Inside the Process of Student Product Development

Welcome to Season 10, Episode 2 of the ShermCast! In this episode, co-hosts Liam MacMahon and Andrew Han delve into the process of product development and learn more about how Northeastern students are turning their ideas into successful products. Join them as they interview Ryan Lonkart—current Executive Director of Generate—and Ananya Shah—current Sherman Center Entrepreneur-in-Residence to gain further insight into the experience of being a leader in the product development and entrepreneurial space. For more information on Generate and REV, check out the following links:
Generate:
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/generatenu/?hl=en
Website- https://generatenu.com/
LinkedIn-https://www.linkedin.com/company/generate-product-development/
REV:
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/rev_neu/
LinkedIn-https://www.linkedin.com/company/revschool/
Check out more of the Sherman Center here:
Follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn @nushermancenter
Head to our website for all episodes and transcripts- https://sherman.center.northeastern.edu/podcasts/
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Transcript

Liam [00:00:05] Welcome back to season ten, episode two of the ShermCast podcast. I'm Liam MacMahon. 

Andrew [00:00:10] And my name is Andrew Han. In today's episode, we have the pleasure of interviewing two members of the Sherman Center. Up first, we have Ryan Lonkart, the executive director at Generate. 

Liam [00:00:20] Then we have Ananya Shah, the entrepreneur in residence, as part of the venture Co-op program. Now let's get straight into the interviews. Hello. Today we have the pleasure of interviewing Ryan Lonkart, a fourth year computer engineering student here at Northeastern University. He is also the executive director of the organization Generate here at the Sherman Center. How are you doing today, Ryan? 

Speaker 3 [00:00:41] I am doing awesome. I'm so happy to be here today. 

Liam [00:00:44] So before we get into what Generate is, can you just tell the audience a little bit about yourself first? 

Ryan [00:00:50] Yeah. So as you said previously, I am a fourth year computer engineering major with a minor in business administration. I'm originally from, small beach town of Rhode Island called Narragansett, so grew up in like high school where I graduated with 90 people. And now I'm now here in Boston looking up. 

Andrew [00:01:06] Now that we know more about you? Could you tell us more about what Generate is? 

Ryan [00:01:10] Generate is Northeastern's student led product development studio. So what we do is every single semester we'll take nine or so clients that have, hardware or software development ideas, and we'll turn those ideas into reality. So clients a lot of times will come to us from a non-technical backgrounds. They'll have a vision for their products that they want to develop, and we'll build a team of students that will work over the course of the entire 13 week semester to build that product for them and pass it off to them so that they can continue building their venture. 

Liam [00:01:42] So we've mentioned earlier that you are the executive director, so can you tell us how that role was like and what a day in a life would look like for you? 

Ryan [00:01:49] It's certainly a fun role, and there is no very clear day in the life for me, which is kind of, you know, what adds to the fun part of it. In this role, I have a ton of autonomy to really set the vision for what I want to see out of generate and to help push our organization forward. Unlike a lot of other organizations on campus, we really have the flexibility and freedom to do whatever we want, to help push our goals forward and help our clients work to achieve their goals. So my day to day, a lot of times is really focused on supporting my team members. Given we're about 180 members the semester, that takes up a lot of bandwidth. So I really need to make sure that things are running smoothly and that everyone feels like they have the opportunity to be supported in their roles so that they can succeed in whatever they're working on within the organization. 

Andrew [00:02:38] 180 members. That's a lot. Could you tell us more about what these members are working on? 

Ryan [00:02:43] Yeah. So, of that 180, about 140, 150 or so are actually working on our client project. So actually work on the development of those products. On the hardware side, some of these members can be working like as mechanical or electrical engineers, project leads, tech leads, all that fun stuff. And some of the projects that they've been working on this semester are Wave Wise, which is this vertically adjustable seaweed farm. Essentially, the goal of it is to kind of help automate the process for people up in Maine, which is where our client is originally from. These clients were based out of the Roux Institute and came to us with this idea last fall. We built version one for them, and now we're building, you know, V2 this semester, which is going to be bigger and better than last semester, we'll call it. We also have a project called Fufu Pot. This is another returning client. Essentially the idea is almost like a KitchenAid. But to make this West African dish called fufu just typically very done by hand. And so we're automating the process by building a machine with an induction heater and all that stuff that would make it for you. Just pour in the powder and let it go. We have five different software projects this semester. Since it's Valentine's Day, I'll talk about one of the projects that we're working on. It's for a venture called Couplet. Essentially, it is a dating app of sorts. And so it's just this really cool idea where we get so many projects that come in from a variety of places. You can be working on anything from a seaweed farm to a dating app with what we do. And that's just a really cool opportunity of being in Generate is. There is no set clear goal when you walk into a semester of this is what our project is going to be, these are what we're going to do. It all depends on what those clients bring to us. 

