WPI Journal - The Magazine for WPI Alumni

WIN 2013

The Alumni Magazine for Worcester Polytechnic Institute. (WPI)

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Caprio used his social network contacts to wheedle an ofƂcial invite on the newly expanded New York City StartupBus in 2011, went through a screening and interview process, and was accepted two days before the bus rolled. "I had a couple of days to get packed. I had nowhere to stay in Austin. I had never been to Texas. Didn't even have a South by Southwest badge. But the experience changed my life." His inaugural team tied for Ƃrst place in the StartupBus competition out of 38 national teams that year. His team created TripMedi, an intuitive online resource to weigh options for medical treatment and procedures outside the United States comparing quality, cost, and insurance coverage while collecting review feedback from users. The start-up was eventually pitched to seed-stage funding Ƃrm Y Combinator in San Francisco, but has since stalled. If it ever does succeed as an operating business, Caprio is assured a 1 percent equity. But that, he says, is really beside the point. He was hooked on the process itself. "I met all these amazing people and we ended up creating this fantastic community of top talent in New York City. They're all entrepreneurial people who have this common bond of working under these extraordinary constraints and conditions." The community-building aspect of StartUpBus appealed so much to Caprio that he served as the New York City bus conductor for the 2012 event. Last spring the competition grew to more than 300 "buspreneurs," including those on buses departing Boston, Cincinnati, Florida, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Louisiana, Mexico, New York, Silicon Valley, Stanford, and Washington, D.C. Two of Caprio's New York bus teams made the competition semiƂnals. He took the volunteer conductor position because he was eager to give other entrepreneurial talent a taste of the awakening he had experienced the year before. "My role as bus conductor is one of cheerleader, drill sergeant, task master, and mommy and daddy. I have to comfort them, but I also have to challenge them—and it's a very emotional, wearing process. But when it's all said and done, I feel so much pride in their work. It's like being a proud parent." And good parenting isn't always easy. "I sometimes feel like a jerk because I have to put them through a ritual to push them out of their comfort zones in order to show them what they are truly capable of." He learned the importance of soft skills at WPI, he says, and his time on the bus has taken those skills to another level. "WPI prepared me well for working with people—project 48 Winter 2013 teams were important during my entire program. Knowing how to deal with people in different circumstances and working with social and team dynamics are critical skills I learned at WPI." The Plan format, more than anything, is what brought him to WPI. "I liked that the WPI program is accelerated with quarter terms, team projects, future problem solving, and plenty of independent study. That appealed to me and gave me the initiative to become an entrepreneur. I also liked the fact that there was a pizza parlor on campus [Gompei's Place in Sanford Riley, where the Little Theatre is now]." (Did we mention Mike is from Brooklyn?) Caprio recalls an independent study class at WPI, half lecture and half speaker series, taught by Art Gerstenfeld and Don Berth, that "had a huge, huge impact on me." The speaker series featured successful entrepreneurs from a wide variety of industries and the readings of renowned management theorist Peter Drucker. "We were taught the principles of 'entrepreneurial judo.'" Those judo skills no doubt came in handy wrestling with never-ending issues on the NYC StartupBus. After making stops in Nashville and Baton Rouge to pitch start-up ideas and receive mentoring from community businessmen—and a pit stop at Graceland in Memphis for a quick dose of Elvis (this was a road trip after all)—the bus rolled into San Antonio on the third day to make team start-up pitches at Rackspace hosting headquarters to the likes of Silicon Valley venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki and former Microsoft exec and Rackspace partner Robert Scoble before the ofƂcial competition even began in Austin. Only one in three applicants got seats on the buses this year, Caprio says. "So we gave them the star treatment wherever they went." Competition and cooperation (not to mention some serious sleep deprivation and poor nutrition) goes hand-in-hand

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