Teams from PSYCH/ALA 223 that have seen impressive commercial success.
Team Name: Valiant (Management Group)
Term: – Fall 2017
Elevator Pitch: – Create a clothing brand with a group of Football players
Key Founder(s): – Jared Wangler
URL: – https://valiantmanagementgroup.com
Notable Achievements:
Started a clothing line, initial success led to placement in M-Den, switching from Adidas to Nike resulted in a number of items no longer being produced, so Valiant stepped into that space, with great success. Increasing visibility within Athletics led to significant NIL involvement, which is now the core of Valiant’s amazing business.
Team Name: Go Nanas
Term: – Fall 2016
Elevator Pitch: – Make the world’s best vegan banana bread!
Key Founder(s): – Annie Slabotsky, Morgan Lerner
URL: – https://eatgonanas.com
Notable Achievements:
– Started baking from home, then moved to commercial kitchen
– Pivoted during COVID to offer banana bread mixes
– Expanded distribution to 2,500+ stores nationwide
– Featured in Nordstrom, Wegmans, Whole Foods, and more
– Media coverage from QVC, Forbes, and USA Today
Team Name: Tabs Chocolate
Term: – Fall 2021
Elevator Pitch: – Chocolate with aphrodisiac nutraceuticals
Key Founder(s): – Oliver Brocato & Jake Lewin
URL: – www.tabs.co
Notable Achievements:
– High quality, US-made
– Multiple flavors
– 250,000 customers
– Clever marketing and use of social media
– 223 internship partner
Team Name: Line Leap
Term: – Fall 2017
Elevator Pitch: – Express pass to get through long bar lines, this project was the launch of an existing company in the A2 market.
Key Founder(s): – Megan Sugrue
URL: – www.lineleap.com
Notable Achievements:
– Expanded to hundreds of bars nationwide
– 223 team helped with A2 launch
Team Name: Funkin Seeds
Term: – Winter 2015
Elevator Pitch: – This was a group of guys who loved making pumpkin seeds using their grandmother’s family recipe and noticed that not only did they like them but other people kept asking for them. So in a scenario that would repeat itself frequently during the years of the class they decided to get serious about producing them for sale. They did a great job in the class and kept it going for a year or two afterwards.
Key Founder(s): – Danny Cohen
URL: – Sold for several years, not active
Notable Achievements:
– Partnered with various agencies to prepare for state certification and commercial sales
Team Name: Maté Bros
Term: – Fall 2015
Elevator Pitch: – This was an example of what I called a “train in motion” project, where Michigan and US Olympic gymnast Sam Mikulak, as a student in an early semester of the class asked if he could get a group together to formalize the commercial launch of an energy tea that he had been brewing for years for his athlete friends. He launched his Kickstarter during class and I was one of the first contributors. He went on to have successful sales for a number of years. In the end I think the drink space is just too crowded and competitive.
Key Founder(s): – Sam Mikulak
URL: – Sold for around 10 years, not active
Notable Achievements:
– successful commercial sales, phenomenal marketing
Team Name: AOE Medical
Term: – Fall 2015
Elevator Pitch: – This was a chair that transitioned into a flat adjustable bed format to minimize the amount of effort it took to get patients from wheelchairs onto beds. This would reduce the primary risk of injury for nurses and other hospital staff. They created an interesting prototype and actually formed the company and moved to Florida, and were in business for a couple of years.
Key Founder(s): – Ariana Carley
URL: – https://aoemed.com/ [not active]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atxxuKaZ1fg
Notable Achievements:
– Successful incorporation after class
Team Name: Cheese Team
Term: – Winter 2015
Elevator Pitch: – This was a fun project to watch because it was such a clever niche idea and the student was so nervous about trying it. Eventually I kind of had to dare him to just get a loan and do it. His key insight was that at big music festivals he noticed the food vendors got wristbands that allowed the workers access to the entire event. Most of those workers didn’t care but he figured that he could get his friends to be his workers and they would love to go to the event in their off time when they couldn’t get or afford tickets otherwise. So he purchased some pop up tents and got on the list of food vendors for several big music festivals, and bought a bunch of Panini presses making gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches before that trend broke big. His workers were essentially volunteers, he rented a short term house to put everyone in to sleep overnight, and everyone got to see the festival when they weren’t working. He had no payroll or employee costs because they were volunteers. And one evening he convinced the organizer to let him stay open late when there was a late set being played and he was the only food available. He said it was like getting money, people were just throwing $20 bills across the counter and the workers didn’t even pick them up they were working so fast, and they had to sweep it all up later. It was so great to see the joy of the student when he had so much success from his idea. It didn’t have a lot of long-term promise because as soon as anyone from the festival figured it out they could just change the rules of the vendor wristbands and he’d be done. But talk about making hay while the sun shines!
Key Founder(s): – Chad Walley
Team Name: Stars Academy
Term: – Winter 2021
Elevator Pitch: – This was a very polished project where a “chronologically advanced” student already had a career as a real estate professional but had developed a side gig training realtors to a practical standard as opposed to the artificial standard that the certification exam dealt with. She had had success doing this informally but with this project she created the actual training materials to scale it and it was immediately a huge success and continues to run to this day. She’s definitely one of my more brilliant students.
Key Founder(s): – Trisha Dork
URL: – https://www.mystarsacademy.com/
Notable Achievements:
– Successful and profitable right out the gate, and still doing great things
Team Name: Bada Bing Bagels
Term: – Fall 2018
Elevator Pitch: – These guys were hilarious, they were all East coasters, many of them from Jersey, and they longed for delicious bagel sandwiches made with Taylor ham (or pork roll depending on where you’re from in Jersey). So they ordered a bunch of the ingredients from places on the East Coast and every weekend they would grill up fresh eggs on New York City bagels with a meat of your choice. They had cars and bike runners to deliver and eventually they were selling hundreds every weekend. A lot of people were sad when they stopped after the class ended!! Including me : ).
Key Founder(s): – Alex Burger
Team Name: Jooby Rumi
Term: – Winter 2024
Elevator Pitch: – This is an example of someone who is highly creative with beautiful work and just needed a formal outlet for it. Her efforts to create jewelry and also jewelry kits allowed others to be creative with beautiful curated materials and was almost immediately successful. It was wonderful to see how much joy she took in seeing her idea take off.
Key Founder(s): – Joyce Na
URL: – https://joobyrumi.com/
Notable Achievements:
– Still in business to this day
Team Name: Green Wolverine
Term: – Winter 2017
Elevator Pitch: – Adam was a very strong student who had intense passion for the cannabis business space at a time when it was still illegal in Michigan. Helping him navigate the political climate of the University as he started and built his cannabis business club was extremely entertaining. Check out the entry under troublemakers to hear more about how he followed my advice almost too well. He very quickly became a nationwide club and then became a nationwide 401c3, with chapters on multiple campuses.
Key Founder(s): – Adam Rosenberg
URL: – https://www.greenwolverine.org/
Notable Achievements:
– He continued to work in the cannabis space and develop an impressive network of contacts. He has been highly successful and has come back to class to speak to the students numerous times, always a favorite!