An Afternoon at the Joiner Fair: Building Connections at Venture Lab

Wednesday, February 12 was a gloomy day in Philadelphia, but on the second floor of Tangen Hall — the home of Venture Lab — the atmosphere was warm and inviting. Students and alumni from across the University were preparing for the Joiner Fair, a tabling event that connects current students with early-stage venture teams seeking project staff, permanent team members, and more.

“I’ve gotten a ton of great usage from the Joiner Fair,” said Archana Somasegar, WG’24, whose venture, MineMe, is an AI copilot designed to support customer success teams. “I’ve found people to help envision and design the product, engineers to help build it, sales and marketing people to cement and implement a go-to-market strategy. Truly, the people here are so smart and so excited about this part of the startup world, so it’s really great to be able to tap into that network.”

Somasegar is no stranger to Venture Lab. As an MBA student, she took part in the VIP-X Accelerator, an intensive three-month program that provides high-potential ventures with access to funding, mentorship, and a supportive environment in which to progress. “A lot of great speakers came in that I was able to then follow up with, pick their brains,” she said.
“But the most important thing, and the most subtle, was finding a community of entrepreneurs.”

Like Somasegar, Jennifer Bryan, WG’25, G’25, was quick to take advantage of Venture Lab’s offerings. “I think Venture Lab is just one of those things that when you get on campus, you start to see all the resources that a place like Penn would have,” said Bryan, a student in the Africa Program (French) at the Lauder Institute. After touring Tangen Hall with Lauder, Bryan became involved with Venture Lab’s Venture Initiation Program (VIP) Incubator, which offers resources like coaching and legal support to any student with a Venture Lab membership.

Bryan’s venture, Menyou — “a platform that makes dining easier for people with dietary restrictions” — was inspired in part by her own experiences. “I’ve always known that I want to be an entrepreneur, to create something,” she said. “I wasn’t quite sure what, but as someone with a lot of dietary restrictions, realizing the pains that people experience when they’re on a first date or at a business meeting — that’s something that I want to make better for diners and food service providers alike.”

Though she mentioned hoping the Joiner Fair would connect her with students with the engineering background required to help bring the platform to life, Bryan also noted that she looks forward to connecting with Wharton alumni in the food and restaurant tech space in the future.

Nidhi Mahale, WG’27, L’27, a first year in the Carey JD/MBA Program, shared a similarly personal story about her venture, Trove, a project management platform designed for use in transactional law. As she discovered while working at a law firm one summer, many transactional lawyers still use Word documents to track deadlines. “My job at the firm was to manage the Word document,” she said. “It was very old school. I talked to a lot of other attorneys here at the law school, and across the board, deadlines were managed on Word, or at best in an Excel spreadsheet. It was crazy to see.”

Mahale and her cofounder, Esha Desai, WG’27, L’27, turned their disbelief into a business idea — and turned to Venture Lab for support. “In the process of talking to a lot of professors at both the law school and the business school, they all started bringing up Tangen Hall,” Mahale said. “Eventually we just came down here ourselves to figure out what it was, and we realized that it’s this really wonderful space where you’ve got people who’re much more knowledgeable about entrepreneurship than we are.”

Those connections have made all the difference. “I’m meeting with a lawyer tomorrow to talk to them about some of the stuff that they’re working on and get their insight on the legal field,” Mahale said. “As people who are building something for the first time ever, there’s a lot that we don’t know, so it’s nice to have a space where we can come and ask people our questions.”

Venture Lab — a Wharton-led initiative — impacts thousands of students through its myriad resources, which include programs like VIP-X and access to state-of-the-art maker spaces. Donor support plays a pivotal role in growing and maintaining Venture Lab’s reach, as do the valuable insights of Wharton alumni who stop by to offer their time. “In my work experience before this,” Somasegar shared, “I was in the startup ecosystem, but Wharton was the security blanket that really helped me feel like I could take the leap. I’m super excited and grateful for that.”