Duck Diaries: Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition
Over the past 10 years, the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition has fueled a dynamic entrepreneurial ecosystem at Stevens, empowering our students to tackle real-world challenges and drive positive change. The competition inspired Samantha Weckesser ’23 M.Eng. ’24 to become a full-time entrepreneur and launch a startup company to increase cargo safety. Read more about Sam’s exciting journey!
This May, Stevens is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition! To mark this special milestone, we spoke with Samantha Weckesser ’23 M.Eng. ’24, an Ansary competition winner who now works as a full-time entrepreneur after launching the startup venture, Homer Maritime LLC.
The Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition is a highlight of Innovation Expo, where student teams pitch their senior capstone projects as startup businesses to industry judges in a high-stakes contest for $17,500 in prizes. Through their incredible generosity, the Ansary family established an endowed fund to support the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition and prizes.
Sam was a member of the Maritime Security team who won first place in the Ansary competition in 2023 after pitching their project that helps to mitigate risks associated with hazardous cargo in order to strengthen maritime security. The team developed an inspection algorithm that targets containers coming into port facilities and flags items for further inspection. The principles behind the team’s algorithm are being utilized by the U.S. Coast Guard.
The Ansary competition helped to spark Sam’s path as a full-time entrepreneur. “Winning the competition was so validating and such a confidence boost in seeing this project materialize into something that could be real,” she says.
Following the competition, Sam worked as a summer intern for the U.S. Coast Guard and completed her master’s degree in systems engineering at Stevens in 2024. She then partnered with Stevens Professor Matt Wade, who directs the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition, and Andrew Narvaez ’23, who began working on the project with Sam in 2021 with the Stevens Maritime Security Center (MSC) Summer Research Institute. Together they launched Homer Maritime LLC in June 2024 and continue to develop the technology.
“We started fresh and built a new system to include machine learning and have been working on bringing the product to market,” she says. “The Ansary competition validated my ideas and gave me the confidence to pursue my new dream of becoming an entrepreneur. I would not be where I am today without the encouragement and support from the Ansary family and the Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition.”
Homer Maritime utilizes AI to identify and mitigate maritime supply chain risks to ensure safer, more efficient global trade operations.
“At our core, we are a risk management software company,” Sam says. “We are working to mitigate potential disasters on the ocean due to hazardous cargo. Hazardous cargo can cause major environmental disasters, billions of dollars in damages and potentially the loss of life. We’ve created a machine learning algorithm that will go through a vessel's manifest of all the containers on board, and prioritize the inspection of those containers to find risks before disaster strikes.”
The technology has evolved from the senior project. “We always had this idea of doing a machine learning model,” Sam says. “It was something that I had suggested at the beginning of senior design. By the end of senior design, it was more of a weighted model, one that would weigh certain cargoes heavier than others, and that was the way risks were prioritized. Now, we have evolved to actually have that machine learning support.”
In addition to Sam and her two partners, the company includes developer Ryan Potenza ’24, a Stevens alumnus, and two interns. It also has a five-member advisory board, which includes former Stevens Trustee Philip B. Kimball ’62, a naval architect with 50 years of experience in ship design, ship construction and transportation consulting, and Beth Austin-DeFares, Stevens’ former director of education and outreach at MSC, as well as other industry experts.
Sam notes that being an entrepreneur fits her outgoing personality well, particularly in giving presentations, networking and connecting with customers. Though the company is not yet profitable, Sam has fully dedicated herself to driving its success.
What made you decide to go all in as full-time entrepreneur?
That's such a good question because that was never the plan. I was staying at Stevens as a graduate student, so I knew I had some flexibility without having a full-time job. It seemed like the perfect time to continue this endeavor, especially after ending my senior year on such a high from winning the Ansary competition. I was thinking, let's keep up the momentum, let's do this and see where it takes us. I wouldn't change it for the world. I love it. Is it challenging? Absolutely. Is it non-traditional? Yes. But I think it will be worthwhile.
Can you describe a typical day as a full-time entrepreneur?
Every day is very different. The nature of entrepreneurship is wearing so many different hats. So sometimes I'm the business strategist. Sometimes I'm the marketing manager. Sometimes I'm the product development person. Sometimes I'm all these different people at once.
Right now, a typical day is keeping up on the product development side, checking in on the development team, seeing how our progress is going. But mostly what I'm doing is outreach – working on business relationships, networking and learning more about the industry – because the world of shipping is so expansive and complicated.
What are some of the challenges as an entrepreneur?
The biggest challenge for me is self-doubt. I need to keep reassuring myself that when one door closes, another one opens. As an entrepreneur, you have to get accustomed to a lot of rejection. You may get a million ‘no’s’ before you get the one ‘yes.’ So it's often, let's try this. If it doesn't work, what’s plan B, what’s plan C, what’s plan D? It does make you more resilient. I appreciate the challenges, but it is a lot of conquering fears of rejection and failure.
On a personal level, I do go back and forth, wondering, did I make the right choice? Have I invested too much of my life into this? Is it going to work? But then, reflecting back, I know this is what I'm meant to do. It is difficult to look at other people I graduated with, who have full-time jobs and are getting promotions, making money, living in all these different places and doing all these different things. But I think about patience. Nothing happens overnight. My goal is to see this through until we do start making money. There's no substitute for this hands-on learning experience that I am in right now, there's nothing like it.
What do you find most fulfilling about being an entrepreneur?
I like being in a leadership role, being my own boss and being able to make business decisions. It is a lot of learning on the job and from my mentors, especially those on our advisory board. I also feel like we are truly working hard on making a difference and making things safer and preventing harm, and that is very fulfilling. It is a worthy cause that I'm passionate about, so it gives me the confidence to keep moving forward.
What’s next for you and your company? Where do you see your company, and yourself, in five years?
We are completing the testing of our product and hoping to secure some partnerships in the near future so we can pilot our program to verify that the product is working as intended and we can customize our product for the end-user investment. A lot of startups are looking for investment. Even though it would be nice to be making money, we're not necessarily looking for investment right now. We are looking for those client partnerships.
Ideally, in five years this will be my full-time job, where I'm making a full-time salary. Hopefully, we will have a consistent customer base and other full-time staff. That's my hope for the future.
What advice would you give to Stevens student entrepreneurs?
Don't be afraid to try and fail and try again. That is the hardest mental hurdle to get through. Stevens students are very high-achievers, and it is difficult to run toward failure and not away from it. So don't be afraid to try your best and have it not be enough. Don't be afraid to embarrass yourself. I've done that a million times. It is scary and intimidating, but once you get over that hurdle, you realize you are unstoppable.
Stevens is tremendously grateful to the Ansary family for their generosity and for empowering Stevens students, like Sam, to become entrepreneurs who lead with purpose and address societal challenges for a better future.