Entrepreneurs pitch ideas at conference

Students from USC, UCLA and the California Institute of Technology attended Startup Equinox, an event organized by USC students, that allowed students to pitch ideas and form teams to compete in local startup and innovation competitions.

Students from a variety of disciplines pitched their ideas onstage for 90 seconds, hoping to attract other students with similar interests.

Spencer Moss, a senior majoring in industrial and systems engineering, was one of the organizers of the event and also an entrepreneur who is passionate about the startup culture.

“This is my fourth Startup Equinox that I’ve done,” Moss said. “We wanted to create a place where students can come together and bounce their ideas back and forth, and hopefully build teams and ventures out of them.”

Startup Equinox is an event that brought together entrepreneurs and university students from the greater Los Angeles area. During the event, founders, entrepreneurs and students connected, shared their business ideas and offered expertise in areas such as marketing, design, finance and engineering.

“When we were first organizing, what we noticed was a big disconnect between the Marshall entrepreneurs, the idea guys, so to speak, and the engineering students, the creative people,” Moss said.

The event began with a conversation between Eytan Elbaz and Ankur Bulsara, the founders of Scopely, a mobile entertainment network. The discussion was moderated by Ashish Soni, the founding director of the Viterbi Students Institute for Innovation.

“The goal is to give students some real context as to how they can make their ideas come true,” Moss said. “They come from different stages; some people have ideas and others have fully funded startups and successful ventures.”

Many attendees were excited to have the opportunity to meet other entrepreneurial-minded students.

“There is a huge entrepreneurship community at USC but there hasn’t really been a way to meet each other until now,” said Asher Genoot, a sophomore majoring in business administration. “I think this is a great event for entrepreneurs to come together and showcase what they’ve done and ask questions to learn what entrepreneurship is all about.”

Michael Boateng, a freshman majoring in cognitive science, pitched a business at the event. His startup idea, Madafo, is a fashion business that hopes to integrate individualism into fashion.

“When I was up there, I thought to myself: Believe in yourself. No matter what happens, as long as you believe, that’s all it matters,” Boateng said.

Samantha Katzman, a senior majoring in print and digital journalism, participated in the event in the hopes of building her portfolio.

“There are a lot of really creative people out there and I think it will be interesting to be involved in a startup and to be around some motivated people,” Katzman said.

Genoot said that Startup Equinox is not only for people to grow their entrepreneurial spirit, but also to meet other people who are interested and foster those relationships, even after graduation.

“What’s really amazing is that when we have a Startup Equinox, someone’s coming back and saying that they’ve met their business partner at Startup Equinox and now [they’re] in a later stage [of creating a business],” Moss said.

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