Liam [00:04:31] So you mentioned previously about having 180 members currently in generate. So how is the process like to build such a large membership for Generate? Was it always this way or what did you specifically do to increase the membership. 

Ryan: [00:04:46] So it hasn't always been this way. Generate is now, just over eight years old. And when I joined, which was spring of 2021, it was about 90 something members. Over time, our membership count has increased, mainly due to an increased number of clients. So we've taken on now the most clients we've ever done. I know when I start, I believe it was seven clients that we had a semester. Now it's up to nine, and then the scope of our projects has increased as well. So we're doing larger projects that are more complex every semester, and we're all students here. We can't expect everyone to, increase their workload to 20 hours a week on all these projects. So we have to expand out teams. And with expanded teams comes the need for additional leadership roles to make sure that that workload is spread out. So now, on our software side, we have, within the leadership of each project team, a project lead, two technical leads and a design lead that all just help to spread that workload of making sure that everyone feels supported and not overwhelmed. And we do a similar thing on the hardware side, where it has basically a hardware project lead and two tech leads to help spread out that workload and make sure that, you know, we can continue delivering upon these higher level products, that we promise every semester without saying, make this your full time job. 

Andrew [00:06:11] Speaking of the workload that people do while in generate, could you go for like a general day of an ordinary member working in Generate? 

Ryan [00:06:20] Every member's day is slightly different because of all the roles that we have. But for the most part, if you're on a project team, your typical week will look like maybe 2 to 3 hours worth of meetings throughout the week where you collaborate synchronously with your team. Usually that's the opportunity to, sync up on what you've been working on outside of that time and to establish kind of like, you know, the next steps, what we're all working on next in to get through blockers. Outside of that, we do a ton of asynchronous work just because we're all students. We all have different schedules, whether that be classes or co-op. And so we let our members structure out their own time outside of their team meetings to, you know, work on their own individual tasks, collaborate with one another, and really work through things. And the great part of having the Sherman Center is that it's available 24/7. So you'll see a ton of our members will just outside of those team meetings, kind of impromptu meet up and say, all right, let's work through this task together, or let's just get this done so that we can come back to our team meeting next week and say, we did it. We're done. 

Liam [00:07:26] I think it's a great point. You mentioned, like, the collaborative space with the Sherman Center, because it is always available, and most of the time I'm there. It's always packed, people are always working on their ventures or projects, etc.. So before being an executive director, you mentioned some previous other roles that people may have. Did you have any of those previous roles in Generate, and if so, what were those roles and how were those roles like, and did they prepare you for your current position? 

Ryan [00:07:50] Yeah. So I have spent my entire time in Generate outside of the executive director role on our operations teams. When I joined in, you know, spring of 2021, I joined as what was titled at the time, the Build Studio support lead, which was kind of an ironic role because I was the Build Studio's support lead in a semester where no one was really using the build studio since we were mostly virtual. So that was kind of a, you know, a little fish in a big pond moment where I just was jumped right into it and said, all right, what can I do to improve? And so that role eventually morphed into is now operational supports, within the organization, which basically oversees all our finances and budgeting, our space access, and at the time oversaw some of the collaboration between our maker space and the Generate organization as a whole. So at that time, I really did a lot of stuff on the back end to the organization of just like helping things run. I always kind of love just like the operational aspects of things. Even though I am a computer engineer, I have never done any engineering within Generate, which is the funniest thing. And yeah, I just really enjoyed that and just kept continuing on in that role. And then for all of last year, I jumped into a role called organizational development. And so within that role, a lot of what I did was focused on the kind of special topics of Generate. So like the things that like, you know, haven't really been focused upon in the past. So I started focusing on with my team a lot more on member development things. So thinking about non-technical aspects of like, okay, what if we do more resume workshops? What if we do stuff along those lines and then all right, let's start looking at sponsorships and getting some, you know, external money into the organization. And really like with that role, I had a ton of flexibility to kind of design what I wanted to do because it was very broad. It was like, all right, focus on the things that would help improve the organization. And that was really just a great. And kind of led me to my role now where I said, ooh, I like this idea of having this autonomy to really set my vision and push things forward to actually improve the greater organization. And I thought executive director would have been a great opportunity to kind of step up and not have anymore restrictions on what you do with that, essentially. 

