With summer over and school back in session, the 2014 Hansoo Lee Fellows are as busy as ever. The fellowship enabled Johannes and Alastair to focus their efforts this summer on building and refining their products and growing their teams as they look to raise funds over the next year. Both companies have made significant progress over the last few months, and we look forward to all of the accomplishments ahead of them. (See below for their updates.)

We are also pleased to announce that Wendy Lim 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. Many companies have matching donation programs which is another great way to increase the impact of your donation.

Help us reach our goal of $250,000 in total funds raised which will enable us to create an endowment for the fellowship and support teams of entrepreneurs for many years to come. Click here to donate.

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 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).

This year, we had a very competitive field of applicants for the Hansoo Lee Fellowship. As we read through the applications, we were struck by their high caliber - many of the teams that we would have to cut early in this year’s process would have easily qualified for final round interviews last year.  We believe this is a testament to both the supportive environment for entrepreneurship at Haas and the opportunity that the Fellowship provides for aspiring entrepreneurs.

After much discussion, we whittled the applicant pool down to four and had those companies join us at Haas for in-person pitches and interviews. Each of those four teams pitched their company to the selection committee. We saw so much passion, character, and progress in two of the teams that we decided to “break the rules” and choose two recipients, splitting the monetary award between them. In addition to a stipend, the Fellowship provides mentorship and access to a phenomenal network of entrepreneurs, and we wanted to give both companies the support and resources that would maximize their chances for success. The two winners are Teaman & Company (Alastair Trueger, MBA ‘15) and WeTravel (Johannes Koeppel MBA ‘15).

Teaman & Company

Teaman & Company combines unique colored gemstones with settings from master designers around the world to create stunning engagement rings and custom jewelry. Their founding team includes a gemologist with a lifetime’s experience in fine jewelry, and Teaman is already profitable. They were also accepted into 500 Startups batch 9, one of the top startup incubators in the Bay Area.

Alastair said, “The Hansoo Lee Fellowship has already been vital to us. Thanks to the Fellowship, we’ve been able to bring on an intern and business development director over the summer to help us grow.”


WeTravel

WeTravel is an online marketplace connecting curious travelers to foreigners that live in the Bay area who organize trips to their home countries. They create the most authentic group trips for their customers. They plan to launch their fully-function beta product and their first public group trips this summer.

Johannes had begun working on WeTravel within just a few months of attending Haas. About the Fellowship, he said, “Startups are always challenging, but hearing on the first day of business school about the Hansoo Lee Fellowship motivated me to embrace the startup adventure.”

We’re excited to help both Teaman & Company and WeTravel with their journey. And thank you again for your support!