Jacqueline Hochheiser, Corporate Communications
Mini-Circuits’ founder, Harvey Kaylie, worked with City College of New York to create a program that offered students the ability to jumpstart their own businesses. Since 2010, the Kaylie prize in hardware engineering has perpetuated Kaylie’s and Mini-Circuits’ devotion to changing lives and inspiring today’s youth. A proud alumnus of City College, Kaylie always looked to find new ways of giving back to the community through education, and supporting students and educators of electrical engineering. He believed nurturing the next generation of devoted and talented engineers was vital to the future of the RF/microwave industry, and technology at large.
Serving as a personal philanthropic project, the Kaylie Prize was formed in part to enhance Mini-Circuits’ relationships with universities, and in order to have direct access to young minds in the engineering field. Its purpose is to encourage students to take the extra step and pioneer a project of their own, instead of following a traditional path of falling into step with products that already exist. Without great, innovative minds to lead the charge, there could never be progress. The students that win the prize are then rewarded with a $50,000 grant to advance their project and expand it into the real world as a self-sustaining business.
The Kaylie Prize is one branch (hardware) of four offered by the Venture Competition Program at City College. In this competition, students are actively recruited by faculty at the Zahn Innovation Center, a facility created to give students space and equipment to develop their startup projects. The recruiting process begins in the fall, when students are encouraged to create teams of up to five, and then submit an online application along with a oneminute video and a written project proposal. From the submitted applications, a number of teams are invited for interviews, from which five are chosen to go on and present in front of a panel of hardware experts. In order to prepare candidates for presentations, the Venture Program begins with a three-month intensive workshop meant to give the teams essential skills and guidance to build compelling proposals. The workshop leads students through gathering information with extensive surveys and research, designing a prototype based on the research, and finally, practicing a pitch for the finished product. The first round of presentations weeds out two teams that go on to a final pitch presentation, of which one will come out the winner.
The Zahn Center then offers the Accelerator Program in sequence to the Venture Program. Accelerator was designed by Devin Voorsanger, Interim Executive Director of the Zahn Center, and current mentor for the program. This is where the prototypes become reality. The winning team, and any of the five teams that presented at the first panel are given the opportunity to join. The teams learn the ins and outs of business practice, and how to successfully pitch their product in order to hook investors and customers. These skills are essential if the students wish to run self-sustaining businesses that will earn them an income. Throughout the workshop, the teams have opportunities to meet with investors and IT lawyers to see how their product measures up to the market. The formula behind the workshop is referred as “Logic Gateways.” This formula is based on the concept that customers and investors have emotional and logical responses to a product pitch. It is imperative for students to understand how to present evidence in a way that will justify investors’ and customers’ decisions to invest in or buy the product in question. There are eight categories listed under the Logic Gateways criteria, and each plays a specific role in capturing an investor or buyer’s commitment. These steps include: a main goal, personal motivation, validation, value proposition, differentiation, profit & loss, market, and team.
Devin Voorsanger worked with FitKO, the winning team, throughout their startup journey, and expressed his excitement in their successful fulfillment of the Logic Gateways process in order to win the competition. He said that there was no shortage of enthusiasm and determination from the group as they continued into the Accelerator Program. This is where their talents thrived as they fought their way into the fitness market.
“These guys are exactly what I look for in this program,” Said Voorsanger in an interview by phone. “The program itself can’t do well without excellent students that will always figure out a way to succeed.”
FitKO addresses the problem that over 250 million people in the United States are not getting the suggested weekly 75 – 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise. Through FitKO’s research, the team found that the reasons for this statistic were: lack of time, lack of motivation, and inexperience. In order to solve the problem, FitKO knew they would have to find a way to make fitness engaging, motivating, easy to access. A few of the team members knew from experience that martial arts is a great way to burn a high number of calories in a short amount of time, which made it a viable option for their prototype. According to their research, not only are martial arts effective in burning calories, but also engaging and enjoyable.
The solution to these problems manifested itself as an interactive boxing bag wrap compatible with any boxing bag, otherwise known as “The Boxing Coach.” The Boxing Coach goes around a boxing bag like a cover and guides the user through exercises with light-up targets. The device is paired with an app that can be used to start up an exercise and provide a performance summary at the end of a workout. FitKO was happy to announce that, with their product, they would be able to “guide people on their journey from the couch to the coach.”
Another concern was the stigma of cost for martial arts classes, and a major goal of the product was to reduce cost and make the sport more accessible. The Boxing Coach will be sold to gyms and used in conjunction with personal trainers. FitKO proposed that The Boxing Coach would earn revenue through three main market segments: fitness trainers, gyms, and the 70 million Americans in need of more exercise. These segments are valued at $35 million, $300 million, and $5 billion, respectively.
Thinking through how their product would earn revenue and sustain itself addresses the “profit & loss” segment of the logic gateways process. Mini-Circuits’ own Applications Manager, Jeremy Cortez, is a previous Kaylie Prize winner from 2011. When asked what the most memorable question posed to him on the presentation panel was, he said Harvey Kaylie’s question about cost-effective solutions stayed with him, and still influences his work within MiniCircuits. Jeremy’s example is just one instance of how the Kaylie Prize makes lasting impressions on students.
As with every prize winner, Mini-Circuits wishes FitKO the best of luck in their endeavors. After locking in their first five customers this month, it seems they are well on their way making their revolutionary martial arts coaching device into a reality, and a successful business venture.
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