Liz O’Day made a deal with God when she was 8 years old. If her big brother wasn’t killed by the illness he had in the hospital in Boston, then she would devote her life to science. 30 years later, Liz is fulfilling that promise – but with an unexpected twist.
As a scientist and entrepreneur, Olaris CEO O’Day discovered a passion for founding companies. She started with a science-fashion company she ran from her kitchen counter and went on to found start-up Olaris. This company uses artificial intelligence to provide diagnostic solutions and medical therapies that help patients globally. As O’Day completes her Ph.D., she feels the urge to take these innovations directly to them and founded Olaris. Resources including Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub connected her with mentors who helped her grow as an entrepreneur.
Alexis, the CEO of her own startup and a scientist says “I definitely had this entrepreneurialism in me, but these support systems helped draw it out even further.” Her startup is partially supported by Microsoft, an external entity that provides validation of her abilities as an entrepreneur and female scientist.
Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub works to improve the 70% of startups that fail within two years. This program requires just a business idea and an active LinkedIn profile to join and it’s geared to help entrepreneurs at all stages, as well as provide access to a multitude of technical resources including Microsoft tools and training, along with curated connections to other entrepreneurial veterans and experts in the industry.
The woman stands in front of the sign.
Laura Housman, Olaris Chief Commercial and Operations Officer, and founder Liz O’Day, Ph.D., have been able to grow their company with the help of programs that connect entrepreneurs with investors, such as Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub. Dr. O’Day may be seen in the photo above speaking at a roundtable at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference.
Olaris, a life sciences company based in Boston’s thriving hub, was able to shorten the AI machine learning time to minutes rather than days with help from Microsoft mentors. This opened up access to experts, which freed the startup’s team from technical challenges and helped them speed development of a non-invasive kidney transplant diagnostic test. As well as freeing them from laptop constraints, Azure credits were a tipping point that allowed Olaris to build a metabolomics platform used by scientists around the world.
When O’Day joined the program, she began to get connected with other high-level women in the startup world. She also found that this was a great way for her to grow personally as a CEO and to be able to empathize with people who were in the same position.
This is a woman who is smiling while wearing a white shirt.
Lahini Arunachalam is the Product Manager for Microsoft for Startups. (Photo provided by Arunachalam.)
Lahini Arunachalam, who leads the product team for Microsoft for Startups, shares her excitement about Founders Hub: “Democratizing innovation is what we’re all about,” she says. “If you have an idea, we want to work with you. We have a streamlined process for businesses to work with us.”
Harley Blakeman’s entrepreneurial journey toward launching his company was anything but easy.
Growing up in Florida, Joe Blakeman’s drug-addicted mother disappeared, and his father died before he turned 18. That’s when he dropped out of high school and began selling drugs to support himself. And a month later, the 18-year-old got caught and was sentenced to jail for 14 months. But it was like a reset button; it helped him right his life.
Blakeman was one of the youngest inmates in an adult prison. He studied hard, participated in jail activities, and earned his GED diploma. Once he got out, he went to live with his aunt in Ohio. He obtained a business degree from an accredited university before returning to New York City and founding a digital marketing company.
Even with top grades and a strong work ethic, Blakeman couldn’t keep up in the job market. After almost a hundred interviews, he still couldn’t find any luck until he tried something new. He proactively told hiring teams about his past when they reached out to him. One senior manager was impressed with his honesty and gave him a chance.
After a couple of years as a police officer, he was promoted to detective and considered it one of the greatest achievements in his life. His salary also doubled, giving him the financial freedom to buy his own house and car.
But he couldn’t stop thinking about how hard it is for ex-convicts to find a job after they’ve been released. For many, a failed background check is enough to end the application process. The struggle takes a toll on their mental health, making them more likely to give up — and often leading them back towards criminal activity and reincarceration.
Drawing from his personal experience and research, Blakeman worked to create Honest Jobs, a national fair-chance employment network that connects ex-convicts trying to enter the workforce with companies looking to hire workers with criminal records.
The man stands in front of a brick wall with his arms crossed.
Founder and CEO of Honest Jobs Harley Blakeman
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Honest Jobs CTO, Mark Doyle, says “We believe that great digital products come from passionate and dedicated founders. We’re excited to work with driven individuals who are committed to making their vision a reality.”
“We want to normalize hiring people with criminal records, chipping away at the stigma where we’re a country that believes in rehabilitation,” Blakeman says. “After you’ve been punished, you shouldn’t be punished for the rest of your life.”
Blakeman didn’t think he would go from convict to CEO.
