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Join us in celebrating the J-Term Startup Sprint Class of 2025!
From Jan. 6-17, we had the privilege of hosting 17 promising ventures at the Leslie eLab, where they honed their customer discovery skills and tested their business models in our intensive accelerator program. These startups and their founders are tackling challenges across AI, marketing, art, software, sports analytics, inclusive activewear, and more.
This J-Term’s teams conducted a combined 683 customer discovery interviews. The founders partook in daily startup coaching and feedback sessions, skills-building workshops, and one-on-one sessions with seasoned coaches.
Teams unlocked access to the following benefits:
- A $500 grant, plus an opportunity for select teams to receive up to $500 in additional funding
- Over $5,000 in perks, including AWS and GitHub credits
- Legal guidance from Fenwick & West
This cohort’s special guest speakers included Jonathan Sagot (Law '17) and Kristen Nicol (Law '17) of Fenwick & West; and Nobu Nakaguchi (Tisch ITP ‘10), Co-Founder & Chief Design Officer at Zola, who answered startup questions from the Sprinters during an engaging Ask Me Anything session.
Meet the Teams:
Athlitix is a sports analytics platform that provides college coaches and athletes with data-driven insights from game footage to enhance recruitment and performance. It simplifies talent evaluation for coaches and enables athletes to identify areas of improvement.
Team: Sachin Dasari (Stern ‘25), Girish Kumar Adari
Fruition is a digital platform that consolidates research opportunities into one place. It seeks to increase undergraduate involvement in research/inter-department mingling, leading to more licensing opportunities/invention disclosures, higher retention rates, etc.
Team: Arina Shah (CAS ‘25), Olivia Lewandowski (CAS ‘25)
Living Brands AI offers AI-first, context-aware, tailored marketing tools to help marketers at emerging brands save time without sacrificing quality.
Team: Jonny Sabbath (Tisch ITP/IMA ‘24), Michelle Xu (Tisch ITP ‘26)
Melomo empowers aspiring beginner to intermediate songwriters without formal music training to turn initial musical ideas into fully developed songs. By simplifying pitch, rhythm, and chord challenges, Melomo eliminates frustration, enabling creators to transcribe their ideas effortlessly, stay inspired, and unlock their full creative potential.
Team: Mona Wang (Steinhardt ‘25), Yulu Fu (Steinhardt ‘25), Tony Zhang (Steinhardt ‘25)
Omniframe creates an E-paper art frame with a global gallery, providing art enthusiasts with daily art experiences while supporting artists from all over the world.
Team: Veikko Kurki (Tandon ‘26), Tehreem Khan
period.(dot) exists to give menstruators more non-insertive options in a world that is already holding them back — showing them, and others, that every (body) is different — so that the choices we make about our bodies can reconnect us to ourselves. Its mission is to revolutionize postpartum care by providing new mothers with comfort, hygiene, and confidence through innovative disposable postpartum underwear.
Team: Sara Weitz (Stern ‘24), Kareen Ndema (Stern ‘24)
Plurall AI is an in-house built AI-powered deepfake detection tool.
Team: Sandra Cai (CAS ‘26), Yathish Naraganahalli Veerabhadraiah (Tandon ‘26)
ProperlyAI is a software tool that helps luxury realtors keep track of their client details and preferences so that they are not lost at different phases of the sales process.
Team: Aarav Khanduja (Tandon ‘27), Vedant Rao
Ripplet empowers Chinese-speaking individuals with culturally relevant, evidence-based, and community-driven mental health support. By addressing cultural disconnection, stigma, and systemic barriers, it fosters resilience and connection through Community-Initiated Care, AI Generated Content, Expert-Led Challenges.
Team: Ruiying Mao (Silver ‘26), Jiaqi Duan, Jialin Lu, Jasmine Wu (Tandon ‘25), Hailie Wang
Sayl is an AI co-pilot solution for customs compliance teams to improve that ensures goods are compliant with US regulations while reducing the manual effort and errors in the import process.
Team: Ali Raza (Stern ‘26), Morry Mu (Steinhardt ‘24)
Pencil73 crafts creative tools leveraging the power of AI. Its first offering, Gossip, is an AI-powered web-extension that streamlines presentation creation in Google Slides for users who organize their thoughts, ideas, and data in Notion. Initially aimed at small-scale B2B product managers and consultants, Gossip transforms Notion content into polished decks in G-Slides, focusing on key visuals and insights rather than the full documentation.
Team: Bairui Su (Tisch ‘26), Sai Ram Ved Vijapurapu (Tisch ‘26)
Ebonwing Labs tracks real time analytics for AI agents.
Team: Prithviraj Murthy (Courant ‘25), Satya Chillale (Courant ‘25), Utkarsh Parkhi (Courant ‘25), Karan Kumar Gangadhar (Courant ‘25)
TRANSFORM protects the physically active but endangered pre-operative trans community, by innovating active shapewear sculpted to trans bodies.
Team: Moses Aina (Tisch ‘25), Jinnie Shim (Tisch ‘26), Ja'Nae Dayes (Gallatin ‘27)
Mentivista is an online platform for license renewal and career development education. Targeting licensed beauty professionals in the United States, our AI-powered platform provides a customizable learning experience and allows accessible learning through a smartphone or a tablet.
Team: Anastasia Dor (Tisch Post-Doc), Kami Karras (Tisch Post-Doc)
Mestiere is a global B2B marketplace and product management platform connecting interior designs and architects with furniture artisans and manufacturers.
Team: Clara Viale (Stern ‘24), Elisa Cadamuro
Sheltrium sells affordable self-sufficiency to victims of floods and hurricanes by designing simple, off-grid, modular shelters and delivering them when they're needed most.
Team: Zoey Ferguson (Tisch ‘25), Mingxuan Li (Tisch), Bryan Hellard
Aictopus empowers non-technical creators and early startups to quickly build functional MVPs using an AI-powered builder that simplifies development. Its integrated community allows for seamless product showcasing, user testing, and interaction with potential users and investors, fostering continuous validation and growth.
Team: Annan Yang (Tisch ‘24), Dongxu Xie (Tisch ‘24), Shaoxu Qin (Tandon ‘25), Ivy Xiao (Steinhardt ‘24)