Andrew [00:10:21] It sounds like you've had a long journey in the history of Generate, but could you tell us maybe about, let's say, one of the projects that have been worked on in Generate maybe a product that came out of one of the projects that really stood out to you for any reason.  

Ryan [00:10:40] This is a tough one because I've seen what is it, quick math for my head. Probably almost 50 projects come through organization since I've started. I know as of this semester, we're now over 100 projects all time, so that's crazy to think about. I have to say, one of my favorite projects to come through the organization, just simply because it's so fun was, a project called Auto Passer. We worked on it. We did, v1 and v2 of it over the course of two semesters, and it was essentially a hockey puck passing machine for, like, practicing on your own, similar to a tennis ball machine. The team builds like this awesome device that you could fully control, like you know, where it was pointing at and everything like that. And I'm pretty sure don't quote me on this. They got it up to 40 miles an hour. What it could shoot out when it shot out the hockey puck. So like, that was just like an example of like a project that like, it was so fun and like, our client walked away with something that, you know, they could pitch that to future investors and say, look, let's build this. Or, you know, could go practice on their own and have a little hockey puck passing machine to themselves. 

Liam [00:11:50] That's pretty cool to hear about, just the creation of the product and just finding the need and just being able to make that within Generate. So were there any other projects that stood out particular to you, maybe software as well or...

Ryan [00:12:02] Yeah. So this is one of the example projects that I love to use all the time. We had a project a couple semesters ago called Remo. It came out of the Roux Institute founder residency program from a, primary school educator who decided to fix the idea of the reading journal. Basically, we all know the reading journal in, like, elementary and middle school is like, you know, the paper you write down what you read every night in your summary and stuff like that, and we built them an app for it. Basically, the idea behind it was you could take the app using the Google Books API, but actually just scan in the barcode on the back of a book. It would add it to your library of sorts, and then you could set up like, you know, a timer for how long you've read. And then at the end it would let you write in a summary, ask you some follow up questions, things like that. And then on the teacher side, they could see what you read and what you put in and stuff like that. And it really just was just an example of a unique projects that we had never really worked on before, but truly could make a big impact when it is implemented. 

Andrew [00:13:07] Sounds great that people were able to really smooth the transition between more traditional writing to having this Google API do all the for you, but on the flip side, could you maybe tell us more about maybe some lessons on the opposite of success, maybe a team that you saw going through a lot of hardships and issues, and how they might have overcome that? 

Ryan [00:13:31] Yeah, I mean, every team within our organization ultimately falls on some level of hardship at some point or another. You know, we have this crazy 13 week development cycle where we say we're going to build an entire product in that time frame, and a lot of times you get to that night before a project is ready to go and oh, no, it broke or something like that. And so, yeah, that can happen sometimes. I know of a couple, I forget exactly which projects, but you know, they've burnt out their motor controller the night before a project cuz they were testing it at too high a voltage or something like that. And, you know, those are just cases where the teams said, you know what? We did it. We made it to this point. We got the project done. This can be replaced at a later point, or we can use something from someone else's project. Maybe they have an extra spare part or something like that. In a lot of cases, there haven't been many we'll call catastrophic failures of anything. So we've been pretty lucky so far in that a lot of the projects, it's just a small thing that the team can just work through and be finished at the end. 

Liam [00:14:37] So you mentioned all these different ventures and products that people within Generate are creating. So can you give some tips and advice for any of the students out there that want to get into product development, or perhaps entrepreneurship as well? 

