Art and Art Education)
Heart2Starr – Ileana Lozano ’22
Odin Electric – Paul Mouring ’22 (Mechanical Engineering)
Sequester Carbon Certified – Nathan McMullen ’23
Shai Consulting – Shiv Agarwal ’23
Stockadoo – Hrithik Bansal ’22 (Computer Science) and Justin Fenn ’22 (Computer Science)
Sparza – Ryan Myer ’22 (Finance and Innovation and Entrepreneurship)
Undefined Dreamerz – Takiyah Roberts ’25 (Material Science Engineering)
Venture – Isaac Lefkovitz’24 Samai Patel’24
To learn more about the course and the businesses involved read here.
Founders Forum
Founders Forum is held once a month, shown here at The Hall CP.
Not only will events like the Pitch Dingman Competition–among other Dingman Center programs–benefit your business, but they will provide you with a community of supportive like-minded individuals. Once a month, both current and alumni members of Terp Startup, Pitch Dingman Finalists and Startup Shell participate in Founders Forum. This forum is an opportunity for participants to hone entrepreneurial skills, learn from peers, and catch up with one another. During these meetings, we dive into a new topic related to running a businesses in a roundtable-style, while also making time to socialize.
Terp Startup Accelerator
This is now the program’s eighth consecutive year, and the first time the program will be held live again after two virtual years. Aside from the program’s workshops and roundtable discussions held throughout the summer, each team in the cohort will receive a stipend of up to $5,000 and a dedicated advisor to help them grow their businesses.
EMPIRE 242 – Kang Ewimbi ’23 (Entertainment Industry)
JuJu Food Delivery– Weixiang Wang ’22 (Computer Science), Nanxin Luo ’25 (Finance and Information Systems), Zeyang Liu ’22 (Economics), Keying Sun ’23 (Statistics), Liqianrui Yang ’22 (Economics and Management), Zirui Zhou
The Dingman Center has stayed #trending this semester with our TikTok account! We have posted four videos advertising Giving Day, Terp Marketplace and Pitch Dingman Competition 2022–with more videos to come in the summer and fall. So far, our videos have almost 3,300 views combined. Be sure to check out our account and give us a follow to get exclusive Dingman Center content.
We hope everyone in the Dingman Center community has a restful and relaxing summer. We can’t wait for all the remarkable entrepreneurship to come in the upcoming school year.
The Dingman Center team celebrated Venture Programs Intern Barathi Aravindan’s Fall 2021 graduation at Terpzone.
The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship is wrapping up a semester of live, virtual and hybrid programming. We are pleased to report that our students are excited to engage with us in person while still having some virtual options. As finals week comes to an end and holiday break begins, we want to take the time to reflect on the Dingman Center’s successful programs, events and more. Join us in looking at our Fall 2021 semester recap!
Galen Stetsyuk (right) and Mike Sorokin (left) co-founded MPLEX in 2015.
Galen Stetsyuk and Mike Sorokin met freshman year as undergraduate students at the University of Maryland, College Park, and soon after co-founded MPLEX in December 2015. Both avid gamers frustrated by the subpar options available within the Virtual Reality Industry, Stetsyuk intended to form “a virtual reality video game company creating a game worth getting a VR headset for.” MPLEX’s goal was to create a technology to tackle the current challenges associated with VR games and experiences, including but not limited to simulation sickness.
Stetsyuk and Sorokin were highly involved with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship while they attended the University of Maryland. MPLEX evolved from its initial idea through various Dingman Center programs including Terp Startup Accelerator, Dingman Fridays, and Pitch Dingman Competition. Although the MPLEX team didn’t place at the 2017 competition they entered, they remain grateful for the support and connections made along the way, which helped contribute to the funding they received later on.
Stetsyuk and Sorokin now work full-time on building their company, along with 10 other people they have added to their team, almost all of whom are former UMD students. This growth has been made possible by the second funding round the company just closed, amounting to a total investment of $1.2 million to date. While the co-founders are no longer students themselves, the team hasn’t strayed far from the University of Maryland, as they currently operate out of an incubator space within Mtech. MPLEX also tries to get UMD students involved with their company whenever possible. The company is currently planning an in-person esports tournament to take place on October 16th at the Antonov Auditorium on the University of Maryland, College Park campus. The event will be free for all students to attend and will feature live gaming and other interactive experiences for students to trial.
MPLEX’s main focus lately has been on launching Core Disruption, the company’s debut VR game, which uses simulation sickness reduction technology. The game is a vehicular-based competitive multiplayer experience that has high-fidelity graphics and sound quality, deep player progression, customization, and offers a wide variety of options for different playstyles. Those anxious to purchase the game will have to be patient, as Stetsyuk estimates a rollout through digital distribution by the end of the year, or early 2022. In the meantime, interested students should mark their calendars now for MPLEX’s October 16th esports tournament for a sneak peak.
This summer, the Dingman Center will be conducting interviews with the eight student startups who are participating in the Terp Startup summer incubator phase of our Fearless Founders accelerator program. Participating student entrepreneurs received $3,500 stipends that would enable them to work exclusively on their startups over six weeks in the summer.
Everyone knows good credit is highly important in life. Not everyone knows how to get it. While most college-bound young people are aware that they should establish good credit as soon as possible, there are surprisingly few resources to help them. Parental advice and uninformed Google searches can only go so far in providing college students with a nuanced understanding of how credit works and what steps they can take to improve their credit score. So how can they acquire that essential knowledge?
This summer, the Dingman Center will be conducting interviews with the eight student startups who are participating in the Terp Startup summer incubator phase of our Fearless Founders accelerator program. Participating student entrepreneurs received $3,500 stipends that would enable them to work exclusively on their startups over six weeks in the summer.
