Vanessa Clark, cofounder and CEO of start-up Atomos Space, which  focuses on putting spacecraft where they need to be in space, will be one of two keynote speakers at Saturday’s IDEA CON 2022. The annual event is for BU students and recent grads interested in exploring innovation and entrepreneurship. Photo courtesy of Vanessa Clark

Innovation

Calling All BU Innovators and Entrepreneurs: IDEA CON 2022 Is Saturday

Hybrid and in-person event designed to inspire and help Terriers turn their dreams into reality

Are you a BU student or recent grad with an entrepreneurial bent and want to explore how to make your innovative idea a reality? Then circle your calendar for this Saturday, when Innovate@BU holds its fifth annual IDEA Conference—IDEA CON 2022—featuring talks by world-class innovators from a range of fields, as well as opportunities to develop tools for launching new ideas and connecting with resources at BU and beyond to help make your idea a reality. 

The goal of the free event, sponsored by Lou Volpe (Questrom’78), Kodiak Venture Partners managing partner, is to inspire students and aspiring entrepreneurs engaged in a variety of areas—technology, arts and culture, business, and social impact—while also building their skills and connecting them to resources and people to make visions into reality.

“What makes IDEA CON special is that it brings together students from across all the colleges at BU, and from across New England,” says IDEA CON strategic director Avital Shira (CFA’20). “After two years of a pandemic, this is a really unique experience for students to meet collaborators inside their discipline, across universities, and cross-disciplinary collaborators both within BU and beyond.”

This year’s event, designed to be both in person and virtual to accommodate as many attendees as possible, has registered people from across the country and beyond, Shira says. Last year’s conference, which was virtual only owing to COVID-19, drew over 500 people.

Headlining the 2022 IDEA CON are Vanessa Clark, CEO and cofounder of Atomos Space, a 22-employee start-up formed in 2018 that focuses on getting spacecraft where they need to be in space, and Steve Fredette, president and cofounder of Toast, Inc., a restaurant technology vendor that provides a full point of sale platform for restaurants. Headquartered in Boston, Toast raised $870 million before its initial public offering in 2021, twice as much as the next largest IPO that year, according to the Boston Business Journal. Fredette spearheads the company’s product and innovation initiatives. 

Before students jump into the conference, Li Liang, managing director of the BUild Lab IDG Capital Student Innovation Center—home of the University’s Innovate@BU initiative—says IDEA CON organizers want to make sure attendees understand what entrepreneurship means.

“When we talk about entrepreneurship at the BUild Lab, we mean solving meaningful problems and making things better without regard for the current resources that one controls,” Liang says. “It’s really about making things happen and mobilizing resources that one does not yet control.”

Saturday’s IDEA CON is being held at the Questrom School of Business from 9 am to 1:30 pm, followed by lunch for those attending in person. The conference will also feature talks and presentations by five young innovators selected as this year’s “Ignite Speakers.” 

Community partners nominate the Ignite Speakers, who have taken different paths in pursuit of their entrepreneurial ambitions. Two of this year’s speakers are recent BU alums—Ameera Hammouda (Questrom’18) and Kevin Tang (Questrom’22). 

Hammouda, an American-Egyptian Muslim woman, founded the fashion label AMEERA, which sells high-quality clothing designed to be modest, but stylish. The company uses sustainable materials and each item is made to order to minimize the environmental impact of the fast-fashion industry.

“When I was at business school, they kept saying businesses need to solve a problem,” Hammouda says. “I realized modest fashion was one of my own personal problems: finding things that were stylish and modest for young women. Eventually that’s what I decided to go after.” The company’s ethos is summed up in its motto: “Ethically crafted. Thoughtfully designed. For women, by women. For planet, from planet.” 

Tang’s company, Cleana, Inc., a BU and MIT start-up, creates products designed to make public restrooms cleaner. Their first product, an innovative toilet seat, resulted from market research by Tang and his team. They conducted a survey that found that 75 percent of men do not raise a toilet seat when urinating in public restrooms. 

“Our product is a commercial toilet seat that you install in a normal bathroom, and when you don’t use it, it has a mechanism that lifts the seat up so it’s up by default,” Tang says. “It has a handle on the side that we coat in antimicrobial coating, and you can just lower the seat. It will stay down for a time period afterwards and then slowly retract to the up position.…Why not just leave it in the place where it won’t get dirty?”

The company won Innovate@BU’s New Venture Competition in 2020, which came with a grant of $18,000.

This year’s other Ignite speakers are Kendra Bostick, CEO and cofounder of Kikori, a social impact company whose community-driven mobile app and platform provide teachers with experiential and social-emotional learning activities; Anj Fayemi, CEO of Rivet, a fan engagement app for performing artists; and Maria Vasco, founder of UVida Shop, which bills itself as Boston’s first and only zero waste store. The shop has two locations, one in the North End and one in East Boston.

Bostick, who is pursuing a doctorate at the University of New Hampshire, draws on her years as a former school social worker to create Kikori’s experiential education programs. She had attended a previous IDEA CON, where she met the director of UNH’s Peter T. Paul Entrepreneurship Center, which partners with Innovate@BU to host IDEA CON. 

The IDEA CON 2022 kickoff address will be given by Jonathan Allen (LAW’19), Innovate@BU’s inaugural Innovator in Residence and cofounder and director of development at Leadership Brainery, a Boston-based nonprofit that helps underrepresented students gain access to graduate and doctoral level education and careers. 

The conference also includes a number of workshops focused on pitching ideas, fundraising, networking, and acquiring customers.

“Innovation and entrepreneurship can seem like something that other people do,” Shira says. “We want to make it accessible to all students.”

Innovate@BU’s IDEA Conference is Saturday, February 26, from 9 am to 1:30 pm. Attendees must register for free tickets; register and find more information here.