From housing to fightwear to agricultural robotics, UD Summer Founders alumni share how 12 weeks of mentoring and customer discovery changed everything.
Editor's Note: Applications for the 2026 Summer Founders program are open through April 12, 2026.
When Joel Amin and Bryce Fender joined the University of Delaware’s Horn Entrepreneurship Summer Founders program in 2017, they set out with a shared belief that business could be a force for good. What started as an idea during that summer has since grown into Wilminvest, a Wilmington-based company that owns and manages 33 properties, employs more than 80 people through its real estate and logistics operations, and focuses on supporting families experiencing homelessness or housing instability.
“Summer Founders is the reason that we are in existence today,” said Amin, who co-founded Wilminvest with Fender as UD students during the program. “It encouraged us to ‘get out of the building,’ and outside of the building is where I met the majority of my network in the housing space — many of whom I still work with today.”
For fellow Blue Hen entrepreneur Maya Nazareth, that same lesson in customer discovery became a catalyst for success. Since participating in Summer Founders in 2020, Nazareth has conducted nearly a thousand customer interviews for her company, Alchemize Fightwear, which creates women’s apparel for jiu-jitsu, wrestling, MMA and boxing. Nazareth appeared on ABC’s Shark Tank on Wednesday, Oct. 22.
For 12 weeks, UD students participating in Horn Entrepreneurship’s Summer Founders program receive mentoring, educational sessions, meetings with advisors and up to a $10,000 stipend to validate their hypotheses for their business or social startup. But more important than all that is how their ideas are tested in the real world.
Overall stats from Summer Founders, which began in 2016, are impressive: 104 startups received $11,862,582 in funding, with 66 (or 63%) still in business.
“As an entrepreneur, that discomfort is essential,” continued Stager, who earned his doctorate in mechanical engineering at UD in 2020. He earned his undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering in 2011.
Participating undergraduate and graduate students go through a rigorous selection process for the Horn Entrepreneurship pre-accelerator, which marked its 10th cohort this summer. The program received a boost from Tom and Ronnie Stanford, who gifted $1.15 million last December.
Summer Founders ended in mid-August with a Demo Day where students showcased their projects and engaged with the UD community and the broader entrepreneurial community.
“Summer Founders is more than just time to work on your startup,” said Garry Johnson III, program lead. “It’s about learning how to think like an entrepreneur — how to test assumptions, connect with customers and move from idea to impact.”
Johnson should know; he participated in Summer Founders in 2017 and earned his undergraduate degree in kinesiology (2017) and graduate degree in entrepreneurship and design (2018) at UD.
“The most important thing Summer Founders gives you is the push to get out of the building and talk to real people,” said UD alumnus Adam Stager, who attended the program in 2017 and founded TRiC Robotics.
Summer Founders sometimes has helped entrepreneurs realize that they need to pivot their business model, or as Stager put it, “Don’t build stuff that no one wants.”
His first idea involved selling 3D-printed, modular robots to SWAT teams. TriC, which is based in San Luis Obispo, California, now builds tractor-scale robots that carry ultraviolet lights, replacing pest and disease control costs and reducing chemical use by up to 70%. It employs 15 full-time employees, five part-time employees and three contract workers.
The program also fostered important financial connections for Nazareth, who, with a staff of two, has shipped more than 15,000 orders of high-performance fightwear for women in 20 countries from its Philadelphia Rittenhouse Square neighborhood.
“Ninety percent of our investors came from someone I met at Summer Founders, so either they were a mentor, or they were one connection away from a mentor,” Nazareth said.
For Amin, Summer Founders’ best lesson is that “success is not final. Failure is not fatal. It is the courage to continue that counts.”
Wilminvest continues to evolve, now focusing on families experiencing homelessness or housing instability. It owns/manages 33 Wilmington properties and employs two full-time and four part-time in real estate (there’s also a logistics unit).
“We do believe that you can do good work and be structured as a for-profit,” said Amin, who in 2019 earned his bachelor’s degree in entrepreneurship and a competency in real estate finance. “In my opinion, the only difference is how you get taxed. … We all need to consider profitable business models or sustainable business models, even when doing good.”
One last lesson involved commitment.
“During Summer Founders, I learned firsthand that it’s a meritocracy,” Stager said. “The people who gained the most were the ones who went all in — living and breathing their startup every day. I practically lived between [Horn’s Venture Development Center] and the highway, spending my days building and my nights on the road talking to customers. Meanwhile, others dropped in a few times a week and treated it like a side project. The difference in outcomes was night and day. Startups are all about momentum — and when you fully commit, your network and learning start to snowball fast.”
Applications for the 2026 Summer Founders program are open through April 12, 2026.
About Horn Entrepreneurship
Horn Entrepreneurship serves as the creative engine for entrepreneurship education and advancement at the University of Delaware. Currently ranked among the best entrepreneurship programs in the US, Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.
