Twenty-four student teams have been selected for the Fall 2024 cohort of eLab, Cornell’s student startup accelerator. Now welcoming its 16th credit-bearing cohort, eLab accepts student founders from any field of study across Cornell and trains them to launch their businesses.
Established in 2008 by the Student Agencies Foundation and Entrepreneurship at Cornell, many eLab alumni have flourished following their graduation from the program.
ProducePay, an alum of the 2015 eLab cohort, raised $38 million in a series D funding round this year. GradeWiz, a 2023 eLab team, is running a pilot of their AI grading assistant. Their product is being tested for eLab grading this year, and other Cornell and Ithaca College professors are participating in the pilot.
eLab teams undergo intensive entrepreneurship boot camps, conduct customer discovery interviews, fine-tune their business plans and connect with a network of successful Cornell alumni, all while earning college credit from the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business.
“eLab is unique in that it accepts undergraduate juniors to Ph.D. candidates from any program at Cornell,” said Ken Rother, managing director of eLab and lecturer in the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. “What participants have in common is a desire to address a customer need via an endeavor.”
During the program, student entrepreneurs learn to pitch their businesses to venture capitalists and investors effectively. They also have opportunities to pitch at events in Silicon Valley and New York City, including the annual Cornell Entrepreneurship Showcase on Nov 14.
After the fall semester, the cohort will be evaluated based on a pre-determined rubric assessing performance and business model viability. The top teams will be invited to return for the spring semester and will receive a $5,000 investment into the business and funding for continued customer discovery.
eLab is administered by the Center for Regional Economic Advancement (CREA), a division of the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. The eLab teaching team is composed of faculty members and Entrepreneurs in Residence from CREA. The instructors lead boot camps, impart advice from their entrepreneurial journeys and provide teams with one-on-one mentorship.
“Instructors and advisers enjoy the opportunity to work with students at the earliest stages of business formation, helping students embrace an entrepreneurial mindset,” Rother said. “Every year, students apply to eLab with a new batch of concepts, and it’s exciting to watch these ideas evolve into viable businesses.”
Teams also gain the support of an advisory board. Over 50 seasoned entrepreneurs — many of whom are Cornell and eLab alums — volunteer to work one-on-one with teams to share advice and help shape their business ideas. In addition to the mentorship, this gives the student founders an inside look into what it is like working with a board of advisers.
“I hope to get mentorship from successful entrepreneurs and experts who are dedicated to giving back and supporting new ventures,” said Prabhav Mishra ’26, an applied economics and management student and co-founder of Rebite.
“Specifically, I look forward to working closely with eLab mentors like Nick Nickitas [founder of Rosie] to enhance our strategy for partnering with local restaurants and refining our model to better attract college students,” Mishra said. “With this guidance, I aim to build a scalable solution that brings more affordable dining options to students and helps restaurants reduce waste while boosting their revenue.”
The teams selected for the 2024-25 eLab cohort are:
- Atarea, Caroline Zhu ’26
- BAM, Bennett Santora ’26 and Abhimanyu Kumar ’26
- Cala, Sarah Young ’25 and Rachel Tong ’25
- CRIT, Damon Hollenbeck ’25
- EcoMatia LLC, Michelle Lin, MBA ’25
- FemSalud, Natalia Galan MS ’25
- Filmify, Noah Lucia ’26
- Genesis, Savannah Green ’25 and Chidere Oputa ’25
- Hermit, Akhil Damani ’25
- Homies Edition, Arnav Joshi ’25, Kailai Wang ’25, Ananya Jain ’25 and Bharvi Singh ’25
- HYSS, Ted Lim ’25
- InkSight, Nicole Hao ’25
- JOUS, Camilo Ortiz ’25
- KAVE, Ten Takeda ’26
- Mizoma Africa, Micere Mugweru ’25
- MUMU, Qilin Yu ’25
- Nexus Gaming, William Jiang ’25
- PrepPack, Nick Fisher ’25 and Bella Darmanin ’25
- Proactive AI, Leo Zhang ’26, Hannah Zhang ’25, Kathy Liu ’26 and Psyche He, Ph.D. ’26
- Project X, Alexander De Leon ’26 and Nicolette Gani ’26
- Rebite, Prabhav Mishra ’26
- The Outdoor Wholesaler, Dylan Seale ’25
- Umana Meals and Nutrition, Ella Wilkinson ’25 and Gabrielle Finora ’24
“While eLab offers valuable opportunities to network with like-minded individuals and receive mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs, what excites me most is the chance to gain hands-on experience in building a startup,” said Ten Takeda ’26, an industrial and labor relations student and founder of KAVE. “I look forward to navigating the challenges that come with entrepreneurship while benefiting from the guidance and support provided by the program.”
