The Cognitive Science program’s Berkeley Accelerator & Startup Incubator in Cognitive Science (BASICS) class, which fuses cognitive science and entrepreneurship, hosted a Pitch Day recently for students to present their business plans. The event marked the culmination of months of brainstorming and hard work in the class.
“The primary goal of the course is to give cognitive science students tools to be entrepreneurs,” said Uri Korisky, one of the course’s instructors. “We guide them through all the steps needed to flesh out their ideas into elaborate, justified business plans, which they pitch to investors as the final activity in this course.”
In addition to guiding students through the process of designing a startup, the course is also creating opportunities for underrepresented groups in entrepreneurship.
“Under 7% of funded tech startups are currently female founded,” said Mike Jacobs, the founder of the accelerator. “We are spearheading important changes to the ecosystem.”
Another defining feature of the class is its use of artificial intelligence, Korisky said. The course incorporates AI tools to aid students in conceptualizing projects, navigating markets and creating financial projections. The AI system used, Springroll AI, is a company founded by Jacobs that offers real-world business management assistance.
“We enourage students to use AI in their work processes,” Korisky said. “We highlight and explain the cognitive advantages that using AI provides, like better decision making, faster information gathering and the overall reduction of cognitive load.
The projects showcased during Pitch Day tackled issues that ranged from accessibility to cultural preservation. Many students sought to address pressing challenges in their personal lives and broader communities through their projects.
Examples of the startups students worked on include Helper Bees by Keira Lam, a platform that connects seniors and caregivers with vetted professionals to provide safe, reliable support for independent living. Another is Krisha Prabakaran’s Kalai, which focuses on teaching and promoting Tamil language and culture.
Students presented their startups to a panel of judges, including Xander Pollock of The House Fund, Max Kostin of UP.Labs, Zening Chen of Berkeley SkyDeck and Aman Verjee of Practical Venture Capital. The panelists offered feedback on scalability, audience reach and integration with existing systems, helping students hone the scope of their projects.
“The advisors that serve as judges on Pitch Day are actual investors,” said Korisky. “They ask the same questions and give the same feedback they would if it was a ‘real’ pitch.”
Next semester, a new BASICS class will help bring those projects from ideation to operation, selecting a team of students from previous semesters to launch their startups. The Spring semester course will emphasize strategy, product development, marketing, sales and investment relations to help students build operational businesses.
“We launched BASICS because we believe that quantitative social science students are the future of technology,” said Jacobs. “I can’t wait to see what the social and economic impacts will be for their communities once their companies launch.”