Third Annual Summer Seed Grant a Success!

The Summer Seed Grant is a unique program that provides $10,500 to three students to work on their early-stage ideas/start-ups over the summer without having to find a summer job. The students work out of the Cubex Coworking Space and receive mentorship from ECenter Director, Ian Grant.
In its third year in this format, eight start-ups applied. We were thrilled to award the $10,500 Summer Seed Grant to Ethan Towsley ’21 and Rob Lee ’21 (CEPS) for DrunkTxt and TJ Evarts ’20 (CEPS) for SMARTwheel! Both teams were incredibly productive over the summer and learned valuable skills to help move their ideas forward!

“This was a fun summer with students at very different stages of their companies,” said Ian Grant, their summer coach-mentor. “Ethan and Rob connected right before the submissions and neither has worked on a start-up venture. This was a summer of huge growth for them, from customer discovery to learning to improve their coding skills. TJ, on the other hand, has been working on SMARTwheel for a number of years and worked through some key development stages and marketing project planning as he moves towards a full product launch. What was even more impressive was the way all three helped each other while working on their own ventures.”

Thank you to sponsors Pierce Atwood and the Wildcatalysts Network.

Heather MacNeill
Program Manager
ECenter