TroyLabs: Week 10 (Dec 26)
TroyLabs: Wrapped 🎁
Well, dang. This semester absolutely blazed past us. From Drake and Kanye settling their beef 👬 to Lincoln Riley finally giving us some Trojan football hope 🏈, it's been easy to miss just how quickly USC entrepreneurship is taking off 🚀.
This edition is going to talk about everything from how awesome this year's BUILD companies were, to looking ahead towards the next year, to some startup news and tips, so keep reading for all of the above ⬆️ !
We talked about recruiting some new members, getting jobs, and a little bit of startup news last time, but be ready to truly understand how USC's entrepreneurial ecosystem is changing with this edition.
Let’s get straight to it.
Semester Rewind ⏪
So... we did some cool sh*t this year. Our mission has always been to help exceptional founders create phenomenal companies, and we're pulling back the curtain to show you just how we did that over the past few months. Here we go:
BUILD
BUILD is always the highlight of the Fall semester: It's our first chance of the school year to work hands-on with the best Trojan companies out there, and boy, did we get some fire founders this year! Here's a quick and dirty list of what they're up to:
From pitch decks to product strategy, the TroyLabs team worked with these amazing startups for weeks on end, helping them become powerhouse startups. We've historically brought in speakers from Google to Tesla to Snapchat to Amazon, and we're constantly looking for more mentors to help our founders reach explosive growth.
Just like last semester's cohort, these crazy startups are up to some crazy things:
Rolli has started to gain some insane traction, earning revenue at the earliest stages.
NovaXS has already begun raising millions as they look to completely change healthcare.
Tuun is creating amazing partnerships as the founders lean into the Web3 space.
We'll be releasing more updates on these companies as they continue to evolve, but we wrapped up our culminating LAUNCH event at the end of the semester, and it went exceptionally well!
LAUNCH
This semester’s LAUNCH was out of this world. The event was hosted by our one and only VP of BUILD, Parth Suri, and judges were Timothy Li (CEO of Alchemy), George Bandarian (Founding Partner at Untapped Ventures), and Ian Quetglas (Co-Founder at Silicon Beach Investment Group). Taking first place (and a whopping $3K) was NovaXS, featuring a new medium for medical injections. Rolli, an online booking platform for media producers, took second (and a stunning $1.5K).
Enjoy some shots we took at the event! 🙂
Partnerships
In addition to helping startups directly, we've spent the last few months collecting a huge set of partnerships with companies and external sources to make our mission of helping startups grow easier than ever.
For those of you founders out there, you know better than anyone else just how much cash gets shoveled into the fire of software, services, and fees. With our focus on partnerships, we aim to bring that number down significantly, and allow you to spend your hard-earned money on the things that matter. Here are some quick highlights with who we've partnered with in the past, as well as new partnerships that are on the way!
Stripe
KPMG
HubSpot
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Oracle Cloud
Coda
Notion
Deepgram
Believe us, the list goes on. For a while 📙. And we're pumped to bring these benefits to our founders, soon!
💡 Hungry for some discounts and resources, ASAP? Check out this list from our friends at Maple!
🔥Spicy Take of The Week:
This is lowkey our favorite part: we love hearing your Spicy Takes™!
Wanna submit your own? Scroll on! This week's take is from [redacted]:
The best founders are the awkward, nerdy type who don't know how to sell - so you know the product is phenomenal and it's selling itself. Obviously, if this is you, please hire some sales people. Lol.
Spiciness Rating: 🌶🌶🌶🌶 Some cold hard truths 👀
Button: Wanna Spill Some Tea?
Startup and News Radar:
Nike and Adidas getting into NFTs
Blockchain. Crypto. Meta. NFTs. Any of this sound familiar? Well, it should. We are entering the future. Athletic industry leaders Nike and Adidas wanted to hop on this train, so they took the bold move by stepping into the metaverse. In particular, Nike acquired RTFKT, a major NFT producer that occasionally pairs NFT sales with physical collectibles. Trying to best secure their brand in this new space, the company also filed trademarks for its swoosh logo and the “Just Do It” slogan in digital forms. Similarly, Adidas linked with the NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club. (Please don’t ask why that’s their name.) This new partnership includes a sub-collection called PUNKS Comic, which combines NFTs with actual comic books. Investors and industry specialists are claiming this to be a “trillion-dollar opportunity.” In fact, Adidas has actually sold more than $22M in NFTs. The time has come. Hop on now, folks. Next stop: A completely digital world.
