Returning Vitality to Soil

John Lloyd got the idea for his startup while working on global co- op in Seville, Spain. He and his friends there would meet up at hos­tels and con­verse with locals. He real­ized these inter­ac­tions greatly improved his Spanish—and the locals’ English.

This expe­ri­ence led him to co- found Idyoma, a mobile app designed to con­nect lan­guage learners with others nearby, so they can prac­tice the lan­guages in real life. “Our goal is to help you reach flu­ency,” said Lloyd, DMSB’17, who is the company’s CEO.

Lloyd was among the many stu­dent and alumni entre­pre­neurs on hand Thursday night at NEXPO, the university’s entre­pre­neur­ship expo fea­turing some 30 IDEA ven­tures as well as a range of North­eastern entre­pre­neur­ship pro­grams and resources. IDEA—the university’s student- run ven­ture accelerator—organized the event, which was held in Cabot Center and served as the cul­mi­na­tion of Global Entre­pre­neur­ship Week at Northeastern.

Throughout the room, vis­i­tors were intro­duced to a range of inno­v­a­tive ideas. There was NextSteps Con­nect, which is cre­ating an app designed to con­nect hos­pital patients with resources they need and the oppor­tu­nity to pro­vide feed­back about their expe­ri­ences; 3DFortify, which com­bines 3- D printing and mag­netics to create the highest res­o­lu­tion com­pos­ites and which recently received a $50,000 Mass­Chal­lenge award; and even a freestyle card game, called The Rap Game, designed for people who are inter­ested in helping people rap. NEXPO also show­cased Knightly and Cookin, IDEA star­tups whose founders joined Pres­i­dent Joseph E. Aoun ear­lier this week for a Face­book Live dis­cus­sion about stu­dent entrepreneurship.

I’m really impressed by what North­eastern is doing.
—Sarah Merion, DMSB’10, founder of EthosWell, speaking about Northeastern’s entre­pre­neur­ship pro­grams and resources

Else­where in the room, recent alumni Eli Brown, Alex Vipond, and Har­rison Ack­erman were get­ting their hands dirty as they dis­cussed The Com­post Project, which is focused on turning organic waste into fer­til­izer. They see their com­pany as part of a growing net­work of orga­ni­za­tions working to improve farming tech­niques, with the goal of returning vitality to soil. Their approach involves turning Boston’s organic waste into ver­mi­com­post, a fer­til­izer fea­turing not only soil nutri­ents but also a micro­biome that pro­tects and feeds plant life.

“You look around and see so much food waste,” said Ack­erman, SSH’15. The Com­post Project, he said, is aiming to solve that problem.

Another bud­ding busi­ness on dis­play was Bul­letin, a web ser­vice that will allow stu­dents to effi­ciently browse through and find campus events that interest them. Bul­letin is being devel­oped out of a pro­gram the Entre­pre­neurs Club launched this fall called InNU­vate, which was designed to bring together a team of stu­dents that spends the semester devel­oping a busi­ness or resource focused on improving campus life. Seniors and Bul­letin team mem­bers Dyan Khur, DMSB’17, and Dan Kohlbrenner, CIS’17, said the goal is to launch the ser­vice in Jan­uary, and NEXPO offered a great oppor­tu­nity to share it with stu­dents at an early stage and get more feedback.

North­eastern grad­uate Sarah Merion is the founder and CEO of EthosWell, an online des­ti­na­tion where people can learn about com­ple­men­tary health­care and find the best providers. Merion, DMSB’10, said she’s received guid­ance from the McCarthy(s) Ven­ture Men­toring Net­work, and noted that building her com­pany through the sup­port of IDEA has helped recon­nect her with North­eastern and build a stronger con­nec­tion to her alma mater.

Speaking of the university’s com­mit­ment to pro­viding resources that sup­port and nur­ture stu­dent entre­pre­neur­ship, Merion said, “I’m really impressed by what North­eastern is doing.”