New partnership to support IU student entrepreneurs
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The IU Angel Network is partnering with the Indianapolis-based STARTedUP Foundation to support two student entrepreneurs at IU every year.
Through the partnership, IU Ventures, the parent of the IU Angel Network, will grant two annual educational angel memberships to the winners of the foundation’s statewide Innovate WithIN pitch competition, should they choose to attend IU.
“[We] wanted to find different ways that we could help support those younger entrepreneurs throughout the state,” said Jason Whitney, chief venture officer for IU Ventures. “We have an extensive network of regional campuses and thought we had a strategic advantage to be able to help them do what they were trying to do in a better way.”
Whitney said the partnership was born out of a meeting at last year’s Rally Innovation Conference in Indianapolis. He said there was an opportunity to encourage the pitch competition winners to come to IU and support their business ideas.
The IU Angel Network is designed to connect investors with promising ventures. The students selected for the angel memberships will receive access to a variety of resources, IU said.
“[They will have] an opportunity to join into our monthly pitch presentations network with alumni, founders and funders from around the world and tap into some of the educational resources that we help provide back to our investors,” Whitney said. “It’s gonna let them be better founders in the future, because they’ve been behind the scenes to know what questions they’re gonna get asked before they get in the room.”
The inaugural winners of the angel memberships are Izzy Branam and Kerry Ao, who are currently students at the IU Kelley School of Business in Bloomington.
Branam co-founded Fia Technologies Inc. in Indianapolis as part of a team that was a finalist in the 2021 Innovate WithIN competition. The startup was also named Startup of the Year in 2022 by the Indiana Economic Development Corp.
The company has developed a talent acquisition software platform that uses machine learning to bring together jobseekers and employers.
Ao is the co-founder of Newburgh-based Intertwined, a financial literacy platform that was named a finalist in the 2022 Innovate WithIN competition. He won the Student Entrepreneur of the Year at last year’s TechPoint Mira Awards and is a nominee this year for the Rising Entrepreneur Award.
Whitney said his advice for the participants is simple.
“I’ve encouraged them to make sure that they’re present in the meetings and write down all the questions that they hear everybody asks so that they can better be prepared when they get asked the same questions later on. You know, we’re just getting started,” said Whitney.
Branam and Ao will also be spotlighted at IU Ventures’ annual Founders and Funders Summit in May.
Whitney said while they are testing the partnership with the STARTedUP Foundation in Bloomington, he hopes to expand the partnership to all of IU’s regional campuses in the future.
“I would love to be able to provide some educational content in each of those regional competitions and use our business school teachers that are at each of those regional campuses to help facilitate some of that to help support the work that the STARTedUP Foundation is doing but also to provide some awards to some of those regional winners as well to help tap them into this network.”