Startup Spotlight #209: Founder's Cupid

Founder's Cupid is a growing, in-person community for 350+ student entrepreneurs between Michigan and Stanford’s campuses to support the top student founders.

Bobby Housel and Barry Sabin are students at the University of Michigan pursuing dual degrees through the Ross School of Business and School of Information. They pride themselves on building communities that move the needle for the brightest builders at colleges nationwide through Founder’s Cupid.

Housel: I love to create things, tell stories, and go on life-changing adventures. I think we learn the most about ourselves when we are pushed far outside our comfort zones. I fundamentally believe the world is way more willing to help than we think, and if we just put ourselves out there more often, we’d be amazed by what we can accomplish. Whether I’m writing, sending cold emails, building communities that matter, striving to change the world through startups, or climbing a mountain, I’m always optimizing for living in the present.

Sabin: I am from Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, and have been a lifelong Wolverine football fan, which made my college decision relatively easy. My passion for entrepreneurship sparked in high school when I built a phone accessory product for two years to help my grandfather carry his medicine on the go. Many other small hustles, such as a landscaping business and a music video production company, have shaped my love for working with early-stage startups. I also completed my first marathon this past spring, I DJ on the side (including an opening performance for Travis Scott’s DJ), and I love to watch the Bachelor on ABC.

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Startup Spotlight: Founder’s Cupid

Problem: Universities cater to the mean entrepreneur and fail to support the top 10-15% of founders, nor do they bridge the gap to alumni and investors interested in supporting the next generation of top builders. The top 10-15% of college founders feel unsupported and lack a sense of belonging on their college campuses.

Market: 17.9 million students enroll in postsecondary universities in the United States every year, and 60% of teenagers (enrolled in Junior Achievement) indicated they either had or were planning on starting their own business when surveyed in 2022. Every year more students enroll in university, and a higher percentage of those students build world-changing businesses every year.

Solution: We’ve created an in-person community for 350+ student entrepreneurs between Michigan and Stanford’s campuses to support the top student founders and create a sense of belonging for them on their campuses. Additionally, we connect the most promising startups from this community with alumni, angel investors, and VCs through a syndicate and a media outlet to help them find the team, capital, and partnership they need to become successful. 

Team: Bobby leads in-person community events and brand partnerships, while Barry focuses on building an online platform to host a virtual community, media publications, and intern matching. We have also been lucky to tack on two great interns for the summer, Zach Post and Gus Hawk who will be helping us with planning a big end of summer event and growing our social media.

Recent Success:

Housel and Sabin: We’ve been incredibly successful at introducing the top founders at Michigan and Stanford to one another. Before we launched our company, these top founders were isolated, siloed, and feeling more alone than ever. Through an in-person community of doers, life-changing retreats, syndicate fundraising, and strategic media exposure, we have become the #1 advocate for the success of these top young founders.

Recent Struggle:

Housel and Sabin: The reason this community has been so successful is due to our endless pursuit to meet entrepreneurs in every corner of a college’s campus. As we hope to continue scaling this community with the top 15% of student founders across the country, seeking out these individuals at new schools has proven to be an uphill battle. Our community’s feature on the My Frist Million Podcast tremendously boosted our footprint at other schools, such as Stanford, but it will be essential to set out a sustainable growth plan. Moving forward, we plan to galvanize the most talented founders through extravagant in-person events and continue to support them via our own media platform and syndicate fundraising.

Founder Advice:

Housel and Sabin: Make no small plans, there are no rules, and the world is way more willing to help than everyone tells you. Almost every time we strive to be outlandish and accomplish unbelievably unlikely things, we have been rewarded for it. To truly change the world, you have to dream incredibly big. Once you have your dreams set, you need to remember that there are no rules and that you need to ask for and leverage the help of others to achieve your goals.

Three Cool Founders You Should Know About:

Housel and Sabin: Here are three founders you should check out next!

• Noah Jacobs and Noah Cox, Co-Founders of Ultima Insights

• Blake Mischley and Jonah Liss, Co-Founders of Meet Your Class

• Jake Lewin, Co-Founder of Tabs Chocolate and Founder of Area

Previous Startup Spotlights:

• Startup Spotlight #208: Rivet - Rivet is a platform that utilizes artificial intelligence to generate actions and recommendations that make fan community management and revenue generation easy for artists and creators.

• Startup Spotlight #207: Diddo - Diddo is building a next-gen computer vision to empower a paradigm shift and open up new revenue streams for social commerce.

• Startup Spotlight #206: reUser - reUser provides software to help dining services and their clients, such as universities, hospitals, and corporate campuses reUse takeout packaging.

• Startup Spotlight #205: Swapt - Swapt enables businesses to capture data and deliver personalized consumer experiences in the physical world powered by intelligent QR codes and NFC technology.

• Startup Spotlight #204: Yofi - Yofi is a platform that enables you to better understand your customers, their intentions, and the best way to interact with them.

• Startup Spotlight #203: Simplify - Simplify helps you discover and autofill job and internship applications on millions of sites in one click.

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