The Cornell Tech and the Runway Startup Program at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute were recently featured on Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies — Education list.
An estimated 40% of PhDs don’t have jobs lined up by the time they earn their degrees—not even in STEM fields. A new program called Runway at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech’s Manhattan campus, which bills itself as “part business school, part research institution, part startup incubator,” is trying to fix that by helping postdocs commercialize their research. Not only does Runway train researchers to think like scientist-CEOs, it also entitles postdocs to the intellectual-property rights of their own work without owing any royalties to Cornell Tech. Taking a page from Y Combinator, startups that emerge from Runway grant a Simple Agreement for Future Equity, or “SAFE,” to the university. A core goal is to create a virtuous circle between research science and real-world innovation that feeds back into New York’s business community. One indication it might be taking hold? 100% of Runway grads have headquartered their companies in New York.
By Alex Topchishvili, Johnson Cornell Tech MBA ’18
One of the main reasons I chose to attend Cornell for my MBA is their recently launched Fintech Intensive, offered at the incredible Cornell Tech campus in NYC. The intensive, led by Drew Pascarella, blends teaching us hard skills, involving us in collaborative projects with both startups and institutional players in NY, and exposing us to a roster of incredible speakers.
One of my favorite speakers this month was Ben Alden, a fintech legal authority, Cornell University alumnus, and General Counsel of Betterment. I could not have been more impressed by the quality, openness, and insightfulness of Ben’s presentation at Cornell Tech. By the end of the class, we were all sold on Betterment’s human centric vision and culture.
Here are my 5 major takeaways from the presentation:
1. Wealth management is ripe for disruption
Traditional wealth management is under tremendous scrutiny from clients in recent years for the following reasons:
(i) high required minimum account balances,
(ii) high fees,
(iii) inability to produce differentiated investment returns, and
(iv) a lack of technology solutions that facilitate ease of use and information transparency.
Since the financial crisis, digitization has disrupted the wealth management practice with new startups gaining market share and incumbents revisiting their business models in the face of increasing competition and pricing pressure.
2. The SEC’s approach to fintech is promising
Contrary to popular belief, the SEC is actually encouraging fintech innovation and is taking steps to improve clarity on regulation. In recent years they have been actively soliciting input and involvement from leading industry stakeholders (including Betterment) to recommend ways the agency can improve regulation around the following technologies:
(i) Robo-advisors — to democratize investment
(ii) Blockchain — to make trading, clearing, and settlement processes more efficient and cheaper
(iii) Online marketplace lenders & crowdfunding platforms — to create valuable sources of capital for small businesses and entrepreneurs
3. Robo-advisors record impressive growth
The growth in automated investing pioneered by Betterment and Wealthfronthas resulted in assets under management in the billions. If these companies continue their CAGR of 68% until 2027, robotic-advisors can reach an AUM of $90 trillion. The growth is so impressive that traditional players such as Schwab and Vanguard have entered the fray. The growth is driven by three major factors:
(i) lower management fees, between 0.15% and 0.5%
(ii) similar (if not better) performance, since beating the market is nearly impossible these days
(iii) no minimum balance requirement
4. Frictionless Design, Narrative & Simplicity
Everything about Betterment, from their product to their business model, screams simplicity and friction-less design. Their narrative is clear:
To empower you to make the most of your money, so you can live better.
Every feature and every piece of content they release comes back to this simple narrative, making it stronger and more compelling. This has the effect of (i) keeping their marketing and sales efforts laser focused on solving this problem and (ii) makes customers connect with what they are building more quickly and organically.
5. The importance of setting up the right legal structure
Ben credits a great amount of Betterment’s success to Eli Broverman, a young securities lawyer from NYU Law who co-founded Betterment alongside Jon Stein. He stressed Eli’s foresight in selecting the right legal structure for Betterment in the earliest days of the business. Not only did it impact things like taxes, paperwork, and liability, but it optimized the company for massive growth in the future. Betterment operates as both an SEC-registered investment advisor as well as a registered broker-dealer. The parent company for Betterment LLC and Betterment Securities, Betterment Holdings, Inc., was established in January, 2008.
At the recent Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg speaker series, Mario Schlosser, co-founder and CEO of Oscar Health, was interviewed by Bloomberg Television’s Scarlet Fu spoke with him about the founding of Oscar Health, his entrepreneurial journey, his predictions for the future of digital health, the changing health insurance marketplace and how the healthcare industry can address cost concerns.
Top Quote:
Greatest Insight: Narrow and curated networks in healthcare are better than endless choices.
Inside the Interview:
Fu asked Schlosser: How do you sell people on the the idea that narrow is good when everyone prizes flexibility and options?
To answer this question, Schlosser cited the unscientific discovery process of finding new physicians and market forces unique to the US healthcare industry wherein higher cost do not necessarily mean higher quality care.
Go to 11:32 in the video to hear Schlosser’s full answer.
