Linking Students to
Career Accelerators
Brooke Bango and SkillBlaze
While testing the initial idea and building the concept at StartRight Saturday in 2014 hosted by Pitt Alum, Mike Hruska, she garnered support from coders and entrepreneur advisors. To further develop the idea, she enrolled in The Entrepreneurs Idea Lab course for researching the design, customer validation and development of her investor pitch. As a communications major at Pitt Johnstown, Brooke took the course as an elective as a tool for moving her idea to market.
Today, her idea has gelled into Skillblaze with a prototype interface as a minimum viable product that is testing interest in creating mentor/student connections. Also, with the help of Mike and his company, Problem Solutions, the idea is garnering interest beyond Johnstown with the hope of building an operational platform in the coming year with $250,000 of seed capital from Aptima Ventures of Woburn Massachusetts. With the entrepreneurship program only two years old, already the market is responding to great ideas nurtured at Pitt Johnstown.