The idea for neighbor has evolved over time but the core concept of peer2peer delivery came when I was studying abroad in Shanghai and realized how great but still chaotic the delivery system is over there. Labor is very cheap and due to this there a tons of delivery drivers on motorbikes delivering anything throughout the city for a very little fee. I was wondering whether this concept would work in more developed places but realized quickly that due to the higher cost of labor this won’t work unless people are not doing it as a job but on their daily commutes and errands.

However, with the increasing competition and the fact that a lot of stores already are on board of a couple of delivery system I thought it would be hard to go straight to city to try the p2p approach. In addition, I believe the user education aspect would be incredible expensive in a city. However, I thought colleges and closed eco-systems might be an interesting area to start and try the concept. This is where we are now.

The advantage with a university is also that we just need to talk to a couple of people to onboard every store since they are generally run by one entity even though they are different brands. In addition, another aspect of easiness is that students use meal plan currency and by being able to process the meal plans we save on credit card transaction cuts. However, all these advantages have turned also in quite some pain points. Yes, you need only get one partner at a school. But since this partner is big and powerful we have way less leverage and negotiation power as if we were talking to little stores individually. The same applies to the meal plan provider. There are about two large companies in the US that are providing the software to almost all universities. Getting them to allow us to use their API is more challenging than expected.

Lastly, let me give an update on the week. I have been the last week in Germany to figure out how we are setting up our entity here in Europe. In addition, I have visited potential areas of operations and met with interesting potential partners for a more global expansion. Further, our developers have completed the first major parts of the application and so far, we keep on track for our development schedule.

It is estimated that 2.2 million Americans regularly use cocaine. It would not be surprising if you knew someone, either directly or indirectly, who has or is struggling with cocaine dependency. However, despite the high prevalence of cocaine abuse, there is no effective FDA-approved therapeutic treatment. Surprising, right?!

Let me try to break down as easily as possible how cocaine works in the brain…

Normally when we consume or engage in something pleasurable (e.g. eating an oreo!), we get a release of the neurotransmitter dopamine from neurons, our brain cells. We have a transporter (DAT) that will take back this dopamine into the cell and normalize levels. Cocaine acts by binding to this transporter and blocking its function, leaving elevated levels of dopamine swimming around in our brain, which results in a heightened and lasting feeling of pleasure. With consistent use, the chemistry of our brain changes and what used to give us pleasure is now dampened, thus requiring the intake of cocaine just to feel “normal.” Cocaine abusers will get an insurmountable craving to obtain the drug. Think of someone you may know, maybe during college, who used Adderall (also a psychostimulant). They were more talkative, focused, and energized when taking the drug, but then afterwards they “crash” and feel sluggish, inattentive, etc. In addition to the craving, deficits in executive function, attention, and working memory are also driving factors behind the drive to continue cocaine use.

Modafinil, commonly known as Provigil, is a wakefulness-promoting agent used to treat narcolepsy and sleep apnea. It has recently been investigated as a treatment for cocaine dependence because it binds to the same transporter (DAT) in the brain but is not a stimulant, is not addictive, and has few to no side effects. However, promising results from clinical trials are only modest. This leaves researchers wondering if maybe the chemistry of modafinil can be modified in such a way to enhance its effect in the brain, while still excluding any potential addictive properties or side effects.

This summer I will be working with EncepHeal Therapeutics, a start-up biotech company that will be testing modafinil analogues for the potential treatment of cocaine addiction. I will learn everything that relates to the drug development pipeline, from animal research experiments to the clinical trials phase. Some of my responsibilities will involve research on the market assessment, financials, and competition of EncepHeal’s core business practices, shadowing animal experiments, analysis of data collected, presenting pertinent scientific literature, and exploring ways to expand on the company’s mission to provide a comprehensive treatment for substance abuse. I hope to learn about the roles of each member in the company, the financial work required to start up and maintain a biotech company, and the steps involved in the drug development pipeline.

Potential cocaine abuse treatment coming your way! Stay tuned to learn what I learn.

In the past 5 weeks, I have learned a lot about the culture of the P.S. Snacks company. Currently, we are producing out of a local food incubator, Union Kitchen. This is a commercial space where many local food startups pay to rent a space where they can produce, cook, and package the good that they are selling. It is a communal space which creates and environment of camaraderie among all of the business owners. This is created not only by the shared space, but also, all of the business owners can relate to one another through their successes as well as their challenges.

Since we are a team of only 4 people, which includes the founder, marketing manager, operations manager, and me, most decisions are made as a team. We collaborate with one another and give each other our opinions and thoughts about different challenges that come about. For example, the marketing manager and I look together at each event that requests our product/sampling/demo and see who is available to be the point of contact and on site at the actual event. Additionally, it takes multiple people within our team to figure out the best course of action to take when we have to overcome a challenge.

The challenges that come up on the day to day basis are usually delegated and addressed head on, or we work with multiple people in order to come to a solution. Successes are celebrated, and then we discuss what the next step is in the process in order to increase that success.