Top Tweet:
“Current healthcare data is (insurance company —> pay for this code). You can find out MORE in real-time by instead directly engaging with the patient/provider.” -Mario Schlosser, Co-Founder & CEO of @OscarHealth@techatbloomberg#CTechBBG
Yoav Artzi, assistant professor of computer science at Cornell Tech and Cornell University, is the recipient of the National Science Foundation’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award. This five-year, $550,000 grant will support his continued research on the intersection of natural language processing and machine learning. The goal of this research program is to create a new framework for mapping natural language instructions to actions of autonomous systems operating in complex environments such as self-driving cars and drones, leading to new opportunities for non-expert users to control complex systems and increase the accessibility of current systems.
The Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence recently announced the launch of NYCHope, a web portal for survivors of intimate partner violence. The project was a collaboration between the City and Cornell Tech faculty and students.
During the 2016-2017 school year, students at Cornell Tech interviewed over 100 Family Justice Center clients to assess how technology can support their needs for education, information and easy access to resources. These interviews revealed the need for a single online resource for families seeking help, services and information.
“Through our extensive work and research, it became clear that there aren’t enough tools, resources or accessible information for survivors to get the help they need,” said Nicki Dell, Assistant Professor at the Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute at Cornell Tech. “We’re proud to be a partner in the development of NYCHOPE, having seen this campaign grow from its inception at one of our own classrooms, to its launch today. Working on this impactful campaign is a profound example of how Cornell Tech is reinventing the way we live in the digital age.”
A jet pilot, entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and philanthropist, Roger Burnell ’66 describes himself simply as a “student of life.” He dives headlong into new adventures—from training his family’s golden retriever for various dog show competitions, to exploring the field of wireless precision medicine, his latest intellectual passion.
In 2017, Burnell brought his zest for life and learning to a new level: Through a $5 million gift commitment, he and his wife endowed the Roger and Joelle Burnell Chair in Integrated Health and Technology at Cornell Tech.
The gift crystallized a few of Burnell’s interests and aspirations: After creating a scholarship at Columbia University in 2001 in honor of his father, who was an alumnus, Burnell had been considering a similarly transformative gift to his own alma mater. In the past couple of years, he had also become an angel investor for biotechnology start-ups such as Rejuvenan, and he sought to make a complementary investment in academia, which he believes is a vital, symbiotic partner to industry. Based in Los Altos, California, but raised in Scarsdale, New York, Burnell also feels a “spiritual and genetic” connection to New York, and he was very eager to help advance the region’s own burgeoning version of Silicon Valley, where he sees Cornell Tech as the central driving force.
State of the art recommendation algorithms are increasingly complex and no longer one-size fits all, and advances often only address specific scenarios. OpenRec, a project funded by the Connected Experiences Lab at Cornell Tech and the National Science Foundation (NSF), provides a modular architecture to easily adapt, extend, and compare algorithms for heterogeneous use cases.
The framework, developed by Longqi Yang, a PhD candidate at Cornell Tech and Deborah Estrin, Associate Dean and Robert V. Tishman ’37 Professor, was developed for researchers to develop and evaluate algorithms across a range of use cases and practitioners to customize state-of-the-art solutions.
When I found out that I was going to be a Wintern at Turner Broadcasting, the home of world-renowned programming, such as CNN, TNT, and Cartoon Network, I was shocked. Not only am I a huge fan of multimedia, but I also grew up watching these channels, getting my news from CNN and my daily dose of entertainment from Boomerang. Needless to say, working at Turner was a dream come true for me.
The First Day
On my first day at Turner, I was greeted by a frenzy of excitement near Columbus Circle, as cars and pedestrians alike bustled along on their way to work. Little did I know, I would be just as busy as these people once I started my Winternship. I tried to keep my cool as I walked into Time Warner Center, which represented the epitome of success in the media industry. It was there that I met my fellow Winterns, Jenny and Sabina. I knew that working with such a talented team of young women would make the Winternship experience that much more meaningful for me.
A portion of the beautiful 360-degree view of Central Park from Turner’s cafeteria. It’s difficult to focus on lunch when this is your view.
Our manager, Cristina Coleman, showed us around the building and introduced us to Michael Marinello, the Senior Vice President of Strategic Communications at Turner. He offered us a piece of advice for the duration of the program: a successful career in media technology was about more than just learning to code; it was also about diversity of thought.
That same day, Maigh Houlihan, one of the founders of a resource group called Ladies in Tech at Turner (LiTT), flew in from Georgia to speak to us about her experiences as a woman in the technology sector. The day ended with a tour of CNN, given to us by Lisa Pedrogo, the Vice President of Engineering and Strategic Initiatives at Turner Broadcasting. I tried to remain professional and withhold squeals of elation as I visited Anderson Cooper’s studio, bumped into Jeff Zucker, and watched Anthony Bourdain get interviewed.
Learning from the Best
Every day at Turner Broadcasting brought a new learning experience. Countless employees took time out of their busy days to speak to us about their roles in the company. We met senior executives, product managers, project managers, business analysts, and software developers, as well as various individuals who worked in strategic communications, public relations, and video production. Each of these people, no matter what their job was, used technology to complete their work on a daily basis.
