Who is Hosta Labs?
Much like our namesake, the Hosta plantaginea, we are a tenacious group of thought leaders, innovation disruptors, and programmers that achieve their full potential in the most adversary conditions. It’s hard to knock us down. Our M.I.T. born, diverse company prides itself on being named after the Hosta plant–we admire its hardiness, variation of color and species, and candidness.
The Hosta Labs Team
Rachelle Villalon
CEO & CTO
Hi I’m Rachelle Villalon, the Co-founder and CEO of Hosta Labs. I received my Master's & PhD in Computer Vision and Architecture from MIT, a program that only accepts two candidates per year. I've led over $1B in building projects for strategic innovative initiatives and built over 60+ computational tools. My work focused on the intersection of A.I. and architecture, which serve as the foundation for Hosta Labs’ mission: merging intelligence and infrastructure.
Henriette Fleischmann
CFO & COO
Hi, I'm Henriette Fleischmann, Co-founder and COO of Hosta Labs. Rachelle and I met at MIT where we shared a passion for solving enterprise problems. I received my MBA from MIT's Sloan School of Management and have worked in top tier consulting, managing multi-million $ projects for Fortune 100 companies on process optimization, strategy development, and restructuring.
Awards & Recognitions
Mass Innovation Night #133 Award $20,000
Mass Innovation Nights #133 took place on August 27th via HopIn, and was a rousing success! Thank you to the UMass Lowell Small Business Innovation Research Center of Excellence for sponsoring and (virtually) hosting this event. The new products in the showcase were high-tech products, including robotics, AI, and advanced electronics which can be used by the Department of Defense and others. Each of these companies was eligible to win one of 4 $20,000 grants from UMass Lowell SBIR.
The insurance industry is looking to innovation to drive its future. While much of the industry’s innovation is happening within organizations, the InsurTech Hartford Innovation Challenge is open to the public, allowing for innovation to come from entrepreneurs, students, and innovators inside and outside of the insurance industry. The challenge seeks to provide innovators and entrepreneurs access to services, mentorship, and resources to continue a pathway to success.
Accelerating self-service capabilities: in times of social distancing, Travelers will award this prize to InsurTechs that can help us accelerate capabilities for customers & agents around policy management and claims self-servicing.
Travelers Best Self-Service Award $10,000
Techstars allied space accelerator
The Techstars Allied Space Accelerator is a virtual accelerator program in partnership with the U.S. Air Force, the Netherlands Ministry of Defence, the Norwegian Ministry of Defence, and the Norwegian Space Agency.
The virtual program focuses on the next generation of space technologies such as geospatial analytics, satellite servicing, space situational awareness, resilient communications, AI in space, and others.
The founding teams will build strong relationships with the U.S. and allied partners and leverage a mentor network of industry experts and investors. Each startup will grow commercially and take advantage of opportunities to accelerate their commercial space products to the government and defense market.
The URBAN-X accelerator program provides 20 immersive weeks of customer development, product development, network-building and expert guidance for startups – all in preparation for fundraising. The accelerator’s mentors are experts in urbantech challenges and deeply understand regulated industries and government procurement. $150,000 initial funding.
Each startup has access to unparalleled, human-centric design, product development and engineering knowledge through world-class in-house MINI and BMW design talent. URBAN-X partners include HERE, Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Hubspot, Intercom, IBM, foundersuite, ReachNow and CitiBike.
Urban-X accelerator program
MIT DesignX accelerator program
MIT DesignX provides resources to ventures that exist at the intersection of design, business, science and technology. Teams of creative thinkers and makers fast-track the development of their innovations into the marketplace. MIT DesignX seeks diverse teams working on challenging ideas with clear vision, passion and a drive to design solutions.
The work of MIT DesignX ventures is designed to have a global impact. Through several international partnerships, we expand academic and venture networks for our students, faculty and researchers. Projects include the China Ventures Workshop in partnership with the MIT China Future City Lab and Tsinghua University.
Our Advisors
Ross Martin
Advisor
Daniel Tsai
Advisor
Dennis Shelden
Advisor
Jose Pacheco
Advisor
Gilad Rosenzweig
Advisor
Svafa Gronfeldt
Advisor
John Kennedy
Advisor