Ryan [00:14:50] Join Generate? No. I will preface this with, I am not a business or entrepreneurship major by any means. You know I'm that technical guy on the other side that's really just building these products. But, you know, the biggest thing is just take a chance and go for it. Like a lot of people have this self-doubt, which is great. I think everyone needs to have some level of self-doubt, but it's all about just getting beyond that and saying, you know what? Let's just go for it. If I fail, I fail. That's fine. But if you have an idea for a product, go for it. Build it. We have an awesome community of entrepreneurial organizations at Northeastern. Generate being just one of them. And so whether that be Generate for hardware and software development, Scout for branding and design, IDEA for just building the actual business aspect of your organization, there's so many organizations that can just help with that advancement of your venture. And, you know, I think Northeastern is probably one of the best places to really dive into that, if you're interested in that stuff. 

Andrew [00:15:52] Well, we've heard a lot about the history of Generate, what people are doing now in Generate. Could you maybe tell us maybe the future of Generate what what's going to happen? What events are going to happen soon? 

Ryan [00:16:04] Well, the future of Generate is a question mark in that like it's a positive question mark, I'll call it in that, you know, I'm graduating at the end of this semester, and I'm currently in the process of picking our next executive director. And that's a very fun process to go through myself, but I will ultimately let that decision be up to them, whether they come into this role in terms of like near future things. We have our big end of the semester showcase coming up in April, which is also going to feature a special 10th anniversary Sherman Center celebration. And that's really just going to be an awesome opportunity to showcase all the work that we've done over the course this semester, whether that be or for hardware projects, five software projects, or, operations and engagement teams to help support our organization and make it something, you know, special. It's going to be a super awesome event. We're going to be hosting it, in ISEC on April 19th at 7 p.m.. I think that's the time. And yeah, it's just going to be a super awesome opportunity for everyone to really see what we actually do and to celebrate our impact and the Sherman Center's greater impact.

Liam [00:17:09] Well it seems there are a lot of big things coming up for Generate. So where can the audience find more about Generate? 

Ryan [00:17:14] Ooh, I mean, best place to find everything about Generate is our Instagram which is just Generate.nu. Or our website which is a Generatenu.com. And we basically post almost everything on our Instagram that's open to the community. So we'll post a ton of stuff on there, whether that be like, you know, upcoming events, we'll post our showcase stuff and more. And if you go to our website, you can also sign up for our awesome newsletter. 

Liam [00:17:38] Well, it looks like we're about to the end of the interview, so is great to have you on here today to talk about Generate and just what is coming up next for Generate. So good seeing you guys. 

Andrew [00:17:50] Up next, we have the pleasure of interviewing Ananya Shah, a finance and data science major here at the Northeastern University. Additionally, she is the entrepreneur in residence here at the Sherman Center and the Director of Partnerships at REV. Among various roles she has. How are you doing today, Ananya? 

Speaker 4 [00:18:08] I'm doing good. How are you guys doing? 

Andrew [00:18:10] Doing pretty great. 

Liam [00:18:10] Pretty good, as I said. So before we get into REV and the venture co-ops, can you just tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Speaker 4 [00:18:17] Yeah. Of course. So like they said, I'm a fourth year finance and data science major. I was born and raised in India. And now I'm, I was actually a venture co-op before this, and I was working on my startup from Bangalore in India, and I'm back in Boston for my senior year, spring semester, but I am doing the five year, program, so I'll be doing a third co op. Additionally, apart from being here at the Sherm and partnerships at REV, I'm also the Managing Director at Huntington Angels Network, and I am also the co VP of a We Launch and accelerator hosted by WISE. 

Liam [00:18:57] Interesting. So you mentioned something about your own co-op or venture co op before this. So can you go into that and maybe why that helped influence your decision now with your current role in the Venture co-op program? 