Seema Kumar and Stina Pagliero spoke to us about the fields of business analysis and project management. This opened my eyes to a potential career path that I could take. I loved how fast-paced and consumer-oriented these roles were; their goal is to make the customer experience the best that it can be.
Meeting with top leadership at Turner Broadcasting. From left to right: Maigh Houlihan, Cristina Coleman, Jenny Chen, Sabina Akter, me, Michael Marinello).
Furthermore, I enjoyed learning from the CNNMoney team. We worked with them on their Money 3.0 release, sitting in on their daily sprint planning sessions. They introduced us to the importance of using an agile product management methodology, as opposed to waterfall, to implement adjustments to code in a timelier fashion. We had the chance to shadow actual programmers and see what a day in the life of a technologist was like. Front-end, back-end, and mobile developers, such as Noyda Fuentes, exposed us to the fundamental building blocks of writing code at Turner. It was interesting to learn that different Turner teams wrote code in different languages. Developers said they enjoy working on teams that write code in different languages because it gives them the opportunity to learn something new.
Technology in the Media Industry
As a long-time media aficionado, I often feared that I would be unable to find a way to merge my passions for tech and media. But this Winternship made me realize that my concerns were illogical. Every aspect of the media industry is fueled by computer science. Technologists are responsible for keeping television programming running seamlessly all day, every day. Without these workers, CNN would not be able to report on breaking news in bad weather, nor would shows like “The Alienist” be able to air new episodes abroad.
My fellow Winterns and I touring CNN’s studios. From left to right: me, Jenny Chen, Sabina Akter.
I was able to see first-hand how important employees with computer science skills are in an industry that requires content to be aired live at all times of the day. Hundreds of tickets, which report errors in technical systems, are submitted to Turner’s Global Technology and Operations unit each week. Turner employees have to solve these problems in real-time in order to protect the company from monetary losses.
This issue was further discussed when we watched “Live from Baghdad,” a film that documents CNN’s rise to prominence in the news industry. This film showed the critical importance of using reliable technology while broadcasting in a foreign country. If certain technological devices had not been made available to Robert Weiner, Ingrid Formanek, and their colleagues, they would not have been able to be the only news station reporting live from the Gulf War in Iraq in the 1990s.
In addition, Turner builds multiple internal systems to support advertising. These systems are of crucial importance to the company since half of its revenue comes from selling advertisements. Our team had the chance to sit through an Audience Monetization Systems training where we built ad proposals based on given demographics. This gave us valuable insight into the inner workings of the company’s revenue model. I used this information to create a system that allows Turner customers to make changes to television programming through the use of crowdsourcing technology. I was lucky enough to get the chance to present it to company executives at our final Turner hackathon.
A Strong Support System
Meeting the accomplished women who comprise LiTT was an honor. This organization provides a community for female developers, analysts, designers, testers, and leaders to learn from one another. The women in this organization are full-heartedly committed to ensuring that more women get involved in the tech sector. They meet up after work hours to discuss important topics that relate to gender equality in STEM fields. Even more impressive is the fact that they use their meetings as a safe space for women to talk about challenges at work and connect with one another.
A fun lunch with members of Ladies in Tech at Turner (LiTT).
Every single woman that I met was extremely supportive of our Wintern team. They wanted us to succeed in the tech field and were willing to help us make that happen. They told us to reach out to them if we needed career advice, mentorship, or just somebody to talk to. Knowing that there are organizations similar to WiTNY at large companies like Turner meant a lot to me. It made me realize that even if I was one of the only women in a room full of male technologists, there were plenty of networks of strong women in tech who would be there to help me feel comfortable every step of the way.
Takeaways
During a meeting with Terri Gunnell, the Senior Vice President of Audience Monetization Solutions at Turner, I asked, “What makes tech at Turner unique?” She told me that Turner builds its own internal systems and constantly invests in new technology. But, most importantly, she said that Turner embraces diversity.
At Turner, they encourage you to be yourself. They respect who you are as a person and where you came from because these experiences are what make you special. Being a Wintern at Turner Broadcasting showed me that my thoughts and skills are valuable. They allowed me to bring a unique perspective to a team. I now know that not only am I capable of entering the technology field, but that I can thrive in it.
LiTT was founded on the basis of three pillars: Build yourself. Brand yourself. Be yourself. This is exactly what I intend to do throughout the rest of my career. My decision to become a woman in tech has been solidified. Watch out world, the future is female.
About Annmarie Annmarie is a sophomore at Macaulay Honors College at Baruch. She is pursuing a double major in Computer Information Systems and Management of Musical Enterprises, as well as a double minor in Business Law and New York City Studies. She has also participated in WiTNY’s Summer Guild and Career Access Program.
Head of Startup Studio David Tisch talks about the impact of technology on every industry and how Cornell Tech can be the foundation to accelerates a career beyond traditional academic learning.
