Yaphet Reyes-Powell ’27 (left) demonstrates his prototype Tellerlink to Bill Porta ’86 during the 2026 TIA Entrepreneur Showcase in April.
Editor’s note: This article is the first of two that will highlight how grant funding impacted student ventures in the TIA Incubator in the 2025–2026 academic year.
From the spark of a late-night dorm room brainstorm to tangible physical prototypes and market-ready products, TIA Incubator participants proved that entrepreneurship isn’t just an abstract idea—it is a hands-on pursuit brought to life outside the classroom. During the 2025–2026 academic year, the TIA Incubator served as a launchpad for student creativity, turning ambitious concepts into viable business ventures.
To give those ventures a jumpstart, the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation provided critical financial backing, awarding a total of 18 grants to 17 ventures in the 2025–2026 academic year alone. These grants allowed founders to cross the bridge from theory to practice, testing formulations, coding platforms, and purchasing professional-grade equipment. For alumni watching from afar, it is a testament to Colgate’s enduring legacy of innovation; for prospective students, it is an open invitation to bring your boldest ideas to Hamilton and secure the support needed to watch them grow.
Capturing Coastal Living
Among those scaling their passions into professional realities is Graham Stearns ’26, founder of Up Island Photos. Based on Martha’s Vineyard, Mass., Stearns’ independent photography and videography venture captures the unique energy of coastal living, marine life, and the outdoors, highlighting the intersection of wild places and human presence.
A $2,000 Fast Track Build & Pilot Award allowed Stearns to invest in a game-changing piece of gear. “I used it to purchase a Sony A7IV full-frame mirrorless camera body,” Stearns said, “and it has already become a central piece of equipment.
“The addition of a second body has allowed me to keep multiple lenses with different focal lengths attached to my cameras, making me more dynamic and prepared as a photographer,” Stearns added. The upgraded hardware immediately unlocked new commercial avenues. “The improved image quality, low-light performance, and autofocus system have already allowed me to take on several paid portrait and event shoots with confidence, producing work that meets the standards clients expect from a professional photographer,” he said, noting that the milestone “has made me more apt to the idea of pursuing this venture full-time.”
Beyond the equipment, Stearns emphasized that the grant validated his vision. “The process of applying for and receiving this funding pushed me to articulate my business model, target market, and growth strategy in concrete terms, and it has shaped how I approach every decision for the venture,” he said.
Engineering Financial Tech
While Stearns captured the physical world through a lens, Yaphet Reyes-Powell ’27 looked to revolutionize banking hardware with Tellerlink. The venture utilizes dual large language model (LLM) security to dramatically reduce operational costs for Automated Interactive Teller Machines (ITMs).
The TIA grant allowed Reyes-Powell to pivot toward physical manufacturing. “Prior to receiving this funding, hardware development was not part of our near-term roadmap,” Reyes-Powell explained. “However, following a series of customer discovery sessions, it became clear that a tangible, working prototype would be essential to validate our solution and communicate its value to possible stakeholders.”
He spent roughly $400 to procure components, including a Raspberry Pi 5 computing unit, a capacitive touchscreen display, DC and servo motors, structural aluminum extrusion rails, a barcode scanner, and a webcam.
The hands-on process expanded the team’s capabilities exponentially. “Through the hands-on process of sourcing components and beginning prototype assembly, we have had rapidly developed new competencies in hardware engineering, and physical product design, which were areas that were entirely new to us at the start of this project,” Reyes-Powell said. “The prototype being developed [for the TIA Entrepreneur Showcase] with this funding represents not just a technical milestone, but a signal to the market that we are building something real, differentiated, and ready for commercial validation.”
Connecting Through Faith and Media
For Ruhan Yi ’29, the youngest founder in this first highlighted block, innovation took a digital form. Yi launched Glorlink, a digital platform tailored to support Christian students pursuing diverse career paths. With his grant, Yi focused on technical building blocks and community outreach.
