Shane Murphy’s entrepreneurial idea, Boostly, won a $500,000 seed round to help launch it into reality. His startup is an SMS marketing system for restaurants and seeks to help restaurants put their text marketing on autopilot.
Murphy and his team applied to Y Combinator, a startup accelerator that has helped companies get off the ground including Airbnb, DoorDash, Dropbox, Quora and Twitch. Y Combinator accepted his application for their three-month program.
“I don’t think I slept much [the night we were accepted]. I was just on cloud nine,” Murphy said. “Y Combinator is like Harvard for startups. It’s a really great opportunity for us at Boostly. It’s opened doors to the wider network that would have been really difficult for us to open.”
Y Combinator invests $500,000 per company twice a year in a shortlist of startups chosen from many who apply. The selected companies then spend three months kicking their startups into high gear, perfecting campaigns and innovating products.
“The timing of applying for the investment worked out well for us,” Murphy said. “We’re very happy to get in and have this opportunity.”
For the past 2 1/2 months, Murphy has been working with Y Combinator to help accelerate Boostly from a small startup to a thriving enterprise. It’s one of the many companies that found its home in the UVU Business Resource Center (BRC), a center dedicated to incubating startup companies in their infancy, providing much-needed and otherwise expensive office space.
Business Resource Center director Peter Jay said Boostly is one of several companies for which the BRC has waived its lease due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our goal is to increase the chances of businesses being successful by teaching them the right lessons and giving them the right tools,” Jay said. “We have the flexibility and the space and the services to provide exceptional care for these businesses and help them be successful.”
Murphy expressed his gratitude to UVU for providing him with a flexible and convenient approach to his education while working full-time. He is proud to be a Wolverine forever.
“UVU really provides those amazing opportunities for people who are working and still want to get a quality education,” Murphy said. “I’m super grateful for UVU and the structure they had before the world went away.”
You can learn more about how the UVU Business Resource Center serves by visiting their website.
