Highland Capital Partners Announces Summer@Highland Class of 2015

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. and PALO ALTO, Calif., May 14, 2015 /PRNewswire/ -- Highland Capital Partners, a 27-year old global venture capital firm investing in early stage technology companies, today announced the most recent teams selected to participate in its flagship Summer@Highland program. Entering its seventh year, Highland's innovative student entrepreneurship program matches student founders with the firm's investment partners and provides them with the resources to scale their businesses over the summer.

"Summer@Highland is one of the highlights of the year for us," said Peter Bell, a partner at Highland. "The talent we find at top universities blows us away each year, and this year was no exception. We feel incredibly fortunate to welcome these exceptional founders into our office in Palo Alto for the summer."

More than 400 students applied for consideration in this year's program. Five teams were selected and include founders from Boston College, Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Tufts, and Yale:

• ChaseIQ (Harvard Business School, Carnegie Mellon, and Yale University) – Analytics, pricing, and supply optimization platform for online commerce applications. Co-founders previously ran one of India's fastest growing e-commerce sites (acquired by Groupon), and built the technology behind Cleverlayover, a flight search engine that uses advanced graph search and machine learning algorithms to find savings. 
• unspun (Stanford University, Cornell University, and Savannah College of Art & Design) – Novel method of producing textile products, utilizing techniques from additive manufacturing, robotic controls, and polymer synthesis. Co-founders are currently studying design and manufacturing at Stanford and have previously spent time in the fashion industry. 
• JustiServ (Harvard College) – Online marketplace for legal services with instant pricing information and the ability to pinpoint a client's actual legal needs. Co-founders are all Harvard undergrads who launched the business a year ago in their spare time, while studying economics and computer science. 
• TightSpot (Boston College) – Mobile application for P2P, crowdsourced micro-loans, targeting the underserved populations of the U.S. with a unique approach that leverages the accumulation of social capital. Co-founders are all Boston College undergrads with a passion for businesses with both social and financial impact. 
• Trove (Stanford GSB, Yale University, and Georgetown University) – Mobile application that connects consumers with daily content from top fashion influencers and enables them to share, save, and shop their favorite fashion blogs in one place. Co-founders studied at Stanford GSB and created the popular women's style blog memorandum.com, which focuses on workwear for professional women. 

Summer@Highland is a startup accelerator which helps the next generation of student entrepreneurs build their companies over the summer. Selected teams receive a $20K investment, free office space, and the opportunity to leverage the network and experience of the Highland partners. Over the last seven years, Summer@Highland has helped 50 teams go on to build companies like Cloudflare, Handy, Wellframe, and Wildfire. Members of the program have gone on to raise over $230M in aggregate venture capital and have built businesses acquired by the likes of Dropbox, Google, and Oracle.

About Highland Capital Partners 
Founded in 1988, Highland Capital Partners is a global venture capital firm focused on putting the entrepreneur first. With offices in Palo Alto, Boston, and Shanghai, Highland has raised over $3 billion in committed capital and invested in more than 225 companies, resulting in category-defining businesses across consumer and enterprise technology. Investments include 2U, Bitnet, Bromium, Handy, LevelUp, Malwarebytes, Qihoo 360, Rent the Runway, ShiftCars, SmartThings, ThredUP and VMTurbo. For more information, visit www.hcp.com.

SOURCE Highland Capital Partners

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