A Launch Like No Other

When a small group of Florida Atlantic University leaders had an idea to help budding student entrepreneurs take their ideas to the next level, they had no clue that they were creating a launch pad for a business technology incubator whose velocity of evolution would skyrocket. In 2014, With help from Dennis Crudele, retired CFO who served as interim president in 2013, and Anthony Barbar, who has served as the chair of the board of trustees since 2008, FAU opened the doors to the newly created Tech Runway. The the main goal was to provide a mechanism for winners of the university’s long-running business competition to take their innovations to the next level.

In half a decade, the business incubator, housed inside a former hurricane glass factory, become a major player in South Florida’s startup scene. It helped launch some of the area’s most successful startups, several of which catapulted to near instant success and are already valued in the double- digit millions.

Consider this, in just five years, Tech Runway has graduated 93 companies which, collectively:

• created 587 jobs
• raised more than $95 million in capital
• generated $109 million in revenue
• provided 200 student internships
• awarded 80 patents and trademarks

“Every year the level of entrepreneurial talent represented, and the sophistication of the business concepts submitted jumps several levels,” said Rhys L. Williams, managing director, Tech Runway. Here’s a glance at a few of Tech Runway companies’ success stories.

Lock It Plates,

Venture Class 6

Lockable, Stackable To-Go Plates

Christopher Mundy literally stumbled upon the idea for Lock It Plates when a slip resulted in his plate of leftovers splattered all over the floor of his self-described dead-end job. Mundy, 30, and his partners, Johny Delvar and Jerry Desamours, both 28, created a convenient and secure way to transport food.

The invention — lockable, stackable plastic plates with a built-in cup attachment to carry a plate and drink in one hand — won a Broward business plan competition before Desamours, then an FAU civil engineering student, entered Lock It Plates in the Tech Runway competition.

Since its official launch in May, Mundy said Lock It Plates has sold more than 11,000 units and will soon be available on Amazon and Walmart.com. Chartwells Higher Education Dining Services purchased more than 9,000 units to test on FAU campuses.

Estimates for 2019 revenue will be about $60,000, and projects more than twice for 2020. “Going in, we had an idea but we didn’t think it would grow as fast as it did,” Mundy said.

Honorlock,

Venture Class 2

Revolutionizing Academic Integrity

In 2014, when Elena Soboleva moved here from her native Kyrgyzstan to get her master’s in business, she said couldn’t believe how many students she saw openly cheating on exams.

“While taking tests, they would open a new window and Google the questions,” said Soboleva, now 30.

So she partnered with Adam Roth, 31, to develop a basic prototype pairing key words and test questions found on the internet with data entered in an Excel spreadsheet, which would serve as a flag to a professor. From there, they enlisted the help of a couple of engineers to develop the prototype into a more sophisticated program and convinced an FAUprofessor to try it on her class. The professor provided exam questions to Soboleva and Roth, who created and posted a fake test online. The results were staggering.

“We found that 42 percent of the class was accessing our fake test,” Soboleva said. The idea won the pair a coveted spot in Tech Runway, where Honorlock officially opened its door with its patented technology.

Today, Honorlock employs 40 people who work in its 7,200 square-foot Boca Raton office. Soboleva said Honorlock expects to end 2019 with about $2.5 million in sales, with that figure doubling or tripling in 2020.

“We want to sell it at some point,” she said. “We already got an offer for $20 million, but that’s way too low for what we’re aiming for eventually. We expect it to be worth at least $50 million in three years or so.”

Shipmonk,

Venture Class 1

21st Century E-commerce

Jan Bednar’s side hustle during college — buying American clothing, video games and American Hockey League merchandise and selling it for a slight markup during visits home to the Czech Republic — allowed him to pay the bills while living in South Florida, a world away from his family.

After winning a couple of business competitions for his “side hustle,” including the prestigious Florida Venture Forum in 2014, and getting accepted into Tech Runway’s inaugural class that same year, a writeup about Bednar in the local news media caught the attention of a Fort Lauderdale company who called to ask if Bednar could store the inventory of a developing product.

The request redirected Bednar’s plans and set him on the path to becoming an e-commerce fulfillment center phenomenon, servicing small to medium-sized businesses, a market often overlooked in a world with Amazon.

“We don’t compete with Amazon because Amazon has millions of products and our customers are a completely different part of e-commerce in that they sell their merchandise directly on their website and don’t want to sell on Amazon because Amazon has limited brand control and Amazon has to show 10 other brands next yours,” Bednar said. “They’d get lost on Amazon.”

Today, Shipmonk has 450 employees, warehouses in Los Angeles, Fort Lauderdale and Pennsylvania, and a team of engineers in the Czech Republic. “We’re growing like crazy,” said Bednar, 28. “We did $30 million in revenue last year, will do $70 million this year and $120 million next year. The space is just really exciting.”