Dorm Report #1
Five young teams building in prediction markets, beauty tech, food systems, and dating.
Welcome to the first issue of Dorm Report! I’m Adrian, the founder of Teli Labs, and we’re building this newsletter to spotlight startup teams with college-aged founders. There are so many students and dropouts building incredible companies, and we want to give them a platform to share what they’re working on and the lessons they’re learning along the way.
The format will likely evolve over time, but for this first issue, we’re spotlighting 4 startups and what they’re building, why they started, and what’s next.
If you’re a college-aged founder or know someone who is, don’t hesitate to fill out this form to be featured in a future issue!
Also, if you haven’t yet, join our community of readers by subscribing below:
Founders: Evan Rama (University of Texas at Austin ‘27), Param Patel (Rutgers ‘27)
Company: KupidTV
What? Building the first live streamed prediction market with 60 second settlements.
Why? We built the KupidTV product after running our college shows and realizing the biggest bottleneck wasn’t demand, it was that most people were stuck as spectators instead of active participants. Media over the last decade has been engineered for passive consumption, so we designed KupidTV to flip that turning live college shows into an interactive environment where the audience drives what happens next.
What’s next? Reached 100M+ lifetime views, 9K ticket transactions, 18 of 18 sold out college events, and 5K users. We have plans to reach 100K users, 500M lifetime views, 70 live shows, and over 60K ticket transactions by June 2026, becoming the largest entertainment hub in the nation.
Founders: Abbi Park (Harvard ‘28), Nelson Bellows (Wesleyan ‘26), Pierce Buckner-Wolfson (Wesleyan ‘26)
Company: Spike
What? The prediction market for short form content.
Why? We started Spike after seeing real behavior on Abbi’s Tiktok. People constantly saying things like “investing at 300 likes,” even though no platform actually let them do that.
What’s next? We have completed the beta launch round with 400+ users and launched our product + viral video on Sunday December 8th. We are currently raising our pre-seed round!
Founder: Raf Shlla (Pace ‘26)
Company: Elora App
What? Elora is a matching platform that connects clients with the right hairstylists based on their unique hair profile. We’re building the trusted infrastructure for personalized beauty services, starting with hair.
Why? I started Elora after years of struggling to find stylists who understood the needs of fake-blonde, textured, or high-maintenance hair—realizing this wasn’t just my problem, but a widespread industry gap. I wanted to build a platform where expertise, not luck, determines your beauty experience.
What’s next? We recently launched our first public version and are now focused on scaling our stylist and client base across NYC. Over the next stage, we’re refining our matching engine, expanding stylist tools, and strengthening retention on both sides of the marketplace. Our long-term vision is to become the global booking and discovery layer for beauty services, eliminating the trial-and-error that defines the industry today. Success for us is a world where every person can instantly find a beauty professional they trust.
Founders: Madison Lo (Western ‘26), Nico Mingorance-Geraldo (Western ‘26)
Company: Agora Marketplace
What? We are building Agora, an online farmers market that connects local food to people and businesses. It is a centralized platform that makes buying, selling, and delivering local food effortless for everyone, you can almost think of it as an Instacart for farms.
Why? My co-founder and I grew up close to local food and farming. We know local food is the future, but the systems behind it are stuck in the past.
What’s next? We just wrapped our initial validation, early funding, and kicking off our first partnerships and deliveries. Next for Agora is turning that traction into our first live weekly routes with restaurants across Ontario while onboarding more farms to build a reliable supply network. From there, we’ll open the platform to families and bring the online farmers market to life as we launch into our first city and begin our pre-seed and seed raise. Success for us means becoming the digital infrastructure for local food and empowering farmers, restaurants, and consumers across North America.
Founders: Saul Brauns (Rice)
Company: Bridge
What? Bridge is a community-driven dating experience where a predictive algorithm uses real human input to curate intentional, high-quality matches. Instead of endless swiping, users invest just 5 minutes a day to receive one thoughtful introduction at a time.
Why? Swiping is dead, and online dating is lonely. With 78 percent of users reporting burnout, I wanted to create a dating experience that feels human again — one built on intention, community, and quality over quantity matches.
What’s next? Over winter break, I’ll be posting daily on LinkedIn, sharing my schedule and a live tracker of my coding hours as I commit to at least 10 hours a day. When I return to campus in January, I’ll begin filming daily entertainment content for the “bridge.date” Instagram to prepare for my February posting schedule, where I’ll release one video every day. Then, on February 28, I’ll drop the Bridge launch video, kicking off beta testing at Rice and beginning the next cycle of iteration and expansion.
Thank you for reading!!
Hope you enjoyed the first issue of Dorm Report! We’re excited to spotlight more college-aged founders in the coming weeks.
Want to be featured? Fill out this form.
Feedback or ideas? Email me at adrian@telilabs.com.
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