{"id":4516,"date":"2021-11-09T13:29:30","date_gmt":"2021-11-09T18:29:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/?p=4516"},"modified":"2022-08-22T16:35:48","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T20:35:48","slug":"have-conviction-give-a-shit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/2021\/11\/09\/have-conviction-give-a-shit\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Have Conviction, Give a Shit.&#8221; Spark! Alum&#8217;s Journey From Idea to Launch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-636x636.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"353\" height=\"353\" class=\" wp-image-4517 alignleft\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-636x636.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-1024x1024.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-768x768.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-1536x1536.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-2048x2048.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-700x700.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-189x189.jpg 189w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_4155-100x100.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 353px) 100vw, 353px\" \/>When the rose colored glasses are removed, the cost of college dissuades even the most promising students from attending. \u201cIt&#8217;s my personal goal to make college accessible for everybody,\u201d Spark! alum Vipul Patel said.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Patel is fulfilling that goal with his start-up, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tasseled.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tasseled<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. Tasseled allows for students to take lower cost college courses at thousands of schools nationwide in order to have those credits transferred to their target school.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">During his own transfer process, Patel lost an entire semester of credits. By creating a course-matching algorithm during his appeal, he proved that his classes from Florida Institute of Technology were transferable, prompting BU to reinstate his credits.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">That experience led to the early-stage development of Tasseled (previously known as JustTransfer), which the public first became aware of during his Demo Day presentation in 2017.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cWhile I was at Spark!, I learned not only just the product design process but the iterative thinking behind it,\u201d Patel said, even crediting Spark! Director Ziba Cranmer for his impending successes.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI don\u2019t have a lot of people in my life that I can call and ask a question or even a favor, and Ziba has been that person,\u201d he said. Cranmer ultimately connected Patel with Phil Libin, BU alum and Co-founder and CEO of product studio, <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.all-turtles.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All Turtles<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tasseled is now a member of that same product studio that helped him raise $750,000 in funding. The platform is currently in private best testing in the New York City area.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment4518\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment4518\" style=\"width: 431px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-636x477.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"421\" height=\"316\" class=\" wp-image-4518\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-636x477.jpg 636w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-1536x1152.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/files\/2021\/11\/IMG_9756-2048x1536.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 421px) 100vw, 421px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment4518\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Patel with Spark! students<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cI hope we get everyone as close to net zero, if not net zero. That&#8217;s where we want to go \u2014 streamlining the process and making it easier for anybody to go to college,\u201d Patel said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">When it comes to the future Spark! entrepreneurs that will follow Patel, \u201cThe day to day is not fun, but it&#8217;s incredibly fulfilling,\u201d he said. \u201cYou&#8217;ll never question why you&#8217;re doing what you&#8217;re doing. The only thing I tell students is like, have conviction, give a shit, and I don\u2019t know, try and do things the right way. A lot of people are going to give you a lot of advice. And one of the hardest things is parsing which one to take.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Those interested can likely give Tasseled a try during the early part of 2022.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/in\/vipulhpatel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Connect with Vipul on LinkedIn<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When the rose colored glasses are removed, the cost of college dissuades even the most promising students from attending. \u201cIt&#8217;s my personal goal to make college accessible for everybody,\u201d Spark! alum Vipul Patel said.\u00a0 Patel is fulfilling that goal with his start-up, Tasseled. Tasseled allows for students to take lower cost college courses at thousands [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18463,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[65,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18463"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4516"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4524,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4516\/revisions\/4524"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/spark\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}