Over lunch on Tuesday, June 30th, 1776 hosted Startup Grind with Adriana C. Vázquez, Co-Founder and CEO of Lilu. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Product Design masters program, Adriana founded Lilu in 2016 with another Penn engineer. They recognized that new moms have been vastly ignored by technology, especially when it comes to breast pumping; so they developed the Lilu Massage Bra, that gives the benefits of massage while breastfeeding, hands-free! 

On Friday, June 26th, 1776 mentor Anthony Gold took participants through a comprehensive introduction to obtaining startup capital. Anthony is an experienced social entrepreneur, most recently as co-founder and COO of ROAR for Good, a wearable tech B-corporation that developed a safety module to help reduce assaults against women. 

On June 25, 2020, Anish Kumar, Managing Director of Pennovation Works, and Mike Wojewodka, Senior Vice President of MRA Group, joined the Penn Center for Innovation for a virtual webinar about the opportunities for both researchers and startups on the Pennovation Works campus.
 

The 2020 Pennovation Accelerator officially launches Monday, June 8th for the program's third summer (and the first virtual)!

On June 5th, hosted by the Penn Center for Innovation, PCI Ventures, and Pennovation Works, seven startups pitched to an audience of over 60 people from the Wharton Alumni Club of Austin and beyond at the Innovation @ Penn virtual pitch session. The startups that pitched were originally scheduled to appear at SXSW 2020 until the festival was cancelled. 
 
If you missed it, you can watch the pitches here!
 
The companies that pitched were: 

On May 21st, Victor Boyajian, Global Chair, and Asher Bundlie, Managing Associate, from Dentons’ Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies team led an engaging workshop designed for early-stage startups on how to navigate the challenging, changing, and uncharted waters during the COVID-19 pandemic. Equipped with experience from prior economic cycles, their team shared strategies and tips to reduce burn rate and extend runway. In particular, they discussed fundraising in a down market, with company-specific feedback and advice for how to approach investors during this time.

On Thursday May 7th,  PCI Ventures’ partner, Pepper Hamilton, hosted a webinar about Navigating the Paycheck Protection Program.  The weeks leading up to this webinar were spent learning about the CARES Act and how to apply for the Paycheck Protection Program.

In anticipation of this summer’s 3rd annual Pennovation Accelerator launching June 8th, we caught up with five alumni of the program to celebrate their recent growth and learn what the Pennovation Works community has meant to them.

Founders, clockwise starting top center: Arianna Armelli, Jared Cannon (pictured with Penn's Associate Vice Provost for Research, Michael Borda, right), Tyiwanna Carter, Greg Yeutter, Evan Weinstein

On the evening of April 28, Verge Aero, a leader in high performance drone light shows, delivered an aerial tribute at the University of Pennsylvania campus, not far from the company’s offices at Pennovation Works. As part of the local #PhillyShinesBlue campaign and the global #LightItBlue campaign, the display was created to honor and show appreciation for healthcare professionals and first responders on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.  

On Monday, April 20th, 1776 was delighted to welcome Michael Furman of HR Resolve to lead a virtual workshop on Handbooks, Policies, and Culture, designed to help companies develop and build their human resources capacity as they grow. Michael covered the elements of a successful employee handbook, how to target HR policies to your needs & stage of growth, and how to think about the cultural foundation that a handbook & policies build.