i.Lab Startups in Focus: RecruitRef, geedunk and Whipped Cream

By Jay Hodgkins


Snacks baked with a powder made from crickets. LinkedIn for high-school athletes looking to get noticed by college coaches. An all-natural cream for eczema relief made by entrepreneurs also using their business to inspire fellow African-Americans in the community to start their own companies.

The 2018 i.Lab Incubator — a 10-week accelerator hosted by the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and its Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation — had a little bit of everything this summer.

Watch below to learn about three i.Lab ventures, and how the ventures evolved during the incubator, from their founders: Van Hatchell (MBA ’18), founder of RecruitRef (LinkedIn for high-school athletes); Lyon McCandless, founder of geedunk (cricket-based snacks); and Cordell Fortune, co-founder of Whipped Cream (all-natural skin cream).

RecruitRef

geedunk

Whipped Cream

About the University of Virginia Darden School of Business

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business prepares responsible global leaders through unparalleled transformational learning experiences. Darden’s graduate degree programs (MBA, MSBA and Ph.D.) and Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs offered by the Darden School Foundation set the stage for a lifetime of career advancement and impact. Darden’s top-ranked faculty, renowned for teaching excellence, inspires and shapes modern business leadership worldwide through research, thought leadership and business publishing. Darden has Grounds in Charlottesville, Virginia, and the Washington, D.C., area and a global community that includes 18,000 alumni in 90 countries. Darden was established in 1955 at the University of Virginia, a top public university founded by Thomas Jefferson in 1819 in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

Press Contact

Molly Mitchell
Associate Director of Content Marketing and Social Media
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia
MitchellM@darden.virginia.edu