According to Investipedia, a startup is a company in the first stages of operations, and sure, Northwestern students can definitely build startups. But what does it take for a project like this to continue? From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Michelle Huang. This is NU Declassified, a look into how Wildcats thrive and survive at Northwestern.
Welcome to the first episode of Built This, a series focused on Northwestern startups on campus. Caved clinicians is a student-led research publication founded in 2021 that aims to make scientific knowledge more accessible, The organization simplifies scientific discoveries through digestible newsletters and colorful graphic novels on their website. They also organize speaker series with scientific experts for the Northwestern community. This past quarter, the organization transitioned to an entirely new leadership team for the first time in its history.
It was a lot. It takes a lot to just like be constantly sending emails and like trying to figure out how to run the website. The platform we use the website, I had no idea how to use it. I was just trying to upload a simple picture and format it correctly.
That was Weinberg's second year, Zoe Hall, the current co-president for Caved Clinicians. She stepped into the position at the beginning of last quarter. The organization's founder Weinberg Jr. Gabe Dara announced at the beginning of this school year that he would be graduating early, prompting Hall to take the reins.
The early days of taking over Caved Clinicians from previous leadership weren't easy. Hall said there were an infinite list of things to do. The new leadership needed to recruit new members, reach out to old partners and figure out the technology. Current co-president and Weinberg Jr.
Jennifer Beck remembers a lot of excitement, but very little stability. Really just like a hodgepodge of ideas and it felt very disorganized, I will say, because we all had like small and big ideas, short and long-term goals. In the beginning of the leadership transition, Hall, Beck, and Vice President in Weinberg sophomore, Ina Meng were each putting in around 15 hours a week at the startup, but eventually, Hall says being started to level out. It was a lot of learning and it was a rocky wall quarter.
We were kind of getting under wraps, but then by January we had a really good grip on things, and so the office quarter has been going with me strong. Gradually, the feeling of being a substitute in their roles started to wear off. We felt as executive team that this project was becoming ours as we onboarded new students. So that was a really fun process because these people were coming into the startup with fresh eyes and fresh perspectives.
Being a leader that can voice those new ideas was really exciting and that's when it really felt like this was a new chapter for us as executive team and for the startup. Cave clinicians recently joined the residency program at the garage, the center of student entrepreneurship on campus at the beginning of this quarter. Its residency program is the highest level of membership a student entrepreneur can achieve at the garage. Students in the program receive special privileges, like 24-7 access to the garage's facilities and invitation to weekly catered dinners with a guest speaker.
According to my graph, director of the garage, efforts to continue startups after the founders pass off the project is uncommon. Passion for a project is not something that can be handed down like an account password. To get anything started takes a lot of passion and a lot of interest and a lot of time and a lot of energy. You'll find someone who is a founder has that and sometimes when they're running out and they have people who are on their team who don't have as much responsibility, they don't realize how much work it takes.
So when that handover happens and it wasn't originally their idea, it's not their baby that they care about. Sometimes it's deprioritized. However, the startup's original mission of making higher education scientific research accessible is alive and continuing in the hands of the organization's new executive team. I really think that higher education can be really limiting and it makes me very upset to know that it's just so hard to access.
You shouldn't have to fight through 39,000 pages to understand something that's happening in the world. But passion alone can't sustain operations. There's something else about the Kate Clinicians leadership team that has allowed them to come this far. From day one, me and Jennifer were like, I don't know how is it going to work, but we need to communicate.
Every single thing we say goes in our exec group chat so everyone knows what's happening. We don't have a hierarchy of like, oh, you handle this, you handle that. We have our focuses and we've done really well at dividing and conquering at the same time. Everyone knows what's happening in the other teams.
Now that things have settled down for Kate Clinicians, Jennifer and Zoe are making plans for the organization's future. They're working on getting Kate Clinicians curriculum. It's after school programs at local high schools. They also plan to bring more speaker events to Northwestern's community.
From the Daily Northwestern, I'm Michelle Huang. Thanks for listening to an episode of NUD Classified. Built this. This episode was reported and produced by Michelle Huang.
The audio editor of the Daily Northwestern is Erica Schmidt. The digital managing editors are Dwayne Hainer and Olatunji Ojo Williams. And the editor in chief is Alex Perry. Make sure to subscribe to the Daily Northwestern's podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcast or SoundCloud to hear more episodes like this.