LavaLab holds first student pitch night

LavaLab, USC’s student-run entrepreneurial and product design team, hosted its first “Pitch Night” of the semester on Tuesday night. During the event, LavaLab’s nine startup teams presented their current projects under construction. The event started at 8 p.m. and continued until all nine pitches were presented with a small 10-minute break halfway through.

LavaLab’s president Alexander Zhang explained that LavaLab came to conception only a year ago because a few then-seniors lamented the lack of an entrepreneurial drive in undergraduate student organizations at USC.

“Last year, the president of Marshall Business Student Government and two other presidents from other clubs felt fed up that no USC student business club actually [did] stuff. By that I mean there’s a lot of public speaking, panels, networking events but there was no club that kids can leave with something tangible. There wasn’t enough doing and too much talking,” he said.

LavaLab arose from an initiative to encourage student entrepreneurial spirit as well as combine student talent from all different disciplines. There are a total of 30 members in LavaLab out of 140 students who applied. Drawn from a diverse pool of applicants, the accepted students were then divided into nine teams of three or four students each. The selection process for each team consists of recruiting one member who would represent each of the following themes: business, engineering, design and/or the “wildcard” member who has expertise in a little bit of everything.

Having an entrepreneurial idea in mind was not a prerequisite to apply to LavaLab. In fact, applicants were discouraged to have preexisting ideas in order to enter LavaLab with an open mind.

“We actually suggest that you apply with no idea in mind because then it’ll allows for [idea synthesis] to be more organic and more of a group process,” Zhang said.

The LavaLab teams have been working on their respective ideas for a month in what has been deemed as the “incubation period.” The pitch night event consisted of basic demos, pitches and concept presentations. The nine teams were each given about five minutes to showcase their ideas. Each presentation involves problem assessment, business and marketing plan, competition analysis, product conceptualization and even audience feedback for those teams who had a working prototype.

Most of the presented ideas were mobile apps aimed to solve common problems college students face. Ideas included a revamped free and for sale app called “Loop,” an outfit sharing app that gives the user instant feedback on his/her clothing called “Dapper,” an assignments organizer called “cheK,” a device that compiles health data from wearables called “Fitlytics,” and Tinder-esque food app, called “quickChow,” that helps users choose where to eat.

Lea Moret, the project coordinator for “cheK,” explained how the process has been so far for her team.

“We created teams with at least one person who is advanced in coding and a secondary person who is starting off coding, a businessperson and someone into design,” Moret said. Moret’s team already has a prototype of their product and said that they are currently working on the finalizations to prepare for Demo Day, especially focusing on more substantial marketing plan.

The final prototypes of each design will be eventually showcased to the public at Ground Zero in December. Called “Demo Day,” the event will feature representatives from the tech industry as well as potential investors who will attend and judge the projects.

Katherine Xiong, sophomore majoring in architecture, heard about the event from a suitemate. Xiong had not previously heard of LavaLab, but said that she enjoyed the event.

“I came here on a whim … [but] I [became] interested in the presentation of these ideas. I would definitely consider applying and joining LavaLab at a later semester,” she said.