I am very excited to announce that Brooke, Zanny, and I are finally all in the same city (New York City). We have realized that as a team, we do much better all working together and in person. We get more done, and have bigger and better ideas when we are all together.

After meeting we have decided to focus our efforts on content creation and customer acquisition over anything else. We have each tasked ourselves with coming up with content ideas, and at our next meeting we are going to narrow the list down and put the ideas into action.

As for the printing/matting part of our value proposition, we have decided to outsource that. This week we have been researching a company to partner with, and we hope to have that finalized by next week.

In addition to content creation and customer acquisition we have set up meetings with mentors/experts in the art world to pick their brain on our current idea and the pivots and iterations we have begun to come up with for Higher Art Galleries.

The Higher Art Galleries Team is so excited to all be together again! Stay tuned for week #3!

Hannah and I founded SimpullCork on an idea and a rough prototype mock up. For about a year that is all we used to pitch and demonstrate our product because, quite simply, it worked. From very early on people began to ask, “but how does it work?” That was a question that we previously did not have an answer to and have spent the past two months pouring into engineering and industrial design to answer it.

Fit is extremely important to me and Hannah when choosing who we do business with. That’s why we spent many hours calling, emailing, and meeting with potential firms before we made our final decision of who we would work with. I believe all the up-front time and effort was certainly worth it in the long run. We ended up with a firm who shared our vision and passion for our product. They wanted us to be intimately involved in the design process, updating us regularly and asking for our thoughts and feedback.

We now have multiple methods of production for our product. We went in to the project only expecting one design, but are thrilled that others emerged through the process. Not only did this process yield engineering specs and drawings, but it also yielded data that confirmed our product does indeed make it easier to remove a cork and much more. In the immediate future, we are using this data to further our IP claims.

Last week I began my internship at Moda Operandi in Soho, New York City. I will be working for this wonderful company until mid-August, and could not be more excited! I am working with the Site Merchandising team in the Marketing department. I am the only intern on this team, so thankfully I have been given many time-consuming tasks from each of the four members of this team, who have all been keeping me extremely busy (which I love). As a result, I have already learned an incredible amount about both fashion and fashion marketing.

My daily responsibilities include many tasks. I am responsible for helping the creative department organize image selects from each designer, uploading to the organizational marketing calendar the company uses, and then selecting the images that will appear on the site. I then use these to program the trunkshows (the most elite collections from high-end and unique designers), and later also update the designer introduction pages with the new images from the most recent collection. I am also responsible for updating the organizational calendar, called Trello with all of the upcoming trunk shows so that all of the employees are aware of these, and can prepare accordingly. Another one of my jobs is to pull images for my supervisor to be used in daily emails which are circulated to customers depending on how much they regularly shop at Moda. I also merchandise all of the boutiques on the site, which are meant to help customers decide which clothes to buy, to ensure that they are getting the newest and trendiest clothes for every event to match their lifestyles. This includes uploading products to the boutiques and organizing them in an aesthetic order in order to appeal to the customer. I must also replace sold-out and sale items with like full-priced items, in order showcase the most luxurious goods, which our fashion-obsessed customers will want to see the most.

The team also relies heavily on data revealing the performance of each boutique and designer, in order to see which are the most successful, and how they can improve. I also must consider this data to decide what should be featured in the boutiques. I think that this summer will be an absolutely unbelievable experience for me, as I have loved my internship from the very moment that I started. My coworkers are very knowledgable, strategic and willing to help me grow. I am already learning so much, and can’t wait to see how much progress I make this summer!

This past week I moved up to New York to begin my summer internship at WeWork. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the company, WeWork is a startup based out of New York that is changing the way businesses rent and utilize office space. WeWork builds communities among their diverse range of clients who all work collaboratively and become members of a private entrepreneurial network. Over the last 7 years since the companies inception, WeWork has grown exponentially — and are now valued at nearly $17 billion dollars and poised to go public within the year. Its an incredibly interesting time to join the team here in Manhattan and learn about the post-startup stages of a startup company. Attached below is a picture of my office — it’s truly like nothing I’ve ever seen before and an awesome place to work.

On the first day during intern orientation WeWork founder Miguel McKelvy talked to us about all the exciting things taking place throughout the company right now, as the business continues to expand into new areas and position itself as a market leader. One area in which the company is seeing a lot of success is in the enterprise sales division. While WeWork initially started out focused on providing a place for small entrepreneurial startups to rent a desk or two and work collaboratively in an entrepreneurially focused community atmosphere; the space (and cost) efficient model has become appealing to large enterprises as well. Now entire floors and even buildings owned by WeWork are being rented out by all types of Fortune 500 businesses.