Speaker 4 [00:19:07] Yes. Of course. So I was this actually ties back to my first co-op. I was working at a venture debt firm in Palo Alto, California called Hercules Capital. And I was doing a pretty kind of mundane task. You know how first co-ops go? Usually pretty repetitive. It was a business development role. But I was a finance major. Then I taken a few programing classes here and there. I had a little bit of a, technical background from high school, so I kind of, like, tried automating my role. And that's when I realized that I can be in a space that I cannot innovate in. So, I started interacting with the ecosystem around me. As you can imagine, Palo Alto was like the hub of Silicon Valley. My office was maybe a mile from Stanford. It was literally a mile down. It was amazing. So I got to interact with a lot of cool people. And I met a few people from, you know, my past ventures, etc. and we started talking and I realized that there is a very, very strong, market opportunity, in India, especially around female empowerment. So there was a huge gap in the number of women joining the labor force in India, and that was costing our economy about, I think, around seventy, eighty billion USD because of the lack of people working in the economy. And obviously on a more humanitarian level, you can imagine that this is these are women who are financially dependent on either their, partners. And this can lead to like, abusive relationships, not able to take care of themselves and a lot of other things. So I met my co-founder there, and it was like a match made in heaven at that time. And, we started talking about this. We both ran similar nonprofits in India. So it seemed like a natural progression to us once we realized the nonprofit model wasn't working. So we started speaking about female empowerment, got into this about women in the job market. And that's how my winter finder was born around December, started working on a lot more seriously after we applied for Generate, actually. And once you were a Generate client to a lot of the processes, a lot of customer interviews, I became more and more serious about the idea, and I became very, very serious about almost like either dropping out or pursuing this full time right out of school. And that's when I came across the Venture Co-op and it was like, ding, ding, ding. This is exactly what I should do. It's low risk, but it's exactly what I need. It's going to fund me for a while. I can go back can be the flexibility to work on this full time. And that's kind of what I did. 

Liam [00:21:41] Fascinating. Especially to see the whole journey took from like being in another country and like, how do you figure out more and more over time that you want to go into the entrepreneurial space? Because most people, they just find, oh, the normal 9 to 5, that's like the lifestyle we're kind of destined for. But then you see the entrepreneurial lifestyle. And I've also kind of got hooked with a creative and innovative like type of lifestyle where it's like, okay, I get to have the flexibility to operate I want, and I can see that you've had this similar process as well. But let's take a slight pivot into REV. So can you tell the audience about what REV is and your role within REV? 

Speaker 4 [00:22:12] Yeah of course. So just to give you a little bit context. So when I was building Find Her, like post Generate you know pre venture co op around May, April. I was just, I was turning technical to help build a product. As you can imagine, I wasn't very technical. I was a business major before this, and I and I was taking already that summer. So I had very little knowledge about application development. When I told you I did not know how to host a website til like the end of summer, it was it was insane. So just like building my myself got really isolating and I started speaking to a few friends of mine. I was like, why is there no founder community? I know for a fact that I work from like 9 to 5 of my classes. But after 5 p.m. to 2 a.m., I'm working on my startup. There have to be people who are doing that on campus. And I spoke a really close friend of mine, Jules. And Jules was like, hey, I know someone who's thinking of doing that. And he mutually connected us. And, so to Allen, Allen is, you know, he's one of the major directors at REV. And that's when Allen and I got split into speaking, I was like, we're both trying to build a founder community. We're both trying to build. I wanted to bring the builder culture to Boston, and I was thinking more from just a founder community perspective. But like the underlying themes met. And that's how I got involved with REV very early on in the summer before it was incepted. But as you can imagine, I went back to India to build, so I wasn't very involved, in the front facing role, etc. While REV was being incepted in the fall. But a little, you know, I guess we can get into that later when my when Find Her officially ended and I took a roll up at the Sherm, around November of last year, I was like, okay, I need to go full focus on REV now. This is where my passion lies. Collaboration and building together. Because when I was building in India, I was still alone. And I realized that project success plummets when you are building by yourself, as opposed to when you're building and learning in a community together. And that's why I'm so passionate about REV, and I've been involved with it ever since. And I primarily do partnerships at REV. So I help connect REV just because, just like making sure REV is distributed across the entire Northeastern ecosystem, helping source speakers, whatever we might need. And I was pretty horizontal. We all work on everything that needs to be done. Also helping with something that was the REV capsule, which kind of, that entire journey from coding non-technical to technical and very bite-sized information. So you can, like, ship out products super, super quickly. 

Andrew [00:24:41] That was a very comprehensive history about REV, and I gotta say that having, I guess, like rivals that you can, like, compare yourself against and try to match their standards and go past them. That is a great way to motivate yourself and get yourself started on those projects. But could you go more into depth about what kind of projects or ideas are being worked on REV right now? 