Every college student is familiar with how maddening registering for classes can be, especially when you don’t have the luxury of first dibs. Freshmen in particular are assigned a lower priority, so if you can’t manage to get into a class you need—even if it’s for your intended major—you are faced with having to reexamine your entire four year plan. The co-founder of CourseHunter, Benjamin Khakshoor, encountered just this dilemma when he was turned away from an essential introductory Computer Science class in his first semester at University of Maryland. Instead of giving up on the class, Benjamin wrote a program that would analyze UMD’s registration system, Testudo, and notify him when the class had an empty seat. It worked. After he told friends what happened, he received a surge of requests for help getting into classes.
Enter Benjamin’s roommate and fellow Computer Science major, Aaron Bloch. Seeing a business opportunity, Aaron created a Facebook page to monitor incoming requests to use the program. The program’s appeal to students is understandable, according to Aaron, “We’ve gotten people ahead of 150 person waitlists.” Through word of mouth alone, the demand quickly became overwhelming, so they decided to automate: they built their own website for the program, and thus CourseHunter 1.0 was born.
UPDATE – Recently, we caught up with Brice to get a few updates on iUnit. Within the next few weeks, iUnit will deliver to tenants the first project and MVP. This video gives the viewer a glimpse into the construction process and community amenities. In additional news, iUnit is expanding its partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), one of the world’s largest research centers focused on energy efficiency. The iUnit prototype will be housed in NREL’s Energy Systems Integration Facility where it will be used in testing everything from materials used to build the iUnit to energy efficient mechanical systems like iUnits battery and software systems.
It’s an exciting time for Brice and his team. To put a finer point on the company’s progress, Brice commented “iUnit is essentially the electric car of housing.”
February 4, 2015 – Envision the Prius of apartment buildings: wired with the latest “smart” technology, environmentally friendly, affordable, cool. That’s exactly what lifelong entrepreneur Brice Leconte delivers in his latest venture, iUnit.
Brice is one of the Dingman Center’s EIRs (Entrepreneurs-In-Residence), who help UMD students realize their entrepreneurial ideas during the Dingman Center’s weekly Dingman Fridays sessions. A long-time entrepreneur, Brice has a passion for disrupting industries and building socially active companies. He has started and invested in a wide range of businesses, from real estate development, to bricks and mortar, to e-commerce and tech startups. Today, he is focused on disrupting the real estate industry with his latest brand, iUnit.
More than 100 entrepreneurs, advisers, investors, students and alumni gathered on May 5, 2016 for our second annual Rudy Awards ceremony. This year’s Awards were especially meaningful, as they marked the 30th anniversary of the Dingman Center and its community. Prime movers in the history of the Center were in attendance, including founding donor Michael Dingman and his family, along with first director Charlie Heller and former director Asher Epstein. Under their lasting influence, the Dingman Center network has grown many new branches. The Rudy Awards are not only a way to honor members of each branch, but to allow the entire Dingman center communityto celebrate with each other, united in their passion for entrepreneurship. Congratulations to the following award winners.
2016 Rudy Awards Winners
Research Honors
Yang Pan PhD ’17 – Winner Yuan Shi PhD ’18 – Winner
Faculty Award
David Kressler–Winner
Joseph Bailey
Evan Starr
Mentor of the Year
Polly Vail – Winner Drew Bewick ’88
Paul Capriolo ’06
Bob London ’83
Rashad Moore
Ali von Paris ’12, Route One Apparel – Winner Eric Golman ’15, Javazen
Matt Furstenburg ’11, Grip Boost Evan Lutz ’14, Hungry Harvest
Manpreet Singh ’03, TalkLocal
Social Entrepreneur of the Year
Alexis Carson ’16, Cocoa Queens – Winner Nadia Laniyan ’16, Cocoa Queens – Winner Robin Chiddo ’06, Love Blanket Project Anastasiia Polyakov ’17, Annie’s Children Oru Wonodi ’18, NOVA Prints and Apparel
Student Entrepreneur of the Year
Sam Feldman ’16, Cardbuddy – Winner Damar Bess ’18, Nonich
Taylor Johnson ’16, VentureStorm
Tommy Johnson ’16, VentureStorm
Ryan Pillai ’17, WeCook Daniel Stern ’16, Route One Ventures
Cupid’s Cup is tomorrow, and we’re all excited to watch UMD and Terp Startup alum Javazen compete for the prize of $100,000. But before the main event starts at 4 p.m., there is a wonderful opportunity to see some rising stars of the UMD startup community at the Cupid’s Cup Showcase at 2 p.m. Who knows, one day they may be competing in Cupid’s Cup themselves. Here’s a sneak peek of the impressive startups and their founders you can expect to see there:
In honor of Smith Women’s Week, we would like to highlight some recent past and present female participants of our Fearless Founders student accelerator program. We are immensely proud to have worked with these young women and to have been given the opportunity to help them grow their startups.
East Habesha – Saron Asfaw
Saron Asfaw ’18 started East Habesha in our Idea Shell stage, where she won a $500 MVP grant from Capital One to build her startup. She is currently working on further improving her business as a member of the Spring 2016 Hatch cohort. East Habesha is a website that sells custom Ethiopian dresses and food spices to customers in the DC metropolitan area. There is a large population of Ethiopians in the DC metropolitan area and there are many vendors that supply these necessities. What differentiates East Habesha from its competitors is that the prices are low but the quality is high. We look forward to seeing East Habesha grow as it continues to gain traction in the community.
