New Initiative Offers Entrepreneurship to Everybody

“Entrepreneurial skills are just the skills needed to take an idea and make it a reality,” said Johnathan Cromwell, associate professor of entrepreneurship and faculty director of the Entrepreneurship and Innovation (E&I) Initiative.  “This is ultimately an initiative that helps our students have the kind of impact they envision when coming to the University of San Francisco.”

The enterprise is a business incubator where students from all majors are welcome, Cromwell said. “You can come in with your own project or you can just have the desire to learn how to progress from idea to product and join an existing project.”

He described the incubator as helping students solve problems, create businesses, and develop products that enhance the lives of others. Once students have an idea or have identified a problem to solve, they can join the incubator and participate in pitch competitions, receive mentoring from professional entrepreneurs, and apply for microgrants made possible by donations from alumni and friends of USF. To join, students can either email Cromwell directly and describe what they’d like to work on, or they can request microgrants for already-conceived ideas.

Roshan Paul ’24, an MS in digital health informatics student, used the E&I Initiative to create Ausa Health, a platform that enables people to check their vital signs — blood pressure, blood glucose, heart rate, oxygen levels — from their homes and share the results with their doctors during or after teleconsultations. Paul used a microgrant from E&I to build a prototype of the device, which paved the way to $100,000 in angel funding.

“The microgrant helped me build a proof of concept for my medical device,” Paul said. “Beyond product development, it instilled confidence in me to pursue this path.”

Last spring, environmental studies major Owen Sordillo ’24 and entrepreneurship and innovation major Andrew Saah ’25 founded Silvaye, a startup that uses NASA technology, satellite data, and ground-based sensors to assess wildfire risk. The project earned a $100,00 grant from a NASA challenge, and the two have been working since then to build Silvaye into a company.

Sordillo said that he and Saah learned in the E&I incubator how to differentiate Silvaye from the other projects in NASA’s Wildfire Climate Tech Challenge. “USF’s E&I programs and classes ensured that our original plans had feedback from industry professionals and potential customers,” Sordillo said. 

Access to that feedback and those microgrants will soon be available to all students who opt in to the project , said Shawn P. Calhoun, university library dean and E&I Initiative co-lead. “Our mission is to reach every USF student,” Calhoun said. “Our place in the Bay Area entrepreneurial ecosystem is ideal. While we are at the heart of Silicon Valley and the epicenter of global entrepreneurship, USF is the only university in San Francisco with an E&I initiative.”