Wright:
Welcome to the Princeton Spark. My name is Wright Seneres. 


This season of the Princeton Spark podcast is focused on the story of Adora, a uniquely Princeton startup that found opportunity even in a global health crisis, and achieved a dream exit. 
  
This team of student entrepreneurs built a company that disrupted the college tour industry and enabled more lower-income prospective students to access more colleges across the nation. 


With support from the Princeton entrepreneurial ecosystem, the Adora team launched, pivoted in the face of the coronavirus pandemic, scored some early successes, and then were acquired by a terrific company. We’ll meet some of those key people who helped them along the way, and explore some of the lessons that any entrepreneur can take from their experience. 


So if you haven’t already, please subscribe to the Princeton Spark in your podcast listening app of choice, so you don’t miss the rest of this fascinating story of Princeton student entrepreneurship. 










From the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, this is the Princeton Spark. I’m Wright Seneres. 


The various people that make up the Princeton entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem have long been at work, taking risks to bring transformational ideas and companies to the world, in the Nation’s Service and the Service of Humanity. These are the stories of Entrepreneurship the Princeton Way. 


At PEC, we support Princeton-connected startups and help to build the regional entrepreneurial ecosystem in New Jersey and beyond. 


In the last two episodes, we met Ron Miasnik and Raya Ward, two Princeton undergraduates who set out to solve a problem with college tours. Ron had this younger friend from high school who came to Princeton for a college visit.


Ron:
I asked him how he enjoyed the visit, his Princeton visit. And he looked at me without flinching and said, honestly, it sucked. 


Raya:
I was close friends with Ron when kind of the idea was ruminating in his head and he kept talking about like this friend that he had who came to visit and had an awful tour. And at first as a tour guide, I was like, so offended.


Wright: 
If you haven’t heard those two episodes already, I encourage you to go listen to it now wherever you found this episode, and then come back.   


After that blunt assessment from his friend, Ron got to work on an idea and started building a team. In came Raya, and the third member of their triumvirate, Joseph Rubin.


Joseph:
I'm Joseph. I'm a junior at Princeton, I studied computer science. And I was CTO of Adora and now at Full Measure I’m engineering.


When I first got here, I started a lot of computer science classes. And I met a lot of people, you know, in the department. And, you know, one of the people who I sometimes did work with at nights and studied with, for computer science tests was Ron. And so you know, because we knew each other on when he when he was looking to build a team, um, he contacted me, and, you know, we sat down, he explained the idea, and he showed me a demo of the augmented reality, and I thought that it was really, really interesting, I had never seen AR use like that before. Um, you know, it's still a relatively new technology, and really excited me.


Wright:
Unlike Ron, Joseph was not thinking that a startup was immediately in his future.


Joseph:
And then, you know, once we talked about it, I told him that, that I was that I was definitely in


But you know, I never really imagined that it would turn into, you know, turn into a whole company and, and lead to where we are.


I didn't really have that kind of that kind of background entrepreneurship, I really had had very little idea what I was getting myself into, um, you know, over time, as we, you know, hit more goals, you know, getting Princeton as a customer, pitch, you know, winning the pitch competition, and, you know, more and more, it sort of became, you know, became more real to me as, as sort of an entrepreneurial endeavor at the beginning, it was, you know, working on some apps, you know, just to see where it went, it was it was totally, totally foreign experience.


Wright:
Not every cool idea becomes a company. What was it about this idea that Ron had? That’s after the break.


Wright (advertisement):
Hello podcast listener. I would love for you to send this podcast to a friend, but if you’re like me, and I know I am, I’m probably washing the dishes as I listen to this podcast. So you probably can’t quite send this to your friend right this second. That’s okay, just remember this handy dandy acronym and send it when you’re done the dishes. Ready? Here’s the acronym: S-P-A-R-K. Spark. 


Send
Podcast
Along;
Recommend
Kindly


That’s: Send Podcast Along; Recommend Kindly. And send the Princeton Spark to a friend. Now on with the show. 


