When Dimitri Clark ’23 wrote down an idea in a moleskin notebook for a class assignment his first year at JBU, he never imagined that he would be working to launch it as a startup company a few years later.
The class was Tools and Methods for Innovation, and the assignment was to carry the notebook around and make regular entries for new business ventures.
“The goal of the class is to develop observation skills and empathy for people experiencing problems in the world,” said Eva Fast, former associate professor of entrepreneurship, innovation and marketing, and former associate dean of the Soderquist College of Business.
Clark’s idea for “Abily,” an image-based web browser for people with motor and visual disabilities, came one evening when he watched his younger brother Leks use his cell phone in their family’s kitchen. Both brothers, who were adopted from Ukraine in 2002, have cerebral palsy. Now 23 years old, Leks is neurodiverse and reads at a second- or third-grade level.
“I thought, ‘What if I took an augmentative and alternative communication device, which displays pictures and projects sound for nonverbal people and applied it to the internet?’” Clark said.
As he envisioned it, the application would allow users to navigate the internet on their own rather than depend on others for assistance. It would also help them learn and process new information beyond their perceived ability.
Clark jotted the idea down in his notebook and didn’t think much more about it until the following semester when JBU’s Ignite (formerly known as Enactus) program hosted an idea-pitch contest.
“I returned to the notebook and decided to pitch the idea for Abily,” Clark said, noting that his family’s personal experiences helped him understand the problem Abily could address, and his parents’ professional background in computer programming gave him insight into possible solutions.
Clark didn’t win the contest, but Fast said the judges appreciated the importance of his idea and the story behind it. They encouraged him to move forward with it as a capstone project for his degree in entrepreneurship & innovation.
The following semester, Clark took a class called Market Discovery & Validation. In it, he and a partner conducted dozens of interviews to determine whether there was a need for this type of product and who the target market might be. They concluded that it was worth pursuing and that special-needs classrooms were the best target-market entry point.
The interviews continued in Innovation Launch Lab, the senior capstone class for entrepreneurship majors.
“We developed a potential business model, learned more about the technical feasibility of the product and entered the idea into some collegiate, business-model competitions,” Clark said.
He took advantage of every opportunity to network and share his vision for Abily, including drawing from the wisdom of the business advisory board that entrepreneurship students are required to build their final year.
“Entrepreneurs often have a hard time letting go of their original concept the way it lived in their mind at the beginning,” Fast said. “Dimitri sought honest feedback from experts and customers, allowing his idea to evolve. He’s open-minded but also grounded in his values.”
After graduation, Clark and Fast discussed transitioning Abily from a college project to a business. He applied and was accepted to a summer-idea accelerator program with a venture capital organization called Builders + Backers. In November, he pitched at The Heartland Summit, earning a $25,000 grant and a spot in the yearlong Stepping Stones cohort, an initiative powered by Builders + Backers and Heartland Forward that began in January.
Working with his biological brother, Sergey, a web developer in Ukraine with whom he connected more than 15 years ago, Clark hopes to start beta testing Abily this summer in the therapy clinic he went to as a child.
“Our goal is to have pediatric clinics be our first customers, as I have talked to multiple therapists who have expressed interest in this type of application for their patients,” he said.
As is often the case with entrepreneurs, Clark’s life experiences led to the creation of Abily. But he also is grateful for his education’s role in the app’s development.
“Often how things come about is not simply because the person sat down and came up with an idea,” Clark said. “It is because a person goes through life collecting multiple experiences, and those experiences collectively lead to an idea. Attending JBU provided me with the tools to structure my ideas, put them into action and have the support of the JBU community around me.”
