Cal State Long Beach’s Demo Day brings CSU startups, investors together
Graduating from college represents both an end and a beginning — with the start of careers, sometimes in far off places, a significant part of the latter.
And while embarking on a career is exciting, seeing your college pals scatter can be tough. That, said Cal Poly Pomona student Maz Reeder, can cause lost friendships, diminished social connections and a sense of loneliness.
And that’s where Social Spark comes in.
Social Spark, for which Reeder is an intern, is a startup hailing from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo that has created a digital platform on which college students can meet others with similar interests and plan hangouts.
Social Spark was one of around 40 other startup companies whose founders participated in the second annual CSU Demo Day at Cal State Long Beach on Friday, Nov. 3. The event, organized by CSULB and private capital firm Sunstone Mangement, featured startups from entrepreneurial programs at each of the 23 Cal State University campuses. The nascent entrepreneurs — representing myriad industries, from biomedical research to social platforms — pitched their ideas to various investors in hopes of getting funding to further their businesses.
The CSU Demo Day entrepreneurial teams included faculty, staffers, students and alumni from throughout the CSU system.
“This is an event where business creators find an audience and get in front of investors,” said Wade Martin, director of the Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship within CSULB’s department of economics. “Some entrepreneurs find it very challenging finding people to invest. It can get very daunting.”
This year’s Demo Day, Martin said, featured more than twice the number of participants as in 2022. The goal, Martin said, is to get the entrepreneurs and investors to discuss tech projects under development and generate a cash flow within six months.
In Social Spark’s case, the four-member team wants funding to increase its presence on others digital platforms like Instagram — the company does not yet have an app, only a website — and create better marketing strategies to reach out to groups of college grads with similar interests to attend various events.
The startup currently organizes events only in the Bay Area. It is operating with a $50,000 budget, plus a $10,000 grant from the Cal Poly Pomona Accelerator program. But it wants to raise a sizable sum to expand its program across California, Reeder said — and eventually to other regions in the country.
“We want to get the ball rolling on what graduates would like to do,” said Reeder, and intern with Social Spark.
JAL Therapeutics, meanwhile, is looking for investors to help expand its development of a more effective treatment against Alzheimer’s disease.
Mark Maricich, chief strategic officer of JAL Therapeutics, based out of CSULB, said his company, with the support and research of two Long Beach professors, is developing drugs that can inhibit the key enzyme causing Alzheimer’s, as well as stop deposits of protein fragments that lodge between nerve cells.
Maricich attended CSU Demo Day to interview with several potential investors in search of $3 to $5 million to continue researching and preparing for a stage at which clinical trials may be carried out.
The new treatment JAL Therapeutics’s six-member team is developing has fewer side effects and greater efficiency than others, Maricich said.
“We are learning to conduct toxicology tests,” Maricich said, “in preparation for future clinical trials.”
Martin and others touted the Demo Day as a way to highlight the entrepreneurial talent at the various CSU campuses.
“We are honored to help bring together so many amazing minds found in the CSU university community,” John Keisler, CEO and managing partner of Sunstone Management, said in a press release. “These young founders are the future of technology and business in California and beyond.”