“I knew I always wanted to be an entrepreneur and had it in my blood since both of my parents had their own companies,” says fourth-year Business and Technology major Seth Kirschner. “During my second semester, I had the idea of starting an undergraduate Entrepreneurship Club and before I knew it, Attila Entrepreneurs was born.” Attila Entrepreneurs is a club which aims to establish and maintain a centralized community for entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial thinkers and provide avenues by which students can learn about the fundamentals of entrepreneurship.
Seth just about embodies the Stevens maxim of being the “Innovation University.” He is the founder and president of Attila Entrepreneurs, a member of the Stevens Venture Center, Business School Ambassador & Entrepreneurship Guest Lecturer, StevensTHON Sponsorship Chair, Transfer Student Association (TSA) President and Founding Member, and Gear & Triangle Honor Society Alumni Chair. For fun, Seth enjoys skiing, tennis, EDM music and concerts, and piano.
Some of Seth’s exposure to entrepreneurship came through his parents, who have owned their own businesses. In addition, he had internships with small service providers that operate and control IT for small and medium-sized enterprises. The owner of one of the companies never went to college, and immediately after graduating high school at age 19, he started his own business. “This inspired me to do the same once I had the opportunity and ironically enough, I was also 19 when I started my own IT consulting firm,” Seth explains. “I realized that learning the hard way and failing is the greatest teacher. I decided to begin pursuing an LLC and begin doing work for small IT companies and residential homes by selling anything I could already do. In this process, I established sales experience, customer relationship, accounting, finance, further IT knowledge, networking and more.” It was through these unique experiences that Seth realized that entrepreneurship was the path that interested him the most.
Through the Venture Center, Seth was introduced to Mukund Iyengar, Entrepreneur in Residence at Stevens and a professor who most engineering students know through Intro to Programming, a.k.a. E 115, where asking questions in class earned students candy. Additionally, Seth met Adrienne Choma, the current Director of the Stevens Venture Center (SVC), and other people, such as Mo Deghani, the Vice-Provost of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at Stevens. Seth clarifies, “While Mo, Adrienne, Mukund are great mentors and incredible individuals, they had limited involvement in MiraSaves. From a strategic standpoint, Adrienne has reviewed some of our presentations and critically identified flaws, that would be it.” Additionally, the Stevens Venture Center provides little hand-holding but allows for 35+ Entrepreneurs in Residence (known as EIRs) from different backgrounds to help evolve students’ companies and get to the next steps. “The hard work falls on us!” Seth exclaims. “We were with EIRs that know more about our industry and strategically work with additional EIRs ad-hoc in-case we need legal support, financial planning, and marketing advancements.” Utilizing these connections, Seth started forming a network of people who really cared about entrepreneurship and became more involved with the Stevens Venture Center as it was just starting itself.
“The ideation of MiraView came from a friend who I met when he first came to Stevens, CJ Internicola, who is now my Co-founder,” Seth recounts. “Through my work with StevensTHON, earlier philanthropy, and other community initiatives, I knew my startup had to have a major community aspect to it. I wanted to build a business to help people— not necessarily [to] make tons of money.” Growing up, CJ had a friend who suffered from PTSD, and their ability to go through life day-to-day was much more challenging. Through this collaboration, MiraView came to be. MiraView is a software package for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) treatment and tracking, and it provides therapists with “actionable information on their patient’s symptoms, triggers, and related experiences to jumpstart cognitive behavioral therapy,” Seth says. “Therapists can use this information to measure the efficacy of their treatment methods, identify trends, and make the most out of every minute they spend with their patients.” Furthermore, MiraView connects with patients using Mira for PTSD, a mobile application that includes a personalized voice assistant and an interactive toolkit to ground users when they experience flashbacks, anxiety attacks, and other PTSD related crises. The application utilizes standardized self-reporting and smart journal prompts to gather additional information about a user’s symptoms and progress. With MiraView and Mira for PTSD, PTSD sufferers will have better access to care when they need it the most.
MiraView is about halfway to becoming a fully deployable application, is ready for beta testing, and is already in MVP (Minimum Viable Product) form. “We will begin piloting our mobile virtual assistant in the coming weeks,” Seth declares. “We built our product with scalability in mind, meaning we can begin offering apps for other debilitating mental illnesses or obesity etc., and have MiraView, our platform for professionals, easily adaptable to the needs of the mobile application. We have thrown around the possibility of wearable technologies and virtual/augmented reality as options for therapy and support as well.”
“Entrepreneurship has taught me everything that you can’t learn in a classroom,” Seth says. “Learning from failing and experimenting is one of the greatest components of entrepreneurship. Academia cannot keep up with the pace that the world is advancing forward. To be a better candidate for any job, having the initiative to start something and fail miserably gives you an incredible story to tell that you could never experience in a classroom environment.” Classes helped during the startup process, which included taking into consideration all the components that go into building a firm, such as team building and forming a company culture, mission, and vision. Entrepreneurship classes helped when understanding the larger, macro perspective, while marketing and accounting helped with niche parts of the startup. Learning happens both inside and outside the classroom, and it is key that as an entrepreneur, one finds a balance between the two.
“We are the innovation university and I think President Farvardin has done an incredible job of creating an entrepreneurial community at Stevens,” Seth says. “Most students throughout their time at Stevens take a course in Entrepreneurship or Entrepreneurial Thinking; this differentiates us from many universities and provides a unique value perspective. Entrepreneurship is what keeps the world moving forward, what makes companies outdated, and what brings in inventions and innovations.” A quote from Steve Jobs just about sums it up: “Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
While entrepreneurship as a career is not a great fit for everyone, there are always opportunities to interact, work for, and become part of a movement that moves the world forward. I truly believe that Stevens embraces entrepreneurship at its fullest and will continue to grow.
“If you have an idea, rather than just thinking about it, go out and talk to people, validate your idea, get feedback because you never know how your idea might impact the world or others,” says Seth. “In addition, speak up, find people who believe in what you believe in, and form bonds with others. Network, network, and network like crazy throughout college because everyone is willing to give back to an undergraduate student, and this is your time to use your status to your advantage. Talk to professors and alumni, and keep their contact information somewhere, such as LinkedIn, and follow-up with people. Connections are everything in life and people should remember what you can provide to them, not just your name, but what you know, and how well you do x, y, or z.”
Looking to the future, Seth plans to eventually run his own company and to one day write a book about his personal experiences. “I enjoy lecturing and giving back so [I may] possibly become an adjunct sometime throughout my career!”
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