Outside the Box: Lehigh Ventures Lab Helping Ideas Take Flight

At 8 years old, Olivia Abrams ’21 was diagnosed with Lyme disease, an illness that she said had manifested in arthritis in her knees as a young child. She remembers missing classes in first grade because she had found it too painful to walk.

Ever since, she and her family have been more mindful of ticks, which carry the disease, than perhaps most people. And as a family that always owned large dogs, they found keeping ticks out of their house was no easy task.

Abrams and her father wondered if the towels they were using to clean up dog drool could also be helpful to remove burrs, leaves and insects, including ticks, from their dogs. While Abrams was still a student at Lehigh in 2018, she and her father began working with a tick scientist they knew to develop a tick-removing glove that can be used on both people and pets.

TiCK MiTT officially launched in March 2023 and has since been featured nationally on “Good Morning America” and “The View.”

“Our product fits in a lot of different categories,” Abrams says. “Obviously a huge portion of it is pets, but it's also designed for gardeners, hunters, hikers, campers, golfers, people who are spending a lot of time outdoors where they may encounter ticks. … It's a very diverse product because a lot of people need tick prevention. The population of ticks is only increasing, and the amount of cases of Lyme disease and other tick-related diseases is also only increasing.”

Abrams is getting an assist from Lehigh Ventures Lab, a new Lehigh startup accelerator that supports founders who are working full-time to launch and grow early stage ventures.

Lehigh Ventures Lab, housed in the Business Innovation Building, provides entrepreneurs and startup companies with direct mentorship; content; access to students who could potentially become future interns, employees or even co-founders; and office space. A joint partnership between the College of Business and the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation, Lehigh Ventures Lab officially launched in 2023.

Lehigh Ventures Lab has 11 active ventures, including TiCK MiTT; fuse, an app with a different approach to dating; and Dot Inc., a financial solution for immigrant students in Africa. Other projects range from a ready-to-drink, canned cocktail brand to a redesigned pulse oximeter that reduces the current melanin bias. Three ventures—With Meraki Co. (urinary and vaginal probiotics), OcuTrap (smart animal traps) and Foli-Q (hair care analysis and products)—have graduated from the program.

“Lehigh has taken a bold new step with Lehigh Ventures Lab, making it clear that we are here to help real companies launch and grow, building upon the decades of work around entrepreneurship education,” Chris Kauzmann ’13 ’14G, interim director of the Lehigh Ventures Lab, says. “Our aim is to propel these ventures forward so they are ready for what's next in their growth beyond Lehigh, whether that be their next capital raise, an industry-specific accelerator, a sustainable customer-driven growth path or other venture-specific pathways.”

Abrams says Lehigh Ventures Lab has proven to be a great asset since launching TiCK MiTT, as she focuses on growing its market.

“Having other entrepreneurs who understand what you're going through is really helpful,” Abrams says. “They say that entrepreneurship is a really lonely road, and it's definitely true, especially if you're working out of your own apartment or your parents’ house.”

Abrams developed the idea for TiCK MiTT outside of Lehigh, during her sophomore year. It was that year, however, when she met Kauzmann while taking Entrepreneurship 101. She stayed in touch with him throughout Lehigh as an entrepreneurship minor and after graduation, when he connected her with Lehigh programs that aided her in her venture.

Now as part of Lehigh Ventures Lab, TiCK MiTT was taken on as a case study in the Fall 2023 semester by Lehigh students in a social media and digital marketing course. The students helped with developing marketing strategies online.

This year, Abrams will host an intern at TiCK MiTT via the Lehigh@NasdaqCenter's SiliconValley Innovation Internship, which she had taken part in during her time at Lehigh, and work with an engineering Capstone program and one of Abrams’ former professors, Joshua Ehrig, professor of practice in the Department of Management.

As a student at Lehigh, Abrams had experimented with prototypes for TiCK MiTT on and off for nearly five years. She created much of the foundation for the product in a class with Ehrig, including a six-month business plan, the current logo for TiCK MiTT and brand colors.