Jason Blakeman’s success with Honest Jobs has a lot to do with his connections on social media. After connecting to Mark Doyle, Jason learned about Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub and took advantage of the Azure cloud credits, technical expertise and more. When he met with Doyle the second time, his company, honestjobs.com, was averaging about one hire per month. Now Honest Jobs is up to 17 employees–13 ex-cons–and all clients are found jobs within 23 days on average!
“We were able to access technical expertise on the fly with the help of this platform. The feedback we got from experts changed our path and solved some tough issues,” Doyle tells us.
They were able to fix the crawls with code and also found ways to improve their system. One of the fixes was providing users with a green band on the site that shows them potential jobs in their area. The success for this came from looking at an email another business owner sent out and applying it to Affilradle.com. The other fix is from Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services which gave Affiladle.com “just enough guidance” and helped them get started on one of their own algorithms, called EngagementIQ.
Creating The Real World- my new language learning tool – was an opportunity for me to share what I’ve come to believe about being an entrepreneur.
Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub launched in March 2022 to give entrepreneurs the chance to earn more Azure credits and gain access to a host of free Microsoft products and services, as well as offers from external partners. In addition, four new LinkedIn benefits have been added to help founders with recruitment, sales leads, and digital marketing.
This program helps startups that don’t have a big budget, and the startup ecosystem consequently reflects the “world as it is.” That’s what Microsoft for Startups says.
“People who haven’t had the opportunity to go to places like Berkeley or have larger networks of people they can lean on simply don’t have access to these resources,” says Arunachalam, who joined Microsoft in 2018 after a successful career as a product leader at startups. “You need to provide help to the self-taught, self-funded, those who are just learning coding and want to build a startup that solves problems they’ve experienced in their life.”
One of the most powerful benefits of having diverse founders is solving diverse problems.
Janvier Wete knows how difficult it can be to juggle different part-time jobs while staying committed to your startup. That’s why he’s committed to helping startups better their lives, not only as founders but also as employees.
Born to parents who migrated from the Republic of Congo, Wete spends his adolescence in London. He has a cousin in Paris and thought Wete had a luxurious lifestyle, like the characters in the British reality TV show “Made In Chelsea” filmed in a tony section of London. But after he moves to Brixton, an area that’s anywhere but posh, he learns different.
A man stands holding a microphone.
Janvier Wete is the founder and CEO of Minute Shorts, a company that has been providing quality short videos for minutes.
Wete decided to show the audience a different perspective of Brixton with his “Made in Brixton” spoof show trailer and it went viral.
Wete fell out of love with the world she is familiar with and knew she needed to create something that reflected her reality. That spark was the motivation behind everything she has done.
The filmmaker found the limitations of the film world first-hand through this experience. Once the film festival was over, he soon realized that there was no other good place for short films to live and be discovered. Video sharing platforms are often crowded, which means content gets lost quickly. The film industry didn’t have a good way for short-film directors to make a living either – and that’s what made him think, “Hey, why don’t we have a home for short films?”
With a background in creativity but no business or technical skills, Wete harnessed social media to find web developers and business partners for his company, Minute Shorts. This free platform highlights short films and compensates their creators through ad revenue and premium subscriptions. With the help of Microsoft for Startups Founders Hub, we provided the technical tools he needed to create an app and find connections to mentors and investors.
This is a screenshot of my phone and tablet.
Minute Shorts is a massive platform that provides short films and compensates the creators through ads and premium subscriptions. (Photo provided by Minute Shorts.)
Launched in 2019, just a few months before pandemic lockdowns made at-home entertainment popular, Minute Shorts ballooned from roughly 1,000 viewers to more than one million. The service receives about 400 film submissions every month and currently holds more than 3,000 short films, which were carefully chosen by Wete to build a platform that promotes diverse talent around the world.
“On the business side, we need to connect with investors and be a part of a hub for other founders and mentors,” says Wete.
He also says that he went to “loads” of networking events for Microsoft hosted by the company that helped his startup get the funding and development it needed.
O’Dwyer, Blakeman and Wete are among 17,000 entrepreneurs–75% of whom joined with just an idea–helped by Microsoft for Startups in its first six months.
Doyle, of Honest Jobs, says that “the more we grow, the more services we’re able to offer. That means the more people we’ll be able to help.”
When building technical solutions to solve real world problems, he says the most rewarding the part of his job is. He’s also benefited greatly from having access to resources and expertise, which has helped him both for the company and for its clients.
“It’s challenging and rewarding,” he says. “The fact that we get to do this every day just makes my day.”