Speaker 4 [00:25:03] Yeah. So REV or for context is just like a community of builders, coworkers. So we have people from all across the board, not just technical but non-technical people coming and working on their ideas as well. And I'll tell you, we're still pretty early stage on this semester. Talk about a substantial ideas that are coming out. But some ideas that came out last semester where all of these ideas have been featured in Northeastern news, by the way. BiBite, it's a friend restaurant app. I'm pretty sure I really, really ruined that definition. My friend David is going to scold me about that later. And CareWallet. It's supposed to make patient information transfer easy between different medical institutions. And Evan is the founder and CEO of that. So these two are one of my favorites I went through. But we had a lot of, cool other projects come out of it as well. Sebastian, who's also part of the team at REV, is working on an app called Swiftly. It's this AI voice, not up every single time, I kid you not that, we have our discussions at REV about or just working on our own startup ideas. We use Sebastian's app. It's it's so funny. He's he still has the 32nd cap on it, but we still love using it. And one fun thing, REV, in my role as a Sherm EIR, and the failure of my past startup actually led me to create my new one that I'm working on, Sand Castles. It's a project management tool, so I guess you could say that that's also coming out of REV right now. 

Liam [00:26:32] It's actually pretty crazy because on the last episode of the podcast, we actually did interview David and Viraj as part of BiBite and last semester, as part of the ShermCast, we interviewed Evan and his partner as part of CareWallet as well, so it's kind of crazy to see the whole context in the situation here, because we've already worked in this entrepreneurial space and now we get you here on the podcast as well. But can you go into more some of the other big product successes that REV has had besides maybe you could elaborate more on those two ventures, or perhaps another one that you see fit? 

Speaker 4 [00:27:01] Yeah, for sure. I think the biggest success I would say the REV is having right now is the REV connects. I think this is I, I'm not going to take any credit for it at all. I think Allen was mostly behind this. It's so it's basically an entire CRM for REV because we were initially doing everything from Airtable, Slack, and then, you know, they all just got together and we were like, what if we just. We're all builders. We build anywhere, we have data where we're like, all of our all of us are like primarily like front end, back end architectures, little ML, AI here and there. Why don't we just build our own, CRM? So through our website now, people can log in, log their products in, like the project that they're working on, etc. and like, connect with people within the entire community. So it's kind of like, your, website app just for REV itself. So you login to this all to all of your co-working sessions through the REV connects. You log your projects and you track progress. You meet people and everything. Your entire life cycle at REV now lives of the REV connects essentially. So I think that's a pretty cool thing that's coming up. And that's soon going to be, very, very closely tied to the Sandcastle build template. So we're going to like kind of like integrate the connects with how Sandcastles project management works to prove the improved efficiency of project success and scaling. 

Andrew [00:28:25] Yeah, it's really cool. But switching gears a little bit, could you tell us by your role in the Venture co-op program and why you decided to take on that role? 

Speaker 4 [00:28:33] Yes. So I very briefly mentioned that Find Her ended up dissolving in November. And it was not an easy way that it is all it was. Obviously there was a lot of things that went into it, and it was a very, very, emotional time, as I'm sure a lot of startup founders might be listening to this. You realize that when when your startup dies or is about to die, you're going through a tough time like it was. It was rough. And I worked very hard on Find Her, like I was learning so much about myself and the space and the ecosystem, and I was like, building in a completely different country because my entire adult life, like, especially like, you know, 18 after I spent in the US, and a lot of like my formative development was here and like going back to that environment was fun itself, like a different, different ecosystem altogether. Then learning to build all these products from scratch without any support system was difficult. And we were working like close to like every single week. It was at least 50 to 80 hours. Sure. Give or take, you know, for working super hard. But it was just we kept on pivoting each month, as you usually do as a startup, is super emotionally taxing. And then you see all of that effort that it just like I was so passionate about this idea, now suddenly not going to work out because of some reason. The reason was team related. It wasn't anything related to the idea per se. We were getting traction. We actually had five customers the time we ended, and we had built about a database of 160 plus women who wanted to apply for jobs in our platform. So it was really, really disheartening to do that. And Theo, who is currently the, director of the Sherman, also is a huge, huge supporter of he runs the Venture co-op program. And, he's the one who was technically a supervisor during these Venture co-ops. I was constantly in communication with Theo, and I was just telling him about this and he really helped me get through this problems, whatever was on my team, my co-founder, etc.. And when it finally dissolved, that happened. And, he started taking feedback from everybody on how we can improve this. And I was just thinking of just reflecting on my day. My day is like a Venture co-op. And that's kind of where the initial idea of Sandcastles came from itself. I was like, wait, we can do this so much better. Like, this is the instead of just sending our daily goals on Slack, I think there should be a tracker there. That would be that would be so much cooler. And then I started looking into the psychology of productivity and like, mental models and like really changing the success of startups by simply, you know, looking at them in a unique way can change the outcome of your project. Essentially, that's the idea behind Sandcastles. So I started speaking to Theo and I was like, hey Theo would it be cool if I just as a project, my startup ended. But I want to continue building and like honing on these skills. Can I start working on this for the Sherm so that the next venture co ops can take advantage of this, new venture tracking system essentially. It's still in progress. I wish I had said that I had it shipped out by Jan. But that's kind of what happened. And Theo said, Theo offered the EIR position to me. And I was just I was super excited. I was like, yes, of course I would love to do this. And that's when I got on board. And, I think I'm the most involved EIR ever, because I didn't go in as a venture technically, I didn't have a venture at the time that I was made an EIR. So we just went all in and we, like, introduced a lot of new concepts to the venture co-op program, including field trips, more workshops, more startup oriented resources. The venture tracker, like I mentioned, and, certain other aspects of it. 

