With its new Summer Founders Program, the University of Delaware’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship is supporting the efforts of eight UD student teams to develop their business venture ideas.

On Fridays throughout this summer, the Summer Founders Fridays series will highlight one venture and how its creators hope to impact the world.

This Friday, the series focuses on venture creator Farhad Baqi, a UD senior majoring in entrepreneurship and technology innovation and founder of Blue Cube Technologies.

Baqi said that he tried to start a business on his own in the past, but he needed better access to resources.

Then during Baqi’s junior year, his brother Seyar Baqi and Edward Bayley, both now UD alumni, approached him about their invention, the Curing Cube.

The Curing Cube is a light-curing unit that improves upon current designs used in the dental field to cure composite materials. In other words, it hardens dental molds so that they don’t break or wear away as quickly.

“The technology is far better,” Baqi said. “It cures moldings in half the time, more accurately, and makes them more durable. People simply have a better experience using it because of that.”

In May, the team presented the Curing Cube at the Horn Program’s 2016 Hen Hatch startup funding competition, where they won $13,200 to capture value from their new idea.

Now, Baqi is spending the summer working with Horn’s Summer Founders Program to bring the Curing Cube to dental offices across the country.

The program, a 12-week long pre-accelerator used to validate members’ novel business models, provides students with stipends while they work to develop their ventures. Participants have weekly mentoring and educational sessions, progress meetings with philanthropic investors and access to free and discounted services at the Horn Program’s Venture Development Center.

Baqi said that his team is looking toward the future, determining the size of the Curing Cube’s market and potential early adopters of the new technology. He added that the support of the Horn Program has been integral to the success of this process.

“At Horn, I gain so much from [even] my failures.” Baqi said. “It’s not the kind of learning you get from reading books. It’s from making mistakes, and that’s far more impactful because it sticks to you for your whole life.”

Baqi encouraged fellow students with entrepreneurial goals to pursue these goals while enrolled at UD.

“You have so little to lose and so much to gain just from trying.”

About the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship

The Horn Program ignites imaginations and empowers world changers through entrepreneurial education.

The program’s offerings emphasize experiential learning, evidence-based entrepreneurship and active engagement with entrepreneurs, business leaders and members of the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Participation in Horn Program courses and co-curricular activities empowers students by providing them with the knowledge, skills, connections and access to resources needed to successfully manifest innovation and thrive in a rapidly changing world.