FUSE

As they prepared to graduate from Lehigh two years ago, Amanda Karr ’22 and Elodie Clowes ’22 commiserated about their past relationship troubles—their significant others and their friends just had not gotten along. The rift had put a strain on both their romantic relationships and their friendships. They thought, why not date people who your friends have approved of?

Though there are a number of mobile dating applications on the market today, none solved their issue. That’s when the idea for fuse was born.

Similar to other dating apps, fuse, when it hits the market, will have a “freemium” subscription model, meaning it will be free to use and match with other singles, while users paying for a subscription will receive additional features, such as more matches and interactions. But with fuse, the users’ friends, whether single or in a relationship, will be on the app and able to give feedback on matches.

Clowes and Karr, whose parents, David Karr ’90 and Kirsten (Kleine) Karr ’90, are Lehigh graduates and had always stressed the importance of networking through the university, had been wondering how to get Lehigh involved. Then, Karr saw a post on LinkedIn about Lehigh Ventures Lab. Within two hours, they applied, and eventually partnered with the venture support program for startups.

During the Spring 2024 semester, fuse is a case study for Dierdre Malacrea’s digital marketing class and Dale Falcinelli’s MBA consulting course. Karr says she and Clowes will receive many different reports and analyses on their business and marketing plans that they can utilize as they launch. Students in the digital marketing class will formulate a social media marketing strategy tailored to an assigned persona, Clowes says. In the consulting course, five student teams have each been tasked with presenting specific deliverables: customer experience, pricing models, business strategies, market expansion plans and financial projections.

They also have found value in working with others in Lehigh Ventures Lab.

“It's been really great to connect with other Lehigh students who are doing the same thing,” Karr says. “We've established some pretty close bonds with some other students or recent grads who are in the program, and that's been really helpful for Elodie and I because none of our friends work in the same space.”

Another perk is having Kauzmann as a sounding board.

“Sometimes it's really hard,” Karr says. “You're juggling three different CEO’s opinions of what you need to be doing. They’re all very valued and all so smart, and here we are, first-time founders not knowing what we're doing, and there are three different ways to answer the problem. But Chris always has a very good, level head of how to then take the advice and move forward with all of it.”

DOT TECH INC.

Born in Nigeria, Abdulrasaq (Dulra) Amolegbe ’26 visited Kenya before attending the African Leadership Academy in Johannesburg, South Africa, for high school. It was then he realized how difficult it was for international students and immigrants to access electronic banking on a continent that includes 54 different countries and 42 different currencies.

While in high school, Amolegbe applied to open a bank account, bringing all the necessary documents. Now, as a sophomore at Lehigh, over two years later, he says he has yet to hear back about his account because of his foreign status in South Africa at the time.

“For immigrant students specifically that are coming to a new country for the first time, with no immediate relative or immediate support system to help them figure out all these bits and pieces, this can be really difficult,” Amolegbe says. “And that was me when I was schooling in South Africa.”

In speaking with other students at his international high school, he knew he wasn’t the only one facing issues. He says he also realized the prevalence of cash, estimating 90% of transactions across Africa are processed with cash. Amolegbe wanted to help students like himself, so he began working on Dot Tech Inc., a cash-to-cashless platform for immigrant students within Africa, during his senior year.

Amolegbe says it gives students a cashless experience without visiting a bank. Through Dot, students will be able to enter over 1,500 stores, give the cashier cash and their account will be immediately funded on a virtual card that can be used for peer-to-peer transactions. Students can also then send and receive money as well as manage their personal finances. Amolegbe compares it to Venmo but with the ability to fund your account with cash.

In addition to being accepted into accelerator programs, including the Nasdaq Milestone Makers program, which featured Amolegbe’s photo on Nasdaq MarketSite in Times Square, he says Dot has received significant angel investments and credits from Microsoft. He also was assisted by the Baker Institute for Entrepreneurship, Creativity and Innovation, winning the Joan F. & John M. Thalheimer ’55 EUREKA! Award for Student Achievement in venture creation and the Thalheimer Grand Prize of $5,000.