Prototyping and Partnerships: Kicking Off 2025 with Demo Day Prep and Three New Ventures

By Katie Moore (BA ’25) and Erica Yang

The Impact Studio has kicked off 2025 by focusing on an exciting milestone: prototyping! With eleven ventures returning from the previous semester and three new founders entering the mix, energy is running high. Whether the venture is a program providing athletic equipment to underserved communities or a platform intending to facilitate hosting and attending events, every startup is focused on building something beyond an idea or presentation to test out their impactful ideas and get user feedback.

The prototyping flurry is in advance of Demo Day, an event in April wherein all of the ventures will showcase their prototypes in the Ross Winter Garden. With expert advice and top-notch collaboration between teams, all ventures are confident that in just a few months’ time, they’ll be able to present their work in a tangible, impactful way. Even the three new startups, despite just having joined the Studio a few weeks prior, have already begun to reap the benefits of the program.

“As an engineer, I wanted to be able to work with and learn from people of diverse backgrounds,” said Rafe Symonds (BSE ‘25), founder of Flock and a recent addition to the Impact Studio. “It’s been a great opportunity to be able to pursue my venture with other people because they have very different ideas. Brainstorming has been especially interesting, because I see my venture as a tech problem where there needs to be a tech solution, but other people see it as a future company and they’re focusing on how to grow it. It’s interesting to see how they think that and join my tech background with their thoughts on the future users and marketing.”

In joining the Studio this semester, these 3 new ventures have big hopes for the future as well. Two came to the Studio from the Center for Entrepreneurship, and all three already have made significant progress in their prototypes — but look forward to improving and iterating on their prototypes as they collaborate with others at the Studio. “As a fully-dev team we created our prototype from the start without too much analysis,” continues Symonds. “I think pausing and planning before development would’ve helped, but now I think it’s quite a cool product and we’ll be able to plan out and integrate the new ideas that we’re working on here”

UI and UX design skills have been in particularly high demand since the prototyping phase began. “Some founders have reached out to me, mostly with specific questions,” says Hellen Tong (MS ‘25), a UI/UX designer and Impact Studio Applebaum Impact Design Fellow. “It’s amazing but a little overwhelming. The founders all want a lot of features on their prototype but sometimes I can only do one.”

But for founders and fellows alike, creating a legitimate prototype is paramount. “For our group, [the prototype] is everything,” adds Aleena Malik (BBA ‘27), a fellow for edtech venture Krik Krak. “We have a great Figma and we really want to see it made. From licensing books and working with publishers, or creating our own content, we have a lot of stuff to think about along with security features.”

“We’re launching soon on the original idea,” says Symonds. “But there’s still more to do. We want to implement new features and get feedback on those, as well as get some new development done before and testing it out in a more controlled setting while simultaneously getting a userbase for the main idea.”

For many ventures, getting user testing on the prototype might be one of their biggest goals in advance of Demo Day. “During the design stage we had too many features we wanted to do,” says Tong about the venture Roots, which aims to provide a social media platform for interactions between families. “We needed more users to test it to see the features we can keep and which we should delete in order to move forward.”

“I’m working on getting a better UI and getting people to test it out,” notes Faye Xiao (BS ‘25), founder of Skilt. “Also reaching out to people on Fiverr and small content creators to test out the platform to give it its preliminary content is important to my bigger vision for the launch. I did a mini-prototype version over break to test out some stuff, and now, I have two full-time software engineers and we’ve started development on a web platform. I also just got into an EECS capstone class about entrepreneurship and I convinced other people to help me design it for me. All in all, I hope to have two platforms by April.”

Founders and fellows aren’t just bringing in outside collaborators, though — they’re largely relying on the expertise of other founders and fellows around them, both learning and teaching often at the same time. “I’ve been working on the UI interface for Roots,” says Tong. “I know Steven [the founder of Roots] is planning to do the coding with his cofounder and I want to learn more about the coding side so I can help him.”

“Since I’m not directly affiliated with a single startup, I get to consult on all the ventures at the Impact Studio to varying extents,” notes Milena Stepanova (BS ‘25). “For example, for Roots, I conducted background, market, and user research, helped build a compelling value proposition, and designed UX/UI solutions. I also played a substantial role in working with SoarAway by leveraging research insights and my coaching expertise. I really wanted to learn more about startups and contribute to positive social impact, and it’s been great to apply interdisciplinary research and user-centered design principles in real-world contexts.”

“I’ve been able to learn so much from everyone here, and it’s going really well,” says Symonds on enhancing his venture’s prototype. “It’s been a lot of brainstorming and connecting, not too many days where we’re focusing directly on the product yet. While we were talking, I noticed what the UI lacked and thought of some ideas, but mostly it’s been thinking of the big picture and for the future.”

The future and Demo Day are quickly approaching, and founders have big goals for April. “The goal is to at least have the app launched in the app store,” says Xiao. “The web app I’m not sure if we’re launching, but most likely yes.”

“We want to make sure there’s no apparent bugs for Demo Day, so someone can enter in the app,” notes Malik. “We want to get this in front of our people. It’s a great starting point, and it’s only going to go up from here.”

That is the goal of the Impact Studio, to incubate innovative solutions and launch them into the real world

Indeed, the upward trajectory — and prospect of a tangible result of their venture is invigorating founders and fellows alike. In working with and learning from each other, big dreams are fast becoming reality for the Impact Studio. Stay tuned to hear developments on their semester-long journey and updates about Demo Day!