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Are you an EC passionate about solving a problem and dedicated to building the best solution? Are you ready to take your business idea to the next level? The HBS Arthur Rock Center Accelerator is a highly immersive program designed specifically for HBS student founders of early-stage startups. The focus is on building and validating their MVP as well as a strong emphasis on testing plans. The chosen teams experience deep-dive coached sessions and check-ins, pitch feedback and opportunities to pitch for seed funding. The goal is for teams to emerge from the program with a strong foundation for building or expanding a market ready product.

MEET THE ROCK ACCELERATOR 2020-21 TEAMS

Adira
Whitney Wilson, HBS‘21, Founder
Adira is a DTC women’s professional footwear brand that has made the ‘go to’ women’s work shoe – you are unstoppable, your heels should be, too.

Anise Health
Ning Ma, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and CEO
Alice Zhang, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and COO
Nisha Desai, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer
Anise is an on-demand, culturally-competent digital mental health service that delivers end-to-end behavioral coaching, psychotherapy, and psychiatry tailored toward different cultural backgrounds.

Asan Therapeutics
Ananya Zutshi, HBS/SEAS ‘21, Co-Founder
Morteza Sarmadi, MIT ‘21, Co-Founder
 Asan Therapeutics is developing a drug delivery platform dedicated to making the delivery of biologics easier by leveraging novel technologies.

Aspen Apothecary
Keta Burke-Williams, HBS ‘21, Co-founder & CEO
Kaja Burke-Williams, Northwestern ‘18, Co-founder & Chief Creative Officer
Founded by two BIPOC sisters, Aspen Apothecary is changing the face of fragrance. We make self-care less of a hassle with our clean, conscious, vegan CBD infused perfumes for modern women.

Bizbox
Bruno Novarini HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and CEO
Fran Melo, Co-Founder and CTO
Victor Santos, Co-Founder and Chairman
Bizbox allows service professionals to run their business on the go. Impressive customer interactions, intuitive job management and easy digital payments level up their professionalism and unlock efficient growth. Today it's pen & paper, cash & checks. Tomorrow it's Bizbox.

Chaku foods (Nikki's Plantain Crisps)
Nikki Okrah, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
We are making "better food for better outcomes" - delicious sustainably sourced, vegan, gluten free snacks sourced from African farmers.

Convallo Bio
Kaylee Carpenter HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
Convallo Bio is developing the next generation of beneficial bacteria using our novel bacteria armor, to improve the health of humans, animals, and the planet.

Edukita
Peter Gumulia, HBS’21, Co-founder & CEO
Sean Widjaja, Co-founder & COO
Edukita is an online English LIVE classes platform for K-12 population in Indonesia. Our mission is to be the place in between school and home where young Indonesians can build meaningful skills to thrive in the modern world.

EXTA (Excelling through Adversity)
Camille McGirt, HBS ‘20, Co-Founder
Emanuel McGirt, Jr. NC State ‘19, Co-Founder
EXTA is a telehealth platform that provides 24/7, flexible, and convenient mental health support for athletes facing hardship.

Falsetto
Cory Dunton, HBS ‘21, Founder
Falsetto’s goal is to assist consumers of any digital medium or platform seamlessly determine if content can be trusted and educate how they can become better digital stewards.

First90
Kaiz Alarakyia, HBS ‘21, Founder
An education/training platform for businesses that provides coaching and real world simulations to onboard new employees.

FlashCash
Chuck Nadd HBS/HKS ‘21, Co-Founder and CEO
Pavel Vydra, Co-Founder and CPO
Bohuslav Šimek, Co-Founder and Lead Engineer
FlashCash is a payment platform that allows merchants to accept digital payments without hardware.

GenUnity
Jerren Chang, HBS/HKS'21, Founder, Strategy & Finance Lead
Nimisha Ganesh, HBS '21, Marketing Lead
Casey McGinley, HBS/SEAS '21, Operations Lead
Florian Schalliol, HBS '21, Program Development Lead
GenUnity is a civic leadership organization that supports adults’ civic learning and engagement in their local communities on the issues they are most passionate about. GenUnity delivers its unique, immersive programs in partnership with community members, organizations, and leaders experiencing the issues and locally today.

GreenZone
Laura Hoffmann, HBS‘21, Co-Founder and CEO
Shop conveniently and with a clear conscience! GZ is a sustainable marketplace with a broad but selected offer backed by green logistics.

