UT Student Startup Wheelist Helps the Automobile Industry Ramp Up for the Future With the help from The LaunchPad’s summer accelerator and UT’s Student Entrepreneur Acceleration and Launch (SEAL), student entrepreneurs, Connor Phelps and Javier Huerta, launched Wheelist. By Barrett Ward Longhorns Connor Phelps (Communications, Class of 2018) and Javier…

From reducing food waste to improving quality of life for the elderly, five student tech-focused startups from UT Austin were accepted into the global Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars Spring Fellowship program for their novel/future-facing solutions. By Barrett Ward UT Austin set a record this semester with five student teams accepted into the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars Spring Fellowship program. This is the most number of Longhorn teams accepted in one semester since the global program began. Founders, Abhishek Dasgupta, Apoorva Chintala, Becky Xu, Paige Cabianca…

Have you ever sought out mental health care and felt alone in the process? Vrify Health developed an automated behavioral search engine to tackle the common challenges of reaching out for help. By Montse Santibanez I recently had the privilege of sitting down with Vrify Health to learn how they are democratizing patient access to mental health care providers. Vrify Health is a startup co-founded by UT Austin alum Tom Smith (Asian Cultures & Mandarin Chinese, Class of 2019), ROTC instructor Capt…

Apoorva Chintala of Clocr Helps Families Plan for What’s Next By Barrett Ward Each semester, The LaunchPad at The University of Texas at Austin helps students in the various stages of entrepreneurship navigate innovation across the Forty Acres. One student, in particular, has been making waves within the entrepreneurial scene…

The Blackstone Charitable Foundation recently announced the expansion of its signature Blackstone LaunchPad student entrepreneurship programming from two to eight campuses in The University of Texas System, bringing the initiative’s network and resources to a more diverse set of students. The $5 million expansion will give even more students critical…

In Fall 2019, we launched our Innovation Fellows program and hired undergraduate students from all backgrounds to treat the LaunchPad as a startup and help us tackle real-world business challenges. …

Big & Mini launched in April 2020 with the huge audacious goal of combating social isolation and bringing people together across generations. Founded by Aditi Merchant (a UT sophomore studying Biomedical Engineering), Allen Zhou (a UT sophomore studying Computer Engineering), and Anthony Zhou (a high school senior at the…

From inspiration to entrepreneurship in just 54-hours. That was the ambitious goal over the weekend of October 2–4 for many creative and highly-motivated students from the Blackstone LaunchPad & Techstars network schools in Texas. Altogether, more than 100 students from across the University of Texas System — Austin, Dallas, Rio…

Last month, the LaunchPad at UT Austin teamed up with the Kendra Scott Women’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (WEL Institute) for a workshop called Fundraising for Female Founders. By demystifying concepts such as venture capital, angel investor, bootstrapping, non-profit development, and crowdfunding, the goal was for students to leave feeling better…