This is the exciting area where I will be doing the majority of my work this summer. I have joined the enterprise growth team and have been tasked with handling responsibilities ranging from building proposals for potential customers, to interacting directly with customers on deals, to building business cases as well as models to determine the value of of potential deals. Over the rest of the summer I hope to develop a diverse set of new skills such as managing databases in SQL, learning how to utilize salesforce, and work on my financial modeling skills. Also, the incoming intern class is required to sit in on a weekly programming series of Q&A sessions with entrepreneurs and ultimately tasked with pitching our own new business ideas to WeWork at the summation of our internship.

I couldn’t be more excited for all that this summer is going to bring. New York City has been absolutely incredible and exciting to explore (albeit expensive). I’m looking forward to sharing all of my experiences through this platform over the course of the summer and could not be more grateful for this opportunity.

This week at RLM my main goal was to finish up all loose ends so that when I leave for a few weeks all of the projects can be up and running. The most important thing was to transfer all information on my laptop to the RLM company server. I also had to make sure all of the companies I’m doing consulting for have all information/updates. Additionally, I had to organize and store all usernames and passwords that I had created so that in my absence it would be easy to log in as needed. Until I sat down to do this I didn’t realize how many accounts I had created. This also made me realize how many things go into even small tasks in a business, especially a start-up!

For the Forks in the Road book series/company I am working with I had to finish all categories that were needed in order to publish and be ready to print. This way, while I’m gone all I have to do is give the company an order of how many to print and we can begin the selling process. This included going over distribution and sales avenues as well as marketing to the degree that it is customized.

For Krumor, setting everything up for when I was gone primarily meant updating all job postings and going through applications that we have already received. We’re planing to wait the final due date to begin making decisions so review of applications was mostly organization.

Finally, for all of the crowdfunding projects I had to create all of the updates and adjustments that would be needed for the next two months so that while I’m gone it is an easy process. Additionally, in doing it like this the intern that will be uploading said updates won’t have to be briefed on the entire marketing plan.

While I’m gone I’ll have to keep monitoring all of the projects and make sure the crowdfunding goes as planned. Also, if something doesn’t move at the pace we’re wanting it to I’ll have to be able to revise form where I am. Additionally, while I’m abroad I’ll be trained for the software that is being used to create the companies websites so I can easily do updates from wherever I am.

For this blog post, I also wanted to answer some of the questions from the comments I received on my last post asking about what was the inspiration behind the P.S. Snacks company. When Nikki was in college, she developed a gluten intolerance and that, paired with her healthy and active lifestyle inspired her to create a blog, Slender Seven. With that, came her new invention for cookie dough made out of chickpeas which was inspired by her mother’s blondie recipe that she loved as a child. In the recent year, she rebranded to P.S. Snacks because she wanted to separate her college blog from her future company so that she would be able to create her unique and individual business and brand. One of the most recent growing pains that I have directly come into contact with is manufacturing. Right now, we are manufacturing in a food incubator and making the dough ourselves. Because of this, we cannot possibly meet the demand that is quickly increasing across the U.S. The answer to this problem is to find a co-packer that will manufacture the product in a facility and be able to increase our supply immensely. Throughout the business cycle of her venture, Nikki has had the advice from her parents, investors, and fellow business owners to help her go in a successful direction to grow her company.

This week marks the halfway point of my internship at P.S. Snacks. What I am most proud of is that I have been able to work and collaborate with other companies on events and samplings completely on my own. I found their contact information, emailed them, coordinated the event/sampling, and then completed the event successfully by increasing exposure and awareness for the P.S. Snacks company. One thing that I’ve definitely learned and experienced is that though not being able to meet your demand is in theory a good problem to have, it is still a problem and could end up being catastrophic for any business. I hope to achieve by the end of this internship a sense of the big picture of all the moving parts that go into growing a successful venture. Not only am I able to see this by working for Nikki’s company, but I am also able to see this when I’m working in Union Kitchen where a variety of entrepreneurs with different POV’s and products are attempting to start their own venture.

My name is Hana Polizzotto, and I am a co-founder of Higher Art Galleries along with recent Wake Forest graduates Alexandra Dow and Brooke Einbender. In a nutshell, Higher Art Galleries is an online art gallery that showcases and sells student artwork to alumni and parents across the nation. With every piece purchased, a portion of the profit goes back to the student artist and their art department. Brooke, Alexandra, and I launched our company this spring at Wake Forest, but this summer we are putting a majority of our effort into expanding to other universities (primarily in the North).

We are so excited that we are a part of the Summer Fellows Program because the resources from it will help us with our goal to expand! I am already living in NYC working on the company, while Brooke and Alexandra are currently working remotely. However, they will be moving to NYC in the coming weeks, and we cannot wait to be back working together in person!

This week, I spent a lot of time working on our website. Since we are an online art gallery, our website is the core of our business. We have received tons of entries from extremely talented artists, so I have been diligently working on getting their artwork up and available for purchase on our website.

The rest of the week was devoted to launching our GoFundMe. As a startup, we need all the funding we can get. If you are interested in learning more about Higher Art Galleries or want to donate, please check out our GoFundMe here: https://www.gofundme.com/support-higher-arts-growth. Please help us reach our goal and spread the word!