HeraldAPI
Matthew Antoszyk, HBS’21 Founder & CEO
HearldAPI is enabling API connectivity in the commercial insurance space. We are creating the new infrastructure needed to power the age of digital insurance for businesses.

Human Dynamics
Michael Mancinelli HBS/SEAS ‘21, CEO
Kazushige Yoshimaru HBS ‘21, COO
Tomohisa Okamoto MIT ‘21, CSO
Takahiro Nozaki Keio University, CTO
Human Dynamics transforms the way work-at-heights is done. With our patent-pending robotics system, maintenance and construction are cheaper, safer, and cleaner.

IXORA Apparel
Farah Azmi, HBS ‘21, Founder & CEO
Nora Iknadossian, Design director
IXORA provides trend-driven made-to-measure apparel for today’s young working woman. Our apparel is made-for-her body, made-for-her lifestyle, made-for-her confidence, and not made-to-stock.

Jetpack AI
Bryce DeFigueiredo, HBS ‘21, Founder and CEO
Jetpack is AI-powered productivity for under-organized people. You shouldn’t have to spend more time thinking about what to do than actually getting things done. Jetpack uses natural language processing to help you effortlessly stay on top of your life.

Justiexpress
Miguel Bernal HBS´21 Co-Founder and CFO
Sergio B. Co-Founder
Justiexpress universalizes access to basic legal services at affordable prices in Latin America

KadaKareer
Michi Ferreol HBS ‘21, Founder
Cam Carag HBS ‘22, Founder
KadaKareer is a one-stop career exploration platform for low-income students in the Philippines that leverages bite-sized, low bandwith engagements to help land that first job.

KARL Inc.
Ida Hatchue, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and CEO
Cydni Williams, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder and CMO
Gael Hatchue, Co-Founder and CTO
KARL is a platform that delivers personalized, recurring dates to couples based on their interests, budget and availability. This allows couples to spend less time planning, and more time enjoying date night.

Kenai Marketplace
Kelton Gallant, HBS ’21, Co-Founder and CEO
Max Skudarnov, HBS ’21, Co-Founder and COO
Kenai Marketplace is a marketplace that connects environmentally conscious consumers to small businesses that deliver plastic-free products shipped plastic-free. Kenai offers end-to-end transparency and filterability on environmentally relevant metrics (e.g., proximity, chemical-free, etc.)

Liza
Jessica Hart, HBS '21, Co-founder (External relationships & team)
Tyler Hastie, HBS/HKS '21, Co-founder (Product)
Bukie Adebo, HBS '21, Co-founder (Customer growth & partnerships)
Liza helps Americans build their credit score, making it easier to access to affordable credit. Liza formalizes loans between family & friends to make them contribute towards the credit-builder’s score.

Metric
Megan Murday, HBS ‘21 CEO
Anthony Yim, HBS/SEAS ‘21 CTO
Metric helps private market investors measure and improve their portfolio’s environmental and social performance. Our software enables teams to identify and measure material ESG factors, quantify financial impact, and receive tailored improvement strategies.

MMaven
Cathy Chukwulebe, HBS’21, Founder & CEO
mMaven is a job marketplace and skills management platform for manufacturing skilled tradesmen. We provide students at manufacturing trade schools with access to more job opportunities, while providing companies quicker access to technical talent matched to roles based on skills.

Nour
Mae Abdelrahman, HBS ‘21, Founder and CEO
Nour is a skin care company built on the belief that all shades of skin deserve to be valued and protected equally. We are entering the market with a line of tinted mineral-based sunscreens that will blend flawlessly with dark skin tones. Our sunscreens come in three dark shades that won’t leave an unpleasant white cast on the skin.

Orientami
Mariapaola Testa, HBS ‘21, Co-founder
Elisa Piscitelli, MIT ‘19, Co-founder
Susanna Testa, PhD, Creative Director
Orientami’s mission is to empower new generations to craft their future, developing skills, sparking new interests, promoting excellence and innovation. Our first step to achieve this mission is to help high-school students make better university choices.

Oston
Ryan Yu HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
John Lewis HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
Matt Baumgartner HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
Oston builds machine learning models on industrial distributor sales data to generate actionable insights for manufacturers and distributors in the B2B space.

Pericles
Michael Klain, HBS/HLS 2022, Co-Founder
Daniel Barcia, HBS/HLS 2022, Co-Founder
Pericles provides funding for resource-constrained small businesses and law firms pursuing litigation.

