When Ted Wind was in grade school, his classmates paid him to write stories about them. In high school, he started his own real estate photography business.
For as long as he can remember, Wind, CSOM ’25, has understood consumer needs and delivered creative solutions. His latest venture, Socion, is capitalizing on the growth of the modern-day influencer.
“These smaller creators and the midsize creators—they’re really just like small businesses of one person.” Wind said. “True artists, creatives, who just want to either help people or share their message with people”
By treating influencers not merely as images on a screen but as real people trying to manage their branding, Wind saw an opportunity. So, he created Socion.
“It is a campaign management platform for influencer marketers and influencer marketing agencies,” Wind said.
The idea was simple: influencers need help organizing their business in a way that allows them to meet deadlines and work on initiatives with ease. Wind knew just the trick.
He took the idea to Accelerate@Shea, where he competed in a case competition and secured funding from BC alumni invested in student entrepreneurship. Armed with fresh finances and an innovative idea, Wind began working on Socion full-time the summer after his sophomore year.
“That’s the way you actually grow businesses,” Wind said. “You really have to jump in two feet first and be like alright, yeah, we’re gonna do this. We’re gonna build this out full-time.”
Working alongside his co-founder Daniel Biundo, MCAS ’25, Wind grew the business throughout the summer, honing the developing software and building customer relations.
Having spent his freshman and sophomore years interning at a BC-student-run real estate software startup named Aryeo, Wind understood the path to scaling a business. While wind was only Aryeo’s fifth employee, he soon found himself as of one of more than 50 people working for the company.
When Aryeo was then sold to Zillow, Wind realized the full potential of a college student startup.
“That was the pivotal moment,” Wind said. “I’m like holy shit, I can do this myself.”
Wind’s co-founder Biundo was roped into the project after a fateful computer science class in which Wind recognized Biundo’s talent for coding. Wind pitched the idea with all his enthusiasm and excitement, and Biundo couldn’t help but opt-in.
“I was dumb enough to fall for it,” Biundo said. “And it was the greatest decision I ever made,”
Biundo stressed Wind’s ability to dive into a project and ensure its success through his commitment to the ideas he feels strongly about and infectious positive energy.
“His passion—you talk to him—I think that really comes through more than anything else,” Biundo said. “It’s like he lives and breathes entrepreneurship.”
In these beginning stages, it was the people that made all the difference in Socion’s success, according to Wind.
“The people we talked to in the beginning ended up being the people that we went back to and who wound up actually using our product,” Wind said.
Wind went into customer calls leaving his pre-conceived ideas about consumer needs at the door, instead focusing solely on what customers said they struggled with.
“They own the problem, I own the solution,” Wind said.
Wind meant it, writing this mantra at the top of each page of his notes before interviewing a new customer.
The connections Wind fostered made all the difference in maintaining loyal agencies and influencers. After selling software to campaign agencies, Wind and his team worked directly with influencers themselves to help them set up the new software. Today, those relationships go beyond business.
Realizing that creators in Boston lacked a sense of community and connection, Wind started building group chats of creators and planning dinners to bring them together. While typical influencer get-togethers aim to garner advertisements for companies’ products, Wind’s events lacked ulterior motives. Instead, they served as a place for creators to be themselves and share their grievances.
“When you get to meet the real faces behind these accounts, they’re huge,” Wind said. “I mean, just some really smart people who really really care.”
The dinner series proved to be one of the most rewarding parts of Socion, as it allowed Wind to build a base of support and connection with his customers and learn what issues they were dealing with on an intimate level.
This sense of collaboration and camaraderie also manifested within the daily operations of Socion. Between Wind, his co-founder Biundo, and a few interns from BC, Socion became a group of driven, creative people, passionate about making the company work and grow.
“That teamwork,” Wind said. “That sense of togetherness, of ‘we’re all working for the same goal’—to have that in a career is probably one of the most rewarding things I could possibly think of.”
After hearing Wind deliver his compelling Socion sales pitch to another Shea student, Kyle Dapice, CSOM ’27, wanted in. He shared his interest in the company with Wind, and soon thereafter took on an internship position at the startup in the second semester of his freshman year.
But Dapice gained more than just a resume point—he found a mentor in Wind, he said.
“Ted is great, he is very passionate, something that made it more interesting and enjoyable for me, and just really very smart,” Dapice said. “So I think that definitely draws a lot of energy.”
Going forward, Wind is hopeful that this dedicated and tight-knit group will continue down their entrepreneurial paths, whether that be in a Socion-related venture or not. If there’s one thing he knows for sure, it’s that more opportunities lie ahead.
“Definitely moving forward, gonna try something new again, take another swing, right?” Wind said. “You know, take enough swings when you’re at the play, and eventually you’re gonna hit something.”
After his experience with Socion, Wind remains interested in the creator economy, but said he wants to try for something bigger—something that hits on the “pain points” of an industry and has scaling potential.
When Wind graduates in May, he hopes to make a career with his two lifelong passions for entrepreneurship and teamwork in mind.
“Just go for it,” Wind said. “We all have crazy ideas … and so often we think to ourselves, like, ah man, there’s no way that could actually happen.”
But even with uncertainty around what his big idea will entail, Wind is confident that he will build something that matters, through continued conversations with customers and collaboration with good people.
Though Socion is likely to take a backseat as Wind explores his upcoming venture, it will always hold a special place in his heart for the connections it helped build and the experience it gave him.
“We are going to go somewhere next,” Wind said. “I absolutely love this. There’s been nothing more fulfilling I’ve ever done in my life.”
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