Two teams in Horn Entrepreneurship’s Summer Founders pre-accelerator program are exploring how to bridge the gap between daily living and accessibility for those with physical disabilities and chronic illnesses. SpoonAble is developing an adaptable, tech-integrated tool to assist with kitchen tasks, while the Hardbat Adaptive Fitness Program is creating an empowering, communal space for physical training and social growth. This is an article in the series highlighting the teams participating in the 2026 Summer Founders program, and will be featured at this year’s Demo Day.
True innovation often begins when technology meets empathy. For individuals living with physical disabilities or chronic illness, the smallest daily tasks—from preparing a meal to accessing a gym—can present significant barriers to independence. By listening closely to the needs of these communities, student founders are now building solutions that prioritize accessibility, affordability, and human connection.
SpoonAble
SpoonAble is an adaptable meal service concept designed to help individuals with physical disabilities, limited mobility, chronic fatigue, or other conditions that make cooking difficult. The team is developing pre-prepped recipe kits and a user-friendly app that allows customers to filter meals by functional needs, food allergies, and personal preferences, with future plans to explore food delivery.
The engineering duo came into this program wanting to develop a device to help people with disabilities. Because that is a very broad group, they began conducting extensive customer discovery and interviews with people online and within the local community. That outreach put them in contact with the Parkinson’s community. The group was incredibly receptive, answered all their questions, and was eager to help SpoonAble succeed. The founders quickly grew a strong bond and connection to them, which sparked a deep, personal desire to support a community dealing with the realities of chronic illness.
As engineering students, Micah and Aubrey came into the startup world having no idea what they were doing. Though it has been a process of trial and error, everyone else in the Summer Founders cohort has been extremely helpful in teaching them the ropes. Learning to take a step back and say, "Okay, let’s actually learn from the community what their real desires are before we jump straight into a solution," has been the most impactful shift in strategy for SpoonAble.
The duo initially had a lot of different ideas and separate communities they wanted to help, trying to tackle all of them at once before quickly realizing they couldn't do everything well. Eventually, they figured out how to narrow their focus, start small, and plan to expand only after they mastered one thing exceptionally well.
SpoonAble's primary customers are patients with Parkinson’s who deal with hand tremors or muscle weakness. The goal is to develop a device that gives them an easier time using standard kitchen utensils. While there are some solutions currently on the market, they are often incredibly expensive, or people simply don't know they exist. With this new solution, the team is looking to make something truly affordable, especially for individuals living on fixed incomes.
Right now, the goal is to make Delaware the initial target market. Currently, researching high-market insurance strategies is a top priority in order to find a pathway to get state insurance to cover the device. If insurance coverage can be secured, keeping production costs hyper-low becomes less of an issue, as long as the end-consumer doesn't have to pay out of pocket.
The team currently has rough prototypes that they began creating during the Summer Founders program. Their design combines multiple proven elements of Parkinson's treatments and accessible technology that haven't been brought together before. For instance, a major pain point highlighted in their interviews was muscle cramps, which can be alleviated with vibration therapy.
“Additionally, there are existing accessible spoons that use a gyroscope so that hand tremors don’t affect the stability of the spoon head,” Micah explains. “Because both methods are proven to work, we wanted to combine them into a single device. Crucially, we are making this device universal to all kitchen utensils, eliminating the need for families to purchase expensive, specialized silverware sets.”
As the duo looked at their options within the traditional biomedical engineering job market, they realized they wanted to build something that was self-running. “We wanted to build something that directly incorporates input from people living with chronic illnesses,” Aubrey explains. “As a team, we realized the only way to do that authentically was to start our own venture and problem solve in our own way.”
That desire is what motivated them to join the cohort. They love the idea of being involved in every single facet of a business. In larger companies, individuals are often confined to one micro-role and rarely get to see a product through from problem identification and research to development and final execution. At the startup phase, they get to play a part in all of those roles. This gives them a direct relationship with the consumer, allowing them to see the real-world results of their work and ensure it is genuinely helping people.
After this 11-week cohort, success for the team looks like having a functional prototype that they can bring back to the people they interviewed and have them say, "Yes, that is exactly what we want." As engineering students, they are used to keeping their heads in books and working for eight hours straight on a single problem. The engineering mindset teaches them to power through a question until they are absolutely sure of the answer, which has been incredibly helpful to them. Through their engineering classes, they have become highly familiar with taking evidence, building a prototype, testing it, evaluating the failures, and repeating that loop over and over again.