Zepto (grocery delivery app) now worth $570M
Here’s the chai. (Sorry, I had to.) After getting $100M in VC funding, Zepto, an Indian grocery delivery service that claims to deliver goods within 10 minutes of ordering, is now worth $570M. Yeah, you read that right. $570M. Based in Mumbai, the startup has more than doubled its valuation. Let me give some brief context: Two months ago, the startup raised $60M and had a valuation of $225M. The $100M funding was led by Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator’s Continuity Fund. Oh, and it’s also pretty important to note that the startup was founded by Stanford dropouts Palicha and Kaivalya Vohra. Hmm, dropouts . . . sensing a real theme here. With its fresh capital, Zepto plans to expand coverage across India, add various food and drink categories, and strengthen its back-end. It also plans to expand its internal team five-fold, with the bulk of this fresh meat working in operations. Getting my food in 10 minutes? Sure sounds like a deal to me.
SpaceX launches two satellites in the same day for the first time
VANDENBERG SPACE FORCE BASE -- SpaceX launched another batch of Starlink satellites on Saturday morning, followed by the launch of a Turkish communications satellite from Cape Canaveral, Florida. That’s right. Two satellites. And it doesn’t end there. The company also wants to deliver another batch of supplies and experiment goods to the International Space Station for its latest mission. The next day. Since March, every satellite SpaceX has sent to space has been delivered on reused rockets, as the company claims reusability is vital in making launches as cost-effective as possible. Smart, right? SpaceX’s launch efficiency, both cost and capital-wise, has given the company the ability to rapidly accelerate its Starlink launch program. The program has had 28 launches so far. What is all this for? Elon says the company is aiming to have its own lower-Earth broadband internet network across almost the entire globe by mid-2022. Keep it up, Mr. Musk.
Some Help with the Job Hunt 🤝
MergeQueue - Growth Marketing Intern
MergeQueue is on a mission to automate workflows for clients such as Slack and Square. They are currently looking for a gritty growth marketing intern that can accelerate brand recognition.
AlgoUniversity - Full Stack Development Intern
Help AlgoUniversity democratize education by building out their platform past its current initial stages - a great opportunity to get in on a growing startup early on!
Navattic - Software Engineering Intern
Navattic is a no-code platform that helps helps effortlessly share product tours
Johnson and Johnson - Statistics and Decision Sciences Summer Internship
For students interested in experience in Statistics, Biostatistics, or a related discipline, this could a good opportunity to learn about statistical applications specific to clinical pharmaceutical settings.
This Edition's Featured Tweet: It's a controversial one.
Jack Dorsey stepped down as Twitter's CEO, and now he's firing some SHOTS! Thoughts? Agree? Disagree? Let us know!
Weekly Speaker Event
What did you miss?
We had a few amazing speakers come in, one of them being Maya Grossman, the former VP of Marketing at Canvas and now looking to start her own marketing brand.
She left us all with a few great pointers:
Don't assume, Validate ✅
Talk to your prospects 🗣️
Laser focus on your best customers
Position yourself out of the competition
Invest in things that don't scale
All in all, YKTV, keep it consumer centric!
Inspired? Let us know if you would like to join us for the next event!
Interested in getting in touch with some investors and leveling up your fundraising strategy? Shoot us an email with your deck at troylabs@usc.edu so we can help you out!
Some Closing Thoughts
It's always a pleasure sharing some news, laughs, and insights with you all. We at TroyLabs put in hours each day to help USC entrepreneurship reach its maximum potential, but none of that would be possible without people like yourself: people who are here to learn, grow, and help each other.
As we wrap up holiday season and get into the next semester, please remember that in the end, all that really matters is the people you're with, and the memories you create. So be kind, do good, and build cool stuff!
Share this link with your friends to keep them in the loop as well!!
Stay safe, and see you all soon 🚀