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Interview by EbaNee Bond  In what other ways have others helped you out? Alireza: I think in all aspects. You need to be open to learning from others, even those who reject you. I was rejected two times from the UA $10k startup challenge and two times from I-Corps Sites. Each time I reached out to judges and asked for feedback so I could improve. Also I’d like to listen to people who criticize my idea because they may have a point I can use to improve. Nate: When I was working alone, I was essentially developing things and not getting feedback. I wound up getting into Bounce and that really opened up a tremendous amount of networking; I met over 50 local entrepreneurs in 6 months of being there. I’ve worked with Alec at MAGNET, he’s a mentor. The I-Corps program was tremendously helpful. If it wasn’t for I-Corps, me and Ali wouldn’t have met. We went through that together! At the time, my business skills were lacking. What’s it like balancing the requirements of grant funding? Nate: From my experiences so far, in order to qualify for an SBIR, everyone involved in the startup company would need great titles and to be experts on paper. However, I think in order for a startup to be successful, it should not be full of experts on paper at the onset, but aspiring talents that have skin in the game. This is the team I have formed. If you were to apply for an SBIR grant, they are looking for a solid team of experts from the start. A startup should be free to transform so rapidly as it grows; the team should grow and change, striving to be great and evolving to become what the industry customers are interested in. In the case of the SBIR method, the starting team would not be the most efficient team at another level. That’s one thing I see being an issue with SBIRs because essentially, you’re supposed to establish a concrete team and it’s not flexible. What would you tell a student who was thinking about being an entrepreneur? Nate: If a student got really interested in this, it must be a passionate project for them. I don’t think anyone chooses to be an entrepreneur... maybe they do, I’m not sure. But if you just want to make it happen, I think that’s the first inspiration and at that point, everything is risky. You’ll be risking school, because you’ll be distracted. That’s how it was for me. I would actually compare it to having a girlfriend. I mean, it’s a commitment. Haha. I compensated by taking fewer classes every semester and graduated in six years instead of five. Alireza: Don’t do it, unless you enjoy it! In the startup world, you’ll face many challenges. You need to find a way or make a way in order to move forward. If you’re not enjoying it, it’ll get very hard. Nate: At some point people will question your decisions. My professor got me into a great grad school and because it was too big of a time commitment, I turned it down. In having that conversation with him, there were a lot of questions! That was a turning point for me. People are giving you advice but you’re not taking it and you think to yourself, that could be dangerous but if you find you’re turning into an entrepreneur and you’re pursuing your passion and doing what you believe is right… people will question and not be happy with how you live your life. I believe that’s kind of confirmation that I’m doing the right thing. At some point, you will probably be an outcast completely, which is kind of the phase that I’m in right now. As long as you believe you’re doing the right thing, eventually people will be like, hey, yeah, they’re doing the right thing. Alireza: In school you don’t find many people who think the same way as you do. Students do research or study for courses and this is what students are “supposed” to do but I was doing what I am really interested in, and I was different. Nate, in what ways will you help people and machines see in new light? Nate: That’s an exciting question for me, and we’ve been working on answering it for a while. Our passive radar technology has a lot of applications and depending on how customers would like to use it, it will take various forms. The exciting part for me is that we are starting to work on passive radar and antenna design projects for customers in the power and automotive industries which is a significant step for us. These industries are early adopters of passive radar technology and it is really exciting for me because I am starting to get a feel for what customers want, and what these passive radar systems and their resulting output may look like in the real world. In the automotive industry, we are developing passive radar systems that will locate and identify other autonomous vehicles based on their active radar emissions, in addition to monitoring the location of sources such as cell phones, Bluetooth devices, etc being used by pedestrians. Active radar is really good at locating objects, but its object identification capabilities are severely lacking in comparison to passive radar capabilities; the industry is increasing active radar resolution to compensate. However, our passive radar systems can locate and identify these sources very well, with only a few antenna elements. It will be a low cost solution that will improve the safety of autonomous vehicles. Long term, our passive radar systems will allow a user, be it human or machine to have a new type of vision, sort of like night vision. Currently we are immersed in a sea of electromagnetic waves; Wi-Fi, cell towers, and satellites are illuminating the environment. In the future, you could use our passive radar systems to see in the environment. This is the future of passive radar.  Alireza, what do you hope life looks like after you graduate from UA? Alireza: I will receive my master’s degree from UAkron in May and I have started my Ph.D. in computer science and engineering. I hope soon, we could secure enough funding to support G-Angel as a company and continue developing and commercializing the portable automated venipuncture. Nate, what do you hope life looks like for your startup in 5 years? Nate: The early adopters of passive radar seem to be customers working on products for the power industry because the industry has a significant problem that it can solve. But the interesting thing is, I didn’t do any customer discovery in that area. They heard about what we were working on, and I am very glad that we got connected. That’s been the focus of what we're doing right now in terms of time. In 5 years, it’s hard to say at what point it’ll be. I imagine that there will be more customers. I’m hoping it goes pretty well. Thank you for joining us for our two part “Tales from student CEOs” interview and a thanks goes to our interviewees Nick and Alireza for taking the time to tell us about their road to entrepreneurship! If you didn’t catch the first part you can find it in our blog page right under this post! If you are interested in becoming an entrepreneur visit our resource page to find programs like I-Corps or Starting Line where you can begin on your entrepreneur journey!
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