Wright:
Welcome back to the Princeton Spark. Something was different about this project, this cool idea. So I asked Joseph what it was that kept him motivated to keep working. 


Joseph:
Yeah, um, I think probably, it's, it was a lot about the methodology and how seriously we took ourselves. I think that, um, you know, we we sort of each, we each brought a really important skill here, you know, in terms of the time technical side in terms of running the business, and, and of course, user experience. And I think bringing all those pieces together, we sort of we just we started, we started really thinking about, like, how could we make How can we actually make this work and make it really good and combine all the things that we know how to do. And when that happens, no, you got your designs coming in from Raya that look really nice when I implement them. And Ron's, you know, talking to Princeton and potential customers, and you're setting up setting up meetings and work sessions. And, you know, when you when you kind of bring all those pieces together, then it it's it's not, you know, it sort of becomes this, this real thing that, you know, I guess, I guess the best way to describe it is, you know, you're building something that no longer I guess, just no longer just feels like, you know, like a student project. And I think that's one of the reasons that we kept going.


Wright:
No longer just a student project. When they built something they could show to the Admission office at Princeton, then the game was raised. But like everything else in March of 2020, the coronavirus forced everyone to adapt and pivot. Here is Emily Crosby, the assistant dean for events and visitor management, who had been helping the Adora team as they developed their product.


Emily:
We were getting ready to launch and we were going to use it in the summer of 2020, and make a whole big splash about like coming to campus using our app, because our tours are somewhat limited in the summer, because you don't have that many students on campus. So I think, you know, in March, April, you know, as as it became evident that this problem was not going away anytime soon. I think they had already started to think about, you know, okay, how do we reach people now? They're in their homes, because, I mean, they really they had all of the information. They have the capability to create this custom tour of campus. And there's already platforms out there that provide you with it. Match tour not so much a customized, you know, built special for you tour. So, I think it just came to them that, alright, let's let's meet people where they are, which is in their homes and create a new version of this platform just building off what we already had.


Wright:
Out of the need to stay home and stay safe but still have a viable way to personalize the college tour experience, Adora got to work. In the next episode of the Princeton Spark, we will hear from Ann Kirschner, a longtime education technology entrepreneur, a Princeton trustee and an advisor to the Adora team. 


Ann:
the reality is that Adora was was in in a great place, before we were forced to go virtual. And then once we went virtual, they were already in place to take full advantage and to serve students in a way that now was it was no longer optional, it was gonna be required. 


Wright:
We’ll explore more about edtech and the pandemic coming up on the Princeton Spark. This season we’ll also dive into how other students can build impactful ventures, how universities can support them, how Adora made access and equity an integral part of their product, the big decisions around an exit for a startup, and lots more. 


The Princeton Spark is a production of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, which is Anne-Marie Maman, Don Seitz, Lauren Bender, Diane DeLorenzo, Neal Bituin, and me, Wright Seneres.
 
I engineered this episode on Zoom and working from home. Additional engineering by Dan Kearns at the Princeton Broadcast Center. Edited by Brandon Apter. 


I designed the sound and music for this episode. Our theme music is by the Treadmills, who are me on guitar and bass, and John Damond on drums. 
 
Special thanks to Alice Seneres, Scott Colan, Ron Miasnik, Raya Ward, Joseph Rubin, Emily Crosby, Ann Kirschner, and our friends at Creative Circle, Heather Masse and Tiffany Novak.  
 
If you’ve enjoyed these episodes, please tell a friend. Sharing helps the most. 
 
Follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook at @princetonspark. You’ll find some extra content there, you can put some faces to the names and the voices that you heard on this episode, and more. 


We also have a newsletter so you don’t miss out on anything Princeton Spark. You can subscribe at PrincetonSpark.com. 
 
The views expressed by our guests on this show are theirs and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Princeton Entrepreneurship Council, the Office of the Dean for Research, Princeton Innovation, or Princeton University.
 
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Thanks for listening.