From Start to Finish; Exploring OEIP’s Spin In® Experience, Part One

Spin In® offers two views for Massaquoi and Gupta first as part of a student development team and then as Entrepreneurs in Spin In’s first student-led start-up to enter the program.

This article is a part of the series “Where are they now?” This article is part one following James Massaquoi’s story and looks at how Spin In provides enduring outcomes for students. A follow-up article will serve as part two of this story, where Massaquoi and Sury Gupta student co-founders, enter Spin In with a new entrepreneur perspective.  

James Massaquoi earned his bachelor of arts degree in English with a concentration in entrepreneurship at the University of Delaware in 2020. He attributes his early career success to integral entrepreneurial experiences learned in the Office of Economic Innovation and Partnership’s Spin In® program. Massaquoi’s interest in entrepreneurship began early in his freshman year at UD when he anxiously applied to the Spin In® program right after a Lerner college event for first-year students and a one-to-one meeting with Alex Brooks, a graduate student, Spin In program manager and mentor at the time.

Massaquoi wouldn’t secure a Spin In student development team placement until late in 2018 during his sophomore year, but he quickly became a familiar face at Horn’s Venture Development Center, where he worked on his first startup Intellecta Inc., as a cofounder with Sury Gupta they partnered with interesting startups to help them scale and grow. Massaquoi also engaged with other learning opportunities, including internships with TheraV, a wearable device company founded by UD Horn Entrepreneur Alumni Amira Radovic. TheraV helps individuals experiencing amputation and nerve pain. Massaquoi also worked in the Office of Governor Carney and mentored high school youth through Dual School and TeenSharp.  

In 2019 he moved to a second startup 360VR Technology, again cofounded with classmate Sury Gupta, who graduated in 2022 with a master’s degree in computer engineering. 360VR Technology is a software startup that utilizes 3D modeling technology to assist with building management, security, and emergency response. Massaquoi’s attention became centered around advancing 360VR, and at the same time, he entered the Spin In student development team.    

Spin In Student-led Product Development Team  

Spin In is a unique UD offering funded by the U.S. Economic Development Administration to advance workforce development in the region. Spin In enlists the help of an entrepreneur who has an early innovation, a real-world challenge related to the entrepreneur’s company that can benefit from student ingenuity and ideas. OEIP then brings together a product development team of interdisciplinary students to work on the problem and, after two semesters, deliver the solution(s) that can be spun out and delivered back to the entrepreneur. For students this opportunity helps students build real-world teamwork, innovative thinking and decision-making skills necessary in the workforce, among other things. For the entrepreneur, it can provide the satisfaction of giving back and positively impact students about to embark on a career. Along the way, additional insights into their real-world challenge may be realized.    

Massaquoi recalls, “product development is not taught in any class, at least in the interdisciplinary way Spin In uses, and with a real-world challenge where you have to gather all of the considerations.”  

Massaquoi’s Spin In Experience  

Massaquoi was one of five students assigned to a Spin In® student product development team centered on the marketability of a new product concept to improve body posture. The challenge: showcase how the conceptual product can benefit many health issues caused by bad posture. The team did a complete analysis that capitalized on the best features appreciated by customers leading to a most viable product (MVP).  

Along the path, Massaquoi felt empowered to conduct customer interviews, feasibility studies, and market research, leading to product efficacy. Through that process, his most significant experience was learning to work as a cohesive, interdependent team to accomplish the given challenge. The student team presented their work at the annual showcase in March 2019 alongside other teams presenting their Spin In projects. 

Massaquoi isn’t alone in what he learned from the experience. The former Spin In teammates still stay in touch even though they are spread between several points on the map from Hawaii to Pennsylvania and Virginia.  

Team member Kathryn Constantine, a communication specialist for David’s Bridal, located at their headquarters in Philadelphia, now conducts internal marketing to over 300 stores nationally. She attributes her skills to Spin In lessons learned while developing her first actual marketing plan, a way to communicate benefits and create product awareness among customers when a product is brand new.

Constantine’s best friend, Allison Fortney, also held a marketing role.  Today, Fortney is a media planner for TBWA/Chait/Day, Arlington, VA, an advertising firm that disrupts what we think about iconic brands. Forney works on the Nissan account for the agency. Fortney felt Spin In immersed her in the real world. “Working with people of different interests proved to be an inspiration. I learned how important communication is so that ideas are not misconstrued and how collaborating with people of different experiences taught me to find common ground,” said Fortney, who hopes one day to take her skills on the road to explore advertising roles in Europe.  

After the Spin In Experience  

Massaquoi’s thoughts returned to 360VR Technology with an understanding of how necessary documentation is “when you are building processes [for a company], you learn to share responsibility. Secondly, to build best practices, you must talk to people that have been at this stage before. It is the only way to scale up the business,” he said. Early in Massaquoi’s senior year, 360VR Technology participated in prestigious funding competitions, raising over 300K to gain exposure and build strong support for 360VR Technology.  

As Massaquoi was poised to graduate and ready to launch 360VR Technology, the pandemic concerns were in the news, but his story was not finished; Massaquoi and his co-founder, Gupta, decided to spin back in [to the Spin In program], this time as entrepreneurs who bring their own start-up and real-world challenge, 360VR Technology.  Part two of this story explores how Massaquoi and Gupta changed roles in Spin In and became the early start-up Entrepreneurs to lead a student development team.

Spin In is a unique UD offering funded by NSF EPSCoR and the U.S. Economic Development Administration to advance workforce development in the state and region.

Office of Economic Innovation & Partnerships (OEIP)  

Office of Economic Innovation and Partnerships (OEIP) is an economic development portal that connects outside entities to university knowledge-based assets to stimulate a culture of innovation and entrepreneurship among UD students, faculty, and partners to contribute to the state and region’s social and economic development. OEIP acts as a focal point for resources and advisory services to support the cultivation of early-stage companies and industry partnerships. With a focus on discovery, OEIP assists in the development and commercialization of intellectual property assets into marketable opportunities and/or new businesses. OEIP offers the Spin In® program that stimulates innovation and entrepreneurship and provides workforce development opportunities for qualified students. OEIP’s units include the University’s Technology Transfer Office (TTO), Delaware Small Business Development Center (DSBDC), and APEX Accelerator Delaware (formally PTAC). These units perform as an integrated ecosystem to meet the technology and business needs of the University, the state, and the region.