RESET Third Space
Shani Carter HBS ‘21, Founder and CEO
RESET’s platform makes it easy to find, test, and build healthy habits with trusted online mental health and wellness brands

Salvos Therapeutics
Natalie Ferguson, HBS ’21, Co-Founder
Ivana Yifang Shui, HMS ’19, Co-Founder
Salvos is a T-cell therapy company developing cancer therapeutic products by improving T-cell functions utilizing our novel immune cell engineering platform. We are committed to enhancing T-cells to unlock the power of a patient’s immune system to fight against cancer.

Shelly Xu Design
Shelly Xu, HBS ‘21, Founder, Product + design
Shelly Xu Design is the first fashion-tech startup to make beautiful, accessible, 100% zero waste designs. We enhance design appeal while saving ~55% of the cost, so that eliminating the carbon footprint in what we wear becomes a no brainer rather than a compromise.

Shypyard.io
Dan Li, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
Sam Chuang, UCLA ‘14, Co-Founder

Skye
Bobby Lane, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder
Stephen Mch, HBS / HKS ‘21, Co-Founder
Skye enables the first true net-zero emissions and labor responsible structures through a cloud-based climate technology platform. Our product is a new software ecosystem to measure, reduce, and offset the environmental and social impacts of construction.

Smoking Cessation Inc.
Wahid Masri, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder

SpotlightAI
Austin Osborne, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder & CEO
Nikita Jagadeesh, HBS ‘21, Co-Founder & COO
SpotlightAI is a B2B software providing enterprises with the ability to automatically detect sensitive information, anonymize it quickly, and share it with parties that need it.

Vixemble
Jeffery Wang, HBS '21, Co-founder
Charles He, Co-founder
Vixemble is a computer-vision-powered video analytics SaaS tool for manual discrete manufacturing processes.

Wee30
Sylvester Wee, HBS’21, Co-Founder
Sadib Abdullah, HBS’21, Co-Founder
Rachel Lee, HBS/HKS’21. Co-Founder
Wee30 is creating an online-to-offline fitness and lifestyle experience that leverages both localized communities and gamification for accountability.

Welfie
Zachary Hermes, HBS '21, Co-founder
Steven Moyo, Co-founder
We help schools reopen safely through data, insight, and engagement.

FAQS:

Not everyone on my team is from HBS. Can they still participate?

We expect all HBS team members to attend the mandatory events. Outside team members are also welcome and encouraged to attend, but it is not mandatory. There will be one designated HBS lead per team. It is up to the lead to spread the word about events and opportunities for their team.

Can I be part of both the Rock Accelerator and i-Lab VIP program?

Yes, we encourage you to also apply to the VIP program to take advantage of the additional opportunities, resources, and workspace. While there may be some overlap with the program elements, our Rock Accelerator offers funding and is designed specifically for HBS MBA students.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us: rock@hbs.edu.

Recent Notables
 
  • LovePop, 2015, $3MM raised
  • Hello Alfred, 2014, $12.5MM raised
  • Rebagg, 2014, $12.8MM raised
  • PayPlug, 2012, $3.8MM raised
  • Zumper, 2011, $20MM raised
  • Pymetrics, 2011, $8.6MM raised
 

Meet with EiRs

During the academic year, our EiRs provide startup counsel and advice to our students. These impressive entrepreneurs and investors have a wide range of backgrounds and diverse skillsets.

 

Join Our Community

 
 

New Venture Competition

A year long entrepreneurial journey that culminates with a capstone event for students who have worked to develop new ventures while at HBS. All participants present live to top investors and entrepreneurs and receive invaluable feedback at each round of the Competition. $150,000 in cash plus in-kind prizes!

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Rock Accelerator

This innovative, immersive, and competitive yearlong program supports 10-15 teams with up to $7,500 in seed capital, matched mentors, and facilitated peer exchange as they race to Demo Day where teams pitch their ventures to investors and entrepreneurs.

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Rock 100 Initiative

Rock Center support for entrepreneurs extends far beyond graduation. The Rock 100 initiative brings together high impact alumni entrepreneurs with early-stage traction to connect, learn, and share their ideas and experiences. Join the network to participate in our global Entrepreneurs' Summit, regional Roundtables, and smaller forum groups (Rock Councils). Visit our Showcase to see the HBS entrepreneurs who are currently members of our Rock 100 community.

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Rock Summer Fellows

Rock Summer Fellows enables students to continue to explore their entrepreneurial path, both as founders and as those interested in joining early-stage startups, through a 10-week summer fellowship that provides not only financial support but a peer network and community for students.

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