Hardbat Adaptive Fitness Program
Owen Mathias, BS in Entrepreneurship, class of 2028
The Hardbat Adaptive Fitness Program delivers personalized, supervised workout routines and 90-day milestone goal reviews to empower individuals with physical and mental disabilities. The business is fully operational and executing weekly training sessions, focused heavily on continuous sales outreach and ongoing customer discovery to scale its client base.
For Owen Mathias, the spark for his venture, the Hardbat Adaptive Fitness Program, began long before he stepped onto the University of Delaware campus. Having spent his life involved in Special Olympics programs and unified sports, Mathias developed a deep-rooted passion for supporting individuals with disabilities.
While playing with the Newark Dragons, he noticed a concerning trend: many of his teammates were becoming increasingly unfit. "They were capable of being healthy, and they knew how to move their body," Mathias explains. "They just didn't have the access to do it or the availability to do it... there was no environment for them to go and be healthy."
Determined to bridge this gap, Mathias secured a pivotal partnership with his local gym, Hardbat Athletics, providing the infrastructure and support he needed to bring his vision to life. After sharing his vision, he was given "the golden ticket"—mentorship, a dedicated team, and facility access. “The team has been mentoring me, giving me their patience, letting me use their facilities,” says Mathias. "I’m super grateful for the resources and knowledge they’ve given me to allow me to grow this program into what we wanted it to be."
At the core of his efforts is a simple, personal mission: "I just want to make a difference in people's lives and genuinely help people, and I think that being able to coach them gives you the best opportunity to help them the best way I can."
While the primary goal of the Hardbat Adaptive Fitness Program is physical wellness, the program has evolved into a vital hub for social connection. Feedback from parents has been overwhelmingly positive, highlighting that the unique benefit is the "regular gym" environment.
"A lot of people with disabilities face the problem that the only social interactions they have is with their family," Mathias explains. By training in a communal setting, his clients can interact with people outside their immediate circle, fostering a sense of community that is often hard to come by. For Mathias, seeing clients grow their self-esteem and confidence with his coaching and support is what makes it all worth it.
Since transferring to the entrepreneurship major, Mathias has been actively engaged in the ecosystem, even winning a Pitch Party during his first semester. He views the 11-week program as an essential resource for scaling his business.
The biggest challenge for the venture is funding. Because the target demographic often faces financial barriers, maintaining an affordable price point while covering operational costs is a challenge. Mathias is currently working to secure partnerships with nonprofits and initiate the process for Medicaid funding to ensure long-term sustainability. "The biggest resource they've given me is time," says Mathias. "Being able to use this time to face that challenge of funding... that's the success I'm looking for by the end of the program."
A Shared Lesson
Across the Summer Founders cohort, a recurring theme is the necessity of prioritizing real-world connection over abstract planning. For the teams behind these ventures, the path to a successful startup is not found in a vacuum, but through the deliberate, sometimes uncomfortable process of engaging directly with the people they intend to serve.
For Owen Mathias, the primary obstacle for many students is over-analyzing the technical "back-end" before they have secured a core audience. He urges aspiring entrepreneurs to streamline their focus and prioritize the customer experience above all else. "Do it and don't look back," Mathias advises. "Stop thinking so much about all the back-end stuff and focus on your audience. Find customers, and then you'll figure it out from there."
Micah and Aubrey echo this sentiment, emphasizing that true innovation requires deep, nuanced empathy for the community being addressed. They warn against assuming you understand a problem before you have consulted those living with it daily. "Even if you think you already understand what their problem is, once you actually talk to the people living it, you make sure you fully understand the nuances and aren't missing anything," Aubrey explains.
Beyond the importance of customer discovery, the team also highlights the accessibility of the entrepreneurial ecosystem at the University of Delaware. Micah encourages students—regardless of their academic background—to take the first step by simply engaging with the available curriculum. "Horn Entrepreneurship classes are open to anyone on campus, regardless of your major," Micah notes. "Just add one to your schedule and see if it interests you. Taking a class is the perfect way to get involved."
For both ventures, the lesson is clear: entrepreneurship is a practice of service and observation. By setting aside the pressure to have a perfect plan and instead committing to honest dialogue and consistent action, student founders can transform their ideas into solutions that genuinely impact the people who need them most.
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 U.S., Horn Entrepreneurship was built and is actively supported by successful entrepreneurs, empowering aspiring innovators as they pursue new ideas for a better world.