Liam [00:32:08] I think it's great that for the setback that you did have with your previous venture that you didn't let it set you back. But you kind of use that as a way to modify and truly have the entrepreneurial spirit to adapt, to overcome and learn from that experience. But you also quickly mentioned something about field trips and Theo, so recently Theo took all the Venture co-op people and the new group into a trip at Maine as part of a bonding activity. So can you tell the audience how that experience was like, and what was the purpose behind that trip? 

Speaker 4 [00:32:38] Yeah. So the idea was, before the Venture co-op started, I came out with this huge calendar of, really cool events that I wanted to make sure that we could take advantage of as a cohort, because I really wanted to immerse. One of the biggest feedbacks we got was that building in isolation from the venture co-ops itself, because the Sherman Center, as you can imagine, it's like pretty crowded at all times. As like a startup office, sometimes it does not actually work out even if you have that one conference room. So I was like, how can we really ensure that co-ops are going to get together even when they are not, you know, managed to get together by the Sherm Co-op because the best part about it is offer so much flexibility. So I really wanted to facilitate that team bonding. So collaboration can flow between founders. So that's when I proposed a founders retreat to Theo. And Theo was like, hey, what if we do the Roux Institute, that's in Maine, one of our venture co-ops is in Maine. And we said, let's do a day trip. And Theo planned the day trip to the Roux. And, it coincided with a group of Colby's students who were visiting the room at the time for their venture, some entrepreneurship program they had going on there. So we got to interact with, a founder panel. We spoke to a lot of the founders in residence at the Roux. We checked out the campus, which is beautiful by the way. Anyone listening to this, if you have the opportunity to go to the Roux do it. Go for a whole day. Co-work there they have ceiling to all floor windows facing the pier. It's just so beautiful. There's sunlight. It's gorgeous. And yeah, it was it was such a great time. 

Andrew [00:34:16] Well, you talked a lot about REV and the Sherman Center and you've had a lot of experiences with entrepreneurship, with failures and successes. Could you go, I guess, more into, some tips and advice you would give to newer people going into the field of entrepreneurship? 

Speaker 4 [00:34:31] Yes. Get comfortable with failure. I think that the word success just means failing correctly. Each time you fail, fail differently. And just, like, get back up there. You haven't fail. You only fail when you stop trying. Right. Like, it's a pretty bad step back when one startup ends. But, like, what did you learn out of that? Keep pivoting, keep learning, keep trying. And honestly, I've just gotten so comfortable with failure in the last two years that, I just go out and put myself out there now. Do not be afraid to be embarrassed. Nobody's going to remember anything that you worked on. I worked on maybe, like four startup ideas Since I've been a Northeastern, I've been to the Husky Startup Challenge. I went through We Launch with a different idea, so I've been all over the place. Okay. It's okay. It doesn't matter. You experiment and you find out what works for you. I pitched Sandcastles, so we had this, like there was a pitchathon, like there was a pitch event happening at IDEA and we were in this room with, like, maybe 30 people. I kid you not, there were four women there, and two of them were the ones hosting that, Bella and me, and I was the third one, and the other one was a freshman who came in to see this. And I was just like, this is not the representation I would want to see. I would be so intimidated to enter the space if I was a female founder. And this at this point, Sandcastles was a day old. We put up something to apply to the prototype fund so we can help build it out. So I was like, okay, now this was before the prototype fund. So it was maybe like I had one ideation session with my with Allen like and Sebastian from REV. And I was like, I think I want to work on this. So while people were speaking five minutes in, I went on Canva and I created five slides that did not even almost convey what Sandcastles does. But all it said was, the way you look at a project can change the outcome of your project. It had a sandcastle as a logo and it said project management tool for builders. I introduced my credibility and I pitched a good idea, but I made sure I spoke. I'm pretty sure embarrass myself, but it did not matter because right after that I applied for, the prototype fund and now Sandcastles. The concept of Sandcastles is being used as a beta for not only the venture co-ops right now, but is going to be used for REV and We Launch ventures. 

