Startup Shows Usefulness of Shea Center and Accelerators

Two Boston College students, Christian Nicholson and Michael Gordon, both BC ’15, founded a music-sharing company called EchoMe two years ago. They have created an application that allows people to share music with each other. Users can broadcast songs, much like a radio station, while other users tune in to listen to the shared music. The application runs with streaming sources such as Spotify and Soundcloud, and they hope to expand it to Youtube Red and Google Play in the future.

Much of this company’s early efforts were made possible, in part, because of BC’s entrepreneurship programs. The Shea Center, founded in 2014 to promote entrepreneurship among BC students, helped Nicholson and Gordon in their efforts to attend accelerator programs and incubators that offer opportunity to startup companies. Anders Bill, MCAS ’17, joined the EchoMe crew and pitched the company at the Elevator Pitch Competition, where it won Best Pitch and Crowd Favorite. After this early success, the company continued to benefit from the resources BC now offers through initiatives like the Shea Center. In an effort to support the budding entrepreneurs, BC flew them to Georgia to participate in another business competition. At the competition, they were named one of the top five undergraduate businesses in the Atlantic Coast Conference.

BC has played a role in the ongoing development of EchoMe. This is only one example of the positive effects that the Shea center and other BC programs can have on entrepreneurial-minded students. Many students benefit from these tools. Although there were successful startups at BC before these new programs, the center remains a good use of resources. This is an example of the Shea Center’s success in its efforts to expand entrepreneurship on campus. BC has put considerable resources toward enriching these programs and creating a more robust startup culture at BC and it is through the development of new startups like EchoMe that we can see signs of success in these programs.

These new centers work to give BC students the same opportunities that students at Harvard and MIT have when it comes to entrepreneurial support. Programs and centers like this raise BC’s overall profile and make BC students more competitive in the entreprenurial world.

“I have always wanted to be an entrepreneur. [Nicholson and Gordon] have this really amazing spirit … they are very confident in what they do and they make people believe in their dreams,” Bill said.

The purpose of these new programs is to give students like Bill the chance to succeed. As it works to do this, the Shea Center deserves commendation for its programs and tools.

Featured Image by Francisco Ruela / Heights Editor