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 Jacob Jeifa, a recent UD graduate who majored in entrepreneurship and technology innovation and is the founder of TenantU, an online platform that serves the needs of both landlords and student tenants.

TenantU is an online platform that brings the off-campus housing community together by providing tools to tenants and landlords, engaging and connecting them to each other while also making their duties as easy as possible.

In other words, TenantU provides tenants with a dashboard where they can handle their responsibilities, and provides landlords with property management software and free marketing opportunities.

“TenantU is built on the premise of platform economics, where we provide the platform through which basic services can be provided,” Jeifa said. This includes processing rent payments, maintenance requests, general messaging, property feature marketing and more.

“It’s a two-sided marketplace for both tenants and landlords,” he said.

Jeifa’s passion for real estate began in Woodbarry, New York, where both his father and mother worked in the field. It was through this exposure that he eventually landed a real estate brokerage internship in Manhattan.

Jeifa said he had an epiphany while on the job: “I realized I would enjoy the work I was doing more if I loved it.” This inspired him to explore entrepreneurship.

Jeifa began to work with the Horn Program in the hopes that the program’s focus on experiential, evidence-based entrepreneurship skills and active engagement with entrepreneurs would help him to guide his idea for TenantU in the right direction.

Jeifa pursued all the Horn Program had to offer, and was ultimately selected to participate in the Summer Founders Program.

The program is a 12-week long pre-accelerator used to validate members’ novel business models, and 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.

In order to achieve his goal of seeing the TenantU concept become a successful reality, Jeifa used his Summer Founders stipend to hire interns to assist him in building the business. He hopes to see the website officially launch within the next few months.

When asked whether he could have gotten this far without the Horn Program, Jeifa had this to say: “I wouldn’t have even started a company without the Horn Program. Horn is my office, my resource center and my family. It’s incredibly supportive here.”

About the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship

The Horn Program in Entrepreneurship 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.