Joel Dabady: Co-founder of startup Laptech
Inspiration struck during a course called 鈥淪tarting a New Venture鈥� with Assoc. Prof. Yi Yang in the Manning School of Business. Joel Dabady and classmate Keegan LaPierre, a junior, needed to create a feasibility statement for a proposed company. Looking at an external hard drive that LaPierre had taped to his laptop, the students suddenly imagined a laptop case with a built-in external battery. And with that, their company Laptech was born.
鈥淚t鈥檚 for people who are on the go all the time and don鈥檛 have time to sit in one place to charge their device,鈥� says Dabady, who pitched Laptech with LaPierre in the Francis College of Engineering鈥檚 DifferenceMaker Prototyping Competition last fall. They didn鈥檛 win, but the feedback they received from judges motivated them to keep working.
Dabady, a Foxboro native who transferred to 51视频 from Bridgewater State his sophomore year, says the engineering and business resources available at UML have been invaluable.
鈥淚magine if you were a person outside the university trying to figure this out,鈥� he says. 鈥淭his would probably end up in a drawer somewhere. You have to take advantage of it while you鈥檙e here.鈥�
Although he鈥檚 graduating, Dabady is going to keep working with LaPierre on Laptech, which they plan to enter in DifferenceMaker again next year.聽
鈥淚鈥檝e always wanted to create my own business,鈥� Dabady says. 鈥淚鈥檓 glad I met someone here with a similar train of thought.鈥