Entrepreneurs to Watch During National Entrepreneurship Month

November 1, 2021

During November we have a lot to celebrate! Not only is this month dedicated to honoring Native American Heritage and Aviation History, but Capitol Technology University is also celebrating National Entrepreneurship Month. Entrepreneurship, defined as the ability to create a profitable business from an original idea, is near and dear to Capitol Tech. The university fosters the entrepreneurial spirit by teaching students the skills necessary to become industry leaders in their respective field and provides business courses where students can learn the necessary practices to succeed in today’s highly competitive and fast-paced technology industry.

In honor of National Entrepreneurship Month, we’re focusing on a few of the up-and-coming tech entrepreneurs who have created new and innovative companies and products in recent years.

Andrea Sommer

Andrea Sommer is the founder and Business Lead at UvvaLabs, a tech company that uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to “help companies make decisions that create more equitable and accessible workplaces,” according to the company’s website.”2

After years working at Microsoft in multiple countries and serving as the Director of Strategic Initiatives Europe at Avanade, Sommer founded Hiver. A “majority women technology company,” Hiver provides companies the ability to organize and store contact names from events used by marketing experts to measure engagement.1 After founding this company, Sommer went on to create UvvaLabs with her childhood friend Dr. Laura Mangels.1

UvvaLabs gathers multiple points of data to create a full picture of the needs of the company using the software, then the AI-powered algorithm examines the imported data to create dashboard with visual representations of crucial information such as organizational health.2

“We are really excited to be able to bring powerful, AI-fuelled technology to help organizations with their decision-making processes by predicting areas of risk and helping them mitigate against them – thus creating more diverse workforces,” said Sommer in an interview with Carlyn Runnels of ideamensch. “And of course the idea of building a progressive, female-led technology company with a dynamic approach is also really exciting.”3

Arun Saigal

A member of Forbes’ 30 Under 30 for Consumer Technology list, Arun Saigal founded Thunkable in 2015, a platform designed to make app building so simple and easy that no coding is necessary.4 Saigal met the co-founder of Thunkable, WeiHua Li, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where the pair developed the groundwork for the software.5

“When the app building market started to develop, we made a bet that people would want to design their own mobile experiences, but only a small number of people would have the technical training to code apps,” said Saigal. “So we asked ourselves, how can we enable everyone — including people who don’t know how to code — to build mobile apps? From there, Thunkable was born.”6

Thunkable’s ease of use is attributed to the “the simple drag-and-drop design canvas and powerful logic blocks” to create a completely custom Andriod, iOS, or Web app without any coding.7

After graduating from MIT and before creating Thunkable, Saigal worked for Quizlet as the lead Android developer. Saigal holds a Bachelor’s degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and a Master’s degree in these same fields with a concentration in Artificial Intelligence.5

After just two years of operation Thunkable had 4.3 million users who have created over 13 million apps have been created.5

“When a project, a job, a stressful life situation etc. comes to an end, discuss how it went and why. What was good? What could have gone better?,” said Saigal when asked for entrepreneurial advice. “History repeats itself — let’s hope the mistakes don’t.”6

Dennis Wohlfarth

Dennis Wohlfarth is a 27 year-old, German, Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at the University of Stuttgart who creating Accointing, a software that assists users in reporting revenue from unusual sources such as cryptocurrency.

“After heavily focusing on trading with different wallets and exchanges and needing to report my taxes, I started to do some digging about the different tools available that helped people report taxes,” said Wohlfarth in an interview with Stefan Junge. “I talked with my friends that were also trading crypto (now co-founders) about my situation. They agreed on the painful process it was to do taxes at that time for crypto and decided to take part on what it is now Accointing.”8

The service currently supports over 300 wallets and exchanges and allows users to use templates to aggregate and manage a plethora of information. The website, available on computers or phones, shows real-time fluctuations in the value of users cryptocurrency’s and also offers a network of accountants specializing in crypto as an added benefit for high-volume traders.

Capitol Technology University offers degree programs at the undergraduate and graduate level in multiple in-demand industries like computer science, engineering, and unmanned and autonomous vehicles, which when combined with the university’s business-focus allow for students’ entrepreneurial spirit to grow. For more information visit our bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral program pages or contact Capitol Tech’s Admissions department by emailing admissions@captechu.edu.

References

  1. Schulzke, M. (2021, February 16). 50 Tech Entrepreneurs To Watch In 2021. Retrieved from https://ideamensch.com/tech-entrepreneurs/.
  2. UvvaLabs. (2020). UvvaLabs. Retrieved from https://www.uvvalabs.com/.
  3. Runnels, C. (2020, June 25). Andrea Sommer. Retrieved from https://ideamensch.com/andrea-sommer/.
  4. Forbes. (2017, November 14). 2018 30 Under 30: Consumer Technology. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/pictures/59fb86454bbe6f37dda1a37c/weihua-li-28-l-arun-saiga/?sh=e5e07171d8e8.
  5. MITCNC. (2021). Arun Saigal. Retrieved from https://www.mitcnc.org/arunsaigal/.
  6. Runnels, C. (2020, June 9). Arun Saigal. Retrieved from https://ideamensch.com/arun-saigal/.
  7. Thunkable. (2021). Create Your Own Native Apps With No-Code. Retrieved from https://thunkable.com/?utm_term=thunkable&utm_campaign=Brand+(S)&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2723599162&hsa_cam=15000671177&hsa_grp=127293870903&hsa_ad=554377436828&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=aud-1088592525352:kwd-360955260416&hsa_kw=thunkable&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=Cj0KCQiAkNiMBhCxARIsAIDDKNVYP0lMZYeiQ3-DGITEOYL4Sh5TlnRM4jKUt0wTyo3PzM5vVn8gIMUaAqg0EALw_wcB#/.
  8. Junge, St. (2020, February 3). Dennis Wohlfarth. Retrieved from https://ideamensch.com/dennis-wohlfarth/.