Liam [00:36:57] Well, that is fascinating to hear of it. And I think that presonally great advice to just put yourself out there because you just never know what's going to happen. And as you mentioned, even if your idea wasn't fully complete or set out there, you now have it out there and you have some kind of prototype or vision that other people could follow and believe in as well, which is super important as an entrepreneur and just with whatever endeavors that someone has going on with in general. But we're wrapping up the podcast somewhat soon. So can you tell us what is next for that Venture Co-op program and your role in it, and perhaps with the REV as well? 

Ananya [00:37:29] Yes, actually pretty exciting stuff. So the venture co-op applications are open right now. I highly, highly encourage taking advantage of this opportunity. If you are a founder or you are thinking of starting something, this this program really was a life changing experience for me. Because when you put yourself through the grinder, when you're outside of the constraints of a 9 to 5 and you're solely responsible for your own success, that's when you know you got to work really hard. Entrepreneurship is all about asymmetric success, asymmetric rewards. There's a lot of delayed gratification involved. It's not an easy journey. And, we had a really cool speaker, James Career, who's the founder of NF effects, which is a VC fund in the Bay right now. He said that being a founder is one of the hardest jobs ever. If you truly, truly cannot see yourself doing anything but that, only then pursue that. And I agree with that because it was not an easy journey. And with the Venture co-op, it's going to test your limits, but it's going to make you learn so much. So definitely check out those applications and get your applications in within the next two weeks. So that's the Venture co-op. We have a few cool events and workshops coming up. We have a UX workshop and some pitching workshops with REV and Sherm soon. But most importantly with REV, we have a hacker house that's coming up on the 15th to 17th. It's going to be the most exclusive hacker house. We're going to the Cape. We're getting the top 1% builders in the Boston ecosystem to join us. So we're going to have, some builders from MIT, Harvard, BU, Babson. We're obviously going to have some of the REV fellows there we're going to try to have we're actually getting funded by, General Catalyst, for the hacker house. And we're going to have we might have some fellows there will have a lot of cool speakers come and drop out. It's going to be super fun. So that's something you should definitely look out for.

Andrew [00:39:26] For everyone interested in everything that we talked about, where could the audience find everything about REV and the Venture Co=op program here at the Sherman Center? 

Ananya [00:39:32] Yes. Of course. So, with the Sherman Center, honestly, just walk to the Hayden basement and tap on the glass. Theo is amazing. He's honestly been the most amazing mentor I've had and responsible for so much of my growth over the last one year. So you can just reach out to him and speak to him. Otherwise, you can find us on Instagram, the Sherman Center and REV as well. Our REV's Instagram account is, I think rev_neu. All the relevant links will be there. Join our slack, join the Instagram and we're all just sign up for the newsletter and you'll get updated about everything. 

Liam [00:40:05] Well it looks like we're about to wrap up the podcast and it was a pleasure having you on here today. Good luck with whatever you have going on. And yep. 

Ananya [00:40:13] Thank you so much guys. I really appreciate it. 

Andrew [00:40:16] Well, that was a very inspiring and informative podcast. We just heard from some product developers and student leaders here at Northeastern. We first interviewed Ryan Lonkart and learned more about Generate. We then interviewed Ananya Shah and learned more about REV and the Venture Co-op program here at the Sherman Center. 

Liam [00:40:32] We hope that you all enjoyed today's episode. Make sure to like and follow this podcast, and check out the Sherman Center's Instagram at nusherman center and our newsletters as well. Until then, see you all next time.