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We are very excited to announce that six Zahn startups (Active Hands, dawaCare, Function Cosmetics, nuravine, Ouvos, and Wrkbook) will participate in an Adopt-a-Startup program at Google. Over the next few months, Google mentors and startups will produce a marketing an customer acquisition strategy, with the results shared at a group presentation at Google in early December. Google mentors will help the startups define their KIPs, achieve set milestones, and utilize Google Analytics and Adwords.Each startup will work closely with two to three Google mentors. Below is a list of… Read More »


This semester we held one of our biggest hackathons yet! On Friday, October 6th, over 50 City College students competed in a hackathon hosted by Nestlé Skin Health SHIELD to create new innovations in skin health. Challenge topics included optimizing outcomes in skin health, quantifying skin wellness, creating medical devices for skin health, and skin health literacy. Although many hackathons require that students create an app or tech product, this hackathon was more open-ended. Students worked in multidisciplinary teams, and were inspired to create not only tech solutions and… Read More »


In the next month and a half, you'll be hearing a lot about our Annual Startup Competition as we call for applications for the 2018 cohort. A lot of you may be wondering, why should I apply to the Zahn Center's Startup Competition? What will it do for me? The answer, of course, is different for everyone. However, we hope to shed some light on why some of the entrepreneurs in our community applied in the first place, and what they got out of our program.In this blog you'll hear from Elizabeth Bitis, Co-Founder of FxN Cosmetics, a startup that competed in last year's… Read More »


Have you secured your ticket for our Accelerator Demo Day yet? If not, you'll miss out on some new things happening in the maker space.That's because half of the startups in our Summer Accelerator program are also part of the Futureworks NYC Incubator in the “Market Validation” cohort. As part of this cohort, startups work to understand their market fit, refine business plans, and explore funding options. Futureworks connects these teams to the Incubator's alumni and mentors, and also creates workshops and summits that are designed for startups in this stage. The following… Read More »


Sometimes chasing the American Dream is the only option you have. The following is a reflection on entrepreneurship, as told by Cris Mercado, CCNY alumnus and founder of  KeyJargon, a free web app that connects college students and professionals with career opportunities. Cris will share more about his journey on a panel of entrepreneurs at our upcoming Accelerator Demo.  I had not choice but to become an entrepreneur, and startup life has served me well. Immigration issues left me with no options to get a decent job, so in 2014 I took the leap and… Read More »


Sometimes your future doesn't pan out as you expected (and sometimes you're surprised to learn that the unexpected is exactly what you needed). The following is a reflection on entrepreneurship, as told by Revital Schechter, a founding member of Gleam (a 2016 Zahn startup). Revital will share more about her journey on a panel of entrepreneurs at our upcoming Accelerator Demo.  The most common stories of successful entrepreneurs often start with anecdotes of their childhood. A story about how they started hustling at the age of 8, setting up well-organized garage sales… Read More »


As you may know, one of our goals at the Zahn Innovation Center is to prove product market fit and de-risk startups for potential investors, but also for the startups themselves. Zahn Center startups are all taught how to bootstrap their companies early on, so that they can focus 100% on their companies and solve real world problems.Examples of our method include one of our startups from last year, Veripad, who is a finalist in MassChallenge. Another one of the companies that has worked at the Zahn Center is StrongArm Technologies. They were … Read More »


Do you know who the #bossgirls are?Theyre the ten high school and college freshmen disrupting the norm this summer at the Zahn Center. As part of the womens entrepreneurship initiative sponsored by Standard Chartered Bank, weve debuted a new program designed to introduce girls to entrepreneurship and innovative technology.This unique program combines our lean startup methodology bootcamp with elements of STEM. While theres a focus on entrepreneurship and developing business acumen, these students are also learning coding and complete prototyping workshops in our Maker Lab.Over… Read More »


As many of you know, one of our core values is supporting women founders through the Standard Chartered Women in Tech Incubator. Besides bringing prominent women speakers to the City College of New York, and establishing a competition built specifically for women-led teams, Standard Chartered helps us open up doors and networking opportunities for our women entrepreneurs. One of the recent examples of this was attending the Anita Borg Institute's 2nd Annual Women's Entrepreneurship and Innovation Summit here in New York.The Anita Borg Institute (ABI) for Women and Technology… Read More »


While the 2017 cohort is deep in our own Summer Accelerator Program, one of last years standouts, VERIPAD, began their journey at MassChallenge, the worlds largest Accelerator.  MassChallenge is branded as the most startup-friendly Accelerator on the planet. According to their website, theyre a non-profit organization on a mission to help startups win without taking equity. Since 2010, theyve accelerated 1,211 startups who have collectively raised $1.8B in funding, $700M in revenue, and created 60,000 jobs in MassChallenges five markets (Boston, Israel, Mexico, Switzerland… Read More »


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Last Updated: 10/08/2020 22:24