The technology startup community in America is exploding from both east and west coasts with Silicon Alley and Valley respectively. It seems that the United States has an enormous grip on cultivating these ideas and profiting off them as much as possible, but is there a way to have a