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, female-led, 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
Rachelle graduated from MIT with a Master’s and PhD in Computational Architecture, focusing on A.I., computer vision, and developing software engineering systems for the built environment. She’s been involved in the innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem at MIT. She received her B.Arch from Woodbury University. Rachelle has start-up and corporate experience in architecture/design and software engineering in the cyber security, robotics, and creative 3D modeling industries. She is originally from California and enjoys outdoor sports.
Henriette Fleischmann
CFO & COO
Henriette gained her MBA and Analytics Certificate from MIT. She worked for more than 10 years in Automotive, Consulting, and Fashion Retail. Henriette has a strong expertise in strategy and organizational development. She is intrigued by human behavior and technology that imitates humans. The potential to have positive impact in the world drives her.
Daniel Suh
Lead AI/Computer Vision Engineer
Son Nguyen
Architect Engineer
Sathish Kumar
AI/Computer Vision Engineer
Blake Jones
3D Modeling Engineer
Arnav Gupta
Software Engineer
Isabella Pedraza Pineros
Business & Website Development
Ben Rowly
Backend A.I. Engineer
Yunfei Ma
Computer Vision Engineer
Awards & Recognitions
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
Norbert Chang
Advisor
John Kennedy
Advisor
