Trueblood Collaboratory
Create value where there Is none. Create something for someone other than yourself.
Open to all University of Denver students.
Do you have an innovative idea, an entrepreneurial passion, a drive to disrupt? Through the Harry Trueblood Innovation Collaboratory, you can access resources and support to transform your great idea into a business and learn about entrepreneurship from mentors at the Daniels College of Business.
Focusing on design thinking, value creation and market validation to generate industry-disruptive solutions, the Harry Trueblood Innovation Collaboratory offers entrepreneurs like you an exciting environment to think, innovate, build, validate and take your product or service to market.
The Collaboratory starts with an elevator pitch in which you must demonstrate that your idea can generate real industry disruption. If accepted, you will:
- receive a budget of up to $5,000 to prove out your idea
- have 180 days to prove out your idea
- have biweekly meetings with mentors from Daniels
- get help to move your solution off paper and into the market to test the real value hypothesis of your innovation
You must be a current University of Denver undergraduate or graduate student.
You must email the following to du.entrepreneur@du.edu:
- Name, contact information and short bio for every team member
- A two-minute elevator pitch video explaining your idea and why it’s disruptive
- What problem does it solve? What unmet need does it meet? What opportunity does it create? Make sure your idea is about true industry innovation and disruption (see questions below for more guidance).
If your elevator pitch is accepted, you’ll then need to create a budget and conduct a 5-minute live pitch followed by Q&A. If your idea is approved and you have demonstrated the opportunity that your idea presents, you will be accepted into the Harry Trueblood Innovation Collaboratory.
Questions to Ask Before Submitting Your Idea:
- Is your idea innovative?
- Does your idea create value?
- Does your idea have the potential to help a large, addressable target market?
- Who is your target market?
- Is your idea realistic?
- Are you passionate about this idea?
- Will the seed money allow you to create a minimum viable product and experiments?
Practica Studio
Practica Studio is the Duo Lingo for STEM Education. Their mission is to empower college students to master the hardest STEM courses, so they have the confidence to tackle the World’s greatest challenges in the future. Unfortunately, higher education is stuck in a “weed out mentality” for many STEM based courses. Classes, like Organic Chemistry, are challenging classes but not impossible! We utilize curated content to build practical knowledge to help students succeed in these challenging classes. The platform provides innovative technology that can provide more practice problems than any existing media and give the students real-time feedback with adaptive learning that provides the most efficient learning platform.
Founders:
Sam Laird
MBA Candidate, Class of 2022
Cory Giltner
Illegal Oats
Illegal Oats produces the granola that breaks the rules, with the freshest organic ingredients and infused with natural mealworm powder. Instead of the bland granola everyone is familiar with, Illegal Oats makes ento-granola and ento-granola bites. These are unique among every granola or power bar you’ve ever tried, because all Illegal Oats foods are infused with protein and nutrients derived from insects.
Founder:
Clare Whetzel
Finance major, Class of 2023
The idea all started when Clare heard of a competition at her university to pitch a business idea that solved an issue with sustainability. From a podcast she had listened to on people eating insects, Clare had learned that people have been eating insects around the world for as long as they have walked the earth, as insects are rich in nutrients such as protein, healthy fats, calcium and iron.
With an expected population of 9 billion by 2030, and an ever-growing strain on natural resources, it’s more important than ever to eat sustainably. Clare wanted to incorporate the health and environmental benefits of insects into delicious food that we already eat. Thus the idea for Illegal Oats was born.
MyCogito
MyCogito is an intelligent and secure platform giving the user access and insight into their digital life. Their goal is to empower individuals by unlocking their data and enabling them to benefit from it.
Founders:
Mohsen Sharifi
PhD in Engineering with focus in applied AI in heath tech and wearables
Graduation year: 2022
Rohola Zandie
Major: PhD in Computer Science with focus in machine learning and NLP Graduation year: 2022
Rahola Zandie is a fourth-year PhD student at the University of Denver. He works primarily in artificial intelligence and affective computing and natural language processing (NLP). Mohsen Sharifi Renani is a fourth-year PhD student working in the Biomechanics Lab. Both have worked with DreamFace Tecnologies, LLC, a DU-based technological venture that creates social companion robots for patients with cognitive decline.
They are co-founders of MyCogito, an app that uses AI technology to collect meaningful information from users to provide insight and recommendations for their mental health. Zandie works on the AI side of the operation, while Renani focuses on the business side.
buonaforma
The Harry Trueblood Innovation Collaboratory is made possible by a generous gift from the Trueblood family in honor of the late Harry A. Trueblood, Jr., a lifelong entrepreneur and leader in the energy industry.
Throughout his 60-year career, Trueblood was president, chair or CEO of eight publicly traded companies, seven of which he founded. For nearly 30 years, Trueblood’s principal operating company was Consolidated Oil & Gas, Inc., which made significant crude oil and natural gas discoveries in the Rocky Mountain region and Texas. His public real estate firm owned a third of the Vail Valley in the 1960s. In 1968, Trueblood purchased an 11,000-acre ranch on the North Shore of Kauai, Hawaii, and ultimately developed the Princeville Resort, which today boasts more than 5,000 full-time residents. That same year, Trueblood established the Harry Trueblood Foundation in honor of his father, focusing exclusively on providing scholarships based on merit for Colorado educational institutions and his alma mater, the University of Texas at Austin.
Among his many awards and achievements, Trueblood was inducted into the inaugural class of the Rocky Mountain Oil & Gas Hall of Fame in 2004 and was presented with a lifetime achievement award in 2006 by the Independent Petroleum Association of Mountain States.