Originally published in the StartX Monthly Newsletter. As managing editor, I achieved an average 30% open rate within the first six months. This compares to the industry benchmarks of 25.17% for non-profits and 21.06% for social networks and online communities.
THE PATH OF A STARTX STUDENT SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
Summer 2019 StartX Student Scholarship recipient, Elise Smith, arrived at Stanford knowing that social entrepreneurship was something she was interested in pursuing and ready to tap into all the opportunities for support around her. Before pursuing her joint MBA/MA in Education, while in the diverse leaders’ portfolio at a philanthropic venture fund, she found herself wanting the experience of the founders she was helping. “We were finding funding and coaching entrepreneurs solving challenges within diversity and inclusion and I remember missing being a practitioner. The result of this passion is Praxis Labs, where Elise is changing the way organizations train in diversity and inclusion practices through VR immersive learning experiences paired with actionable insights on a learning and reflection platform.
The process of taking Praxis Labs from idea to reality involved stringent research and market validation. When asked what advice she would give to Stanford student founders after a lightbulb moment, Elise stressed the importance of this step in any startup’s origin. “Ensuring that there is a real problem you are solving and a desire for your idea in the market is imperative whether your end customer is a company or a consumer. Additionally, making sure that you are positioning your idea in a way that resonates with folks will help you get feedback so that it becomes a real product that helps people in the way you intended it to.”
Elise credits the GSB and Grad School of Education for their support. “Luckily, being an MBA, MA in education student, there was a lot of focus on entrepreneurship and how to become an entrepreneur with sessions and panels.” Other resources were the Clayman Institute for Gender Research, VMWare Lab, Stanford Venture Studio, and Lean Launchpad out of the Engineering department which she describes as “catapulting that idea of entrepreneurship into something that is more real and tangible.”
Lean Launchpad, run by d.school adjunct professors, Perry Klebahn and Jeremy Utley, also served as a forcing function for another key milestone in an entrepreneur’s path from concept to real solution. To round out the Lean Launchpad team, Elise interviewed students, including, Heather Shen, who is now co-founder and CPO. “That was also a part of the process, finding a group of people that could work well together and had value alignment around the change we wanted to see in the world. There were no promises of where we’re going or what we would end up doing together, but from the beginning, we were aligned on what we were hoping to do and the change we wanted to see.”
There’s a push and pull to Elise’s experience building a company while at Stanford. In addition to leveraging formal programs and centers, she recognized the growth opportunities in other types of involvement. Serving as Co-President of the Black Business Student Association, membership in the GSB diversity committee, the Education and Social Innovations clubs, and serving as a TA for Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen's course “Philanthropy: Giving Models, Purpose, and Practicum,” were also part of her entrepreneurial curriculum. “I really just took advantage of every opportunity to learn and get pushed by an idea or have someone give feedback and tried to go to sessions that were aligned with what we were working on and thinking about.” She wasn’t afraid to ask for help from individual faculty members either a strategy that did a lot for Praxis’ progress. “Faculty across the board are always willing to sit down and give feedback and recommend people to connect with and that really helped us move the needle.”
With this proactive and coachable mindset, Elise and Praxis Labs were a perfect fit for StartX’s Student Scholarship Program, which offers non-dilutive financial support and access to StartX founders as coaches. “We didn’t raise money going into the summer after my first MBA year and not wanting to give away equity, StartX allowed us to pay for our summer living and food while still moving the business forward. What was also valuable was being part of the StartX network. We had product advisors and tech advisors, David Geisert in particular, who really helped in getting our pilot out the door. With an MS in Environmental Engineering from Stanford, experience working at well-known companies like Chegg and Zynga, and expertise ranging from fluid mechanics to feature design, Geisert, co-founder of StartX VR gaming company, Coinflip Studios, is one of sixteen hundred founders in the community available to provide expertise to Student Scholarship recipients who ask for help.
Since then, Elise has received her MBA and Master’s in Education, and team plans to launch its flagship conscious leadership training suite in early 2021. They are currently selling to workplaces, with a long term vision of expanding to work with police departments and other areas in the criminal justice space. To support this growth, they are currently hiring an Adult Learning Lead and Senior Software Engineer.