4/24/2017 Chloe Belczak, Engineering Communications Intern
People often think of stuffed animals for children. Kids use stuffed animals to play with or to comfort them as they get tucked into bed. But what if we were able to use stuffed animals to help more than children, like people people who are suffering from Alzheimer's and Dementia. A start-up created by two University of Illinois students is trying to do just that with Therapalz, therapeutic companion animals that detect tactile input from the user and respond by generating soothing vibrations, sounds, movement, in addition to having a lifelike heartbeat.
Written by Chloe Belczak, Engineering Communications Intern
This is one in a series of features on competitors in the 2017 Cozad New Venture competition, a program sponsored by the University of Illinois' Technology Entrepreneur Center that is designed to encourage students to create new businesses. The competition process offers teams assistance in the form of: mentors to help guide them through the phases of venture creation, workshops to help with idea validation, pitching skills, and customer development, and courses to enhance their skills and knowledge. Teams who make it to the final round of competition will have the opportunity to meet with venture capitalists, early stage investors and successful entrepreneurs who serve as judges. The judges will determine teams that will present their ventures at the finals event. Last year, these teams competed for nearly $220,000 in funding and in-kind prizes.
A start-up created by two University of Illinois students is trying to do just that with Therapalz, therapeutic companion animals that detect tactile input from the user and respond by generating soothing vibrations, sounds, movement, in addition to having a lifelike heartbeat.
Therapalz co-founders, Fiona Kalensky, a junior in systems engineering and design, and Isak Massman, a junior in marketing, came up with the idea for while in the student organization Design for America. The club is dedicated to human-centered design and finding solutions to problems people face every day.
"We were given two words to explore and develop solutions for: caregiver fatigue. Immediately, we began interviewing and collecting stories of caregivers and their loved ones in the surrounding area,” Kalensky said.
“One interview, in particular, was with a woman and her husband who had Alzheimer’s. Throughout the course of the interview, he would get up and begin to wander or become agitated, and she would pause and tend to him. This cycle that kept repeating until their Yorkie came into the room and hopped onto his lap and his demeanor changed almost instantly,” Kalensky explained; "He sat there petting the dog, rocking back and forth and began to verbalize with the group. And we were able to carry out the rest of the interview without any more interruptions."
That was when the idea for Therapalz was born. The team wanted to recreate the same benefits that live animals had for people, but for individuals who don’t necessarily have access to one or can afford to take care of an animal.
Massman joined the team last year to help Kalensky with the 2016 Cozad competition. Last summer the team worked for two months at the University of Illinois Research Park, where they received $10,000 in seed funding.
“I came on just thinking I would help out for a little while. We ended up making it to the finals of Cozad and winning admission into the iVenture Accelerator,” Massman said. “While at Research Park, we built a great network with people in the University and with alumni in Chicago. Despite the transition into the school year we have been able to keep up demos with users and caregivers.”
Its success hasn’t been limited to 2016 Cozad. In December, Therapalz won first place in the “Real” Elevator Pitch Competition, hosted by Saint Louis University. The team received $200 in funding from from the IllinIdeas Competition, and was named one of Illinois top 10 student startups.
For Therapalz, winning Cozad to means the ability to start manufacturing.
"Since we have begun there has always been this enormous hurdle of how are we going to manufacture,” Massman said. “We have heard so many horror stories of startups in the early stages of manufacturing going all they way to China, where it becomes very complicated because so many people are involved. If we can mitigate those problems and make it easier for ourselves, we are definitely going do that.”
The Therapalz team is going through all these preliminary steps to ensure that they can have a successful product that will help people. Winning Cozad 2017 would just be a bonus.