ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½

The ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Impact Lab, established in 2023 through a generous grant from the Phillips Foundation, is an initiative to serve the University’s entrepreneurial students, faculty and alumni in the spaces of social, creative and arts entrepreneurship. 

Candidates from the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ ecosystem – students, faculty, staff and alumni – who have created for-profit entity whose business model and objective include an identified social impact outcome can apply for grants up to $50,000 to help fund their company and its goals. Following a rigorous application and due diligence process, five companies have been selected to be the first to receive investments from the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Impact Lab.

"The Impact Lab bridges academic learning with real-world impact investing, offering students hands-on experience in due diligence and pitching processes to cultivate the next generation of impact entrepreneurs and investors," says ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Impact Lab co-founder Jim Hart. "The success of the five portfolio companies we have invested in demonstrates the power of combining investment analysis with social impact. This approach provides students with invaluable practical experience and ensures social enterprises receive the capital and support needed to scale their impact."

Learn more about the inaugural class of grant recipients for the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Impact Lab below.

CollegePlus

is a platform dedicated to providing students the resources, information and guidance that they need to make properly informed decisions about their future in higher education.

This app, founded by ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ alum Seun Suberu (B.S. ’23), aims to ensure that students from all backgrounds can have an equal opportunity to endure the college admissions process and put themselves in the ideal place to succeed.

Kosmos Workforce

Kosmos Workforce is developing a disruptive tech-enabled solution to help enterprises identify and recruit talent among 18 million unemployed or disengaged young adults, reducing the high business cost of unfilled positions and turnover with a proprietary combination of labor ecosystem outreach, gamified assessments, AI and employee lifecycle analytics.

Founded by ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ alum Carlos Carpizo (MBA ’98), Kosmos Workforce aims to increase the qualified candidate pool for high demand job functions which will improve economic stability, reduce the burden on taxpayer-funded social programs and increase equity for marginalized communities.

PREVO

PREVO aims to disrupt and democratize the current independent film distribution model through a streaming service dedicated to independent and student films. The streaming service will give filmmakers from all walks of life and budgetary restrictions the ability to showcase their talent and to be noticed on a nationwide level.

ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ alum Ryder McNeal (MBA ’24), who has produced over a dozen student and independent films in the past several years, founded PREVO to take the experience of a high-quality film festival and place it in the palm of your hand, or on your laptop. For no cost, filmmakers can submit their films to PREVO, after which their films will either be added to PREVO's content catalog or denied on the basis of quality. The service plans to launch mid-July.

StoryIt

StoryIt is an all-in-one marketing tool that turns customers into your brand advocates on social media. Simply put, StoryIt gets your customers posting about you, by providing you the tools to create and distribute custom offers to your customers through a custom web app interface.

Founder and ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ alum Branson Packard wanted to provide a tool for companies to turn customers into brand advocates and marketers, by offering incentives like discounts and rewards in exchange for Instagram stories, posts and reels. Consumers can access these offers through a web application, and clients can create these offers and incentives on StoryIt's dashboard.

Timio

Getting a fair balance of news information has become near impossible in our current polarized environment. This inspired ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ alum Joshua Baier (BBA, B.A. ’24) to found Timio, a company developing an AI app that creates a news feed where you both sides of the story, in order to fight media bias.

Timio will present users with a diverse feed of news stories, including an "Alternate Perspective" feature, which finds articles with different viewpoints on the story you're reading. Its planned AI Insights feature will offer bullet points on potential biases, misinformation, or unverified claims within articles, catching things consumers don't notice or have the time to research.

For more information, or to apply for an investment from the ÌìÃÀ´«Ã½ Impact Lab, please visit www.smu.edu/meadows/areasofstudy/ccpa/smu-impact-lab.