The funding was split evenly between two digital subscriptions: ClaudeCode for development and Riverside.fm for media production. “ClaudeCode was used extensively in the technical development process to build the Glorlink landing page and initial prototype, enabling rapid iteration, structuring of the platform, and translation of product ideas into a functional digital experience,” Yi said.
Meanwhile, Riverside.fm enabled high-quality multimedia storytelling. “Riverside.fm was used to record and produce high-quality interviews with Christian professionals and students,” Yi explained. “These conversations serve as foundational content for Glorlink’s ‘Honest Path Stories,’ which are central to the platform’s mission of providing real, faith-informed guidance.” Yi learned that building a niche community requires an equal blend of technical agility and authentic storytelling, transforming Glorlink “from an idea into a visible and interactive prototype.”
Solving Global Water Scarcity
One student-founder focused her efforts on global social impact. Agnes Ndanu ’28 founded MajiSafi Solutions with a vital mission: ending water scarcity by drilling sustainable boreholes into deep aquifers, ensuring reliable, clean water for communities facing challenges.
Ndanu utilized a TIA grant to establish both scientific and digital foundations. “A portion of the funding was used to conduct a geological and hydrological survey in the target community,” Ndanu said. “This survey was essential for understanding the local environmental conditions and confirming the feasibility of our planned water intervention.”
Working alongside a professional surveyor, the team secured critical data on groundwater and soil composition. The rest of the funding went toward hiring a web developer to build MajiSafi’s digital presence. “The website now serves as a central platform for presenting our work, explaining the problem of water scarcity in rural communities, and showcasing the progress of our initiative,” Ndanu noted, adding that the experience gave her invaluable practice in resource management and professional coordination.
Redefining Music Discovery
In the realm of digital consumer tech, Sophia Martin ’27 developed Sound Sync, a music discovery platform designed to let users explore new genres and easily share tracks within their communities.
Martin used her grant funding to secure an Apple Developer Program membership—crucial for integrating Apple Music directly into the web application—and to fund a Replit subscription alongside AI usage credits. “Replit’s tools allowed me to rapidly prototype features, debug issues, and iterate on the user experience in real time,” Martin shared. “The AI agent was particularly valuable in accelerating development, enabling me to focus more deeply on product decisions, usability, and feature refinement rather than getting blocked by technical overhead.”
Deploying the app consistently allowed Martin to interview users and watch their behaviors firsthand, gaining critical “user-centered learnings, including how people discover music, where friction occurs in the experience, and which features provide the most value.”
Formulating Wellness
Addressing wellness and consumer goods, Alice Walton ’26 targeted the functional beverage market with FOMO. Her venture aimed to craft functional drinks utilizing key ingredients, such as green tea extract, lion’s mane, and ashwagandha, to fight brain fog and avoid the common midday energy slump.
Walton used her TIA funding to source raw ingredients and flavor components like lemon, elderflower, and apple juice concentrate. “Having these ingredients made it possible for me to start making early versions of the drink and testing different combinations to see what worked best in terms of both taste and the functional benefits of the ingredients,” Walton said.
Her iterative process involved constant adjustments to sweetness and acidity alongside medical safety consultations. “I also spoke with professionals, including doctors and naturopaths, to better understand appropriate ingredient proportions so that the ingredients could be used safely and still provide the intended benefits ... while also making sure there would not be any negative interaction effects between the ingredients,” she said. Walton even utilized a SodaStream to test carbonated variations, discovering through peer feedback that they overwhelmingly preferred the uncarbonated iteration.
A Launchpad for Future Innovators
Whether formulating beverages, engineering teller machines, or surveying deep aquifers, the student-founders in the TIA Incubator represent the vibrant future of business. For prospective students with an idea scribbled in a notebook, the Office of Entrepreneurship and Innovation provides the funding, tools, and mentorship to make execution possible. For the alumni network supporting these initiatives, the results of the 2025–2026 academic year show that the investment in Colgate’s student minds continues to yield real-world dividends.