as many of you know, hansoo lee, co-founder and former ceo of magoosh, and one my closest friends, passed away nearly 2 years ago after a battle with non-smoker’s lung cancer. hansoo was 35. in hansoo’s honor, wendy (hansoo’s fiancée), pejman (a fellow magoosh co-founder), and i created the hansoo lee fellowship with support from uc berkeley and many others.
through this fellowship, we provide mentorship and a $5,000 stipend to each of the 1–2 highly qualified berkeley-haas mba students selected as fellows. these are mba students who opt to pursue their personal ventures, as hansoo and i did with magoosh, in lieu of a traditional summer internship.
i’m excited to announce that wendy lim, hansoo’s fiancée, has committed $5,000, and magoosh has committed $10,000, towards a challenge match for the hansoo lee fellowship.
any donation given to the fellowship by the end of the year, up to the $15,000 total, will be matched dollar-for-dollar. to date, we’ve raised a little over $200,000. if we reach our goal of $250,000, the fellowship will be self-sustaining and able to support aspiring entrepreneurs for many years to come.
to donate, click here.
an update on past hansoo lee fellows
left to right: andre marquis, bhavin parikh, alastair trueger, johannes koeppel, wendy lim
last summer’s fellows are back at haas for their 2nd year and both have continued to pursue their ventures.
johannes koeppel (mba’15) of wetravel reports the following: “in the last three months, we successfully released the beta version of wetravel. since then, we have organized 20 trips and currently have more than 250 paying customers.” wetravel has raised $55,000 from startup competitions and other investments and plans to raise their seed round in mid-2015.
wetravel is at the uc berkeley’s skydeck accelerator and has grown its team, recently adding a designer to provide independent tour organizers with the best possible platform to facilitate their small group tours. in addition to perfecting their product, wetravel will spend the coming months actively onboarding tour organizers on its platform.
alastair trueger (mba’15) of teaman & company informed us that the company “has been going incredibly well. after graduating from 500 startups, we moved back to berkeley and into the skydeck accelerator. we have focused on building out the three pillars of our business: fantastic jewelry, our web and service experience and our 3-d printing sample kit.”
teaman & company has expanded its team, adding a jewelry sourcing and manufacturing expert and a sales manager with years of enterprise sales experience, and is in the process of hiring a creative director. sales at teaman continue to grow, and they recently closed a large $20,000 sale. teaman has also opened its round of funding and has already closed $20,000 (with more to come).
donate to the hansoo lee fellowship
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