St. John’s University students showcased their entrepreneurial spirit on July 2 when the Venture & Innovation Center (VIC) hosted its annual Startup BootCamp demo day.
Seventeen St. John’s students comprising nine teams touted their business development plans before a panel of judges that included alumni entrepreneurs Michael Marrazzo Jr. ’04TCB and Charles M. Piluso ’76SVC, ’78M.A.,’86M.B.A. Mr. Marrazzo is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Summit Facility Solutions in Holmdel, NJ. Mr. Piluso is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer at Manhattan, NY-based Data Storage Corporation and an emeritus member of the University’s Board of Governors.
Demo day is the climax of the VIC’s Startup BootCamp, a three-week summer program designed to transform student ideas into revenue-generating business ventures. Student-entrepreneurs are guided by faculty, industry experts, and mentors in developing business models and prototypes. Through workshops, guest speakers, and pitch sessions, students develop the leadership skills necessary for entrepreneurial success.
“This boot camp is part of a St. John’s ecosystem committed to innovation,” said James M. Kinsley, M.B.A., VIC Director and Instructor of Management, Entrepreneurship, Consulting, and Operations at The Peter J. Tobin College of Business. “It has been intense; we have done a lot of pitching. Hopefully, you will see patterns among all the different pitches because that means we are doing our jobs well.”
Demo day featured a variety of student-created business plans from industries as diverse as health care, higher education, fitness, and technology. Judges awarded prizes to the three best pitches, with Ph.D. candidate Peter Astriab ’23SJC, ’25M.S. earning the first prize of $1,000 for Pulmeris, which would distribute lung cancer treatment drugs via an inhaler, avoiding the side effects common to oral or intravenous therapies.
Second place and $500 went to Bhoomi Dholariya and Akanksha Ugale, Ph.D. candidates in the College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, for Gliovex, a drug treatment delivery platform for those suffering from brain cancer. Third place and $250 went to Adhikary Zinnia, a Ph.D. candidate in biology, for RxDNA. This at-home DNA test would alert doctors to a patient’s genetic likelihood of reaction to 150 different prescription drugs.
Peter’s work on Pulmeris began about two years ago. It is a passion project and research priority of his mentor, Nitesh K. Kunda, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.
“My mentor has been doing this research for many years, and it is something that I also feel passionate about,” Peter said. “The recognition we earned demonstrates that our hard work has paid off. We can put this money toward what we are trying to do.”
The Startup BootCamp is one pillar of the University’s year-long commitment to business development. Each fall, student entrepreneurs can participate in Johnny’s Innovation Challenge, a business development competition designed to create groundbreaking sustainability solutions. In the spring, students can take part in the James & Eileen Christmas Business Plan Competition, where the top for-profit business plans can win up to $5,000.
Several students, including rising senior Victoria Tripoli, pitched ideas in multiple competitions this year. Victoria presented her idea for a community-first Pilates studio, called The Core Collective, to the judges on demo day, a few months after pitching a health tracking app called Signal to judges at the Christmas business plan event.
“There was a lot to do,” Victoria said. “We were here pretty much every day, but we learned so much. There are always things you expect when building a business—but there are things you would also not expect.”
Rising senior Saeed Khan presented his plan for Activity Hub, an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven campus discovery platform that would link college students with clubs, communities, and events of interest. Saeed’s company would sell software licenses to colleges and universities interested in discarding old technology for Activity Hub’s AI algorithm.
“When I started here as a freshman, I realized there were some 300 different organizations on campus,” Saeed said. “There was no simple way to search through them all except to find each group’s social media, and you had to do it all yourself. This is an important asset, especially for commuter students who are not on campus 24 hours a day, seven days a week.”
The alumni judges encouraged the students to identify potential product problems, thoroughly assess their products’ market readiness, and continue refining their ideas within the VIC’s supportive ecosystem.
“I want to empower you all to come up with ideas to solve the everyday problems in front of you,” Mr. Marrazzo said. “It is so easy to build a mountain-moving business these days if you have the right idea.”
“You are so far ahead of anything from when I graduated,” Mr. Piluso added. “The confidence shown in the presentations was unbelievable. If you have the fire of entrepreneurship in your belly, keep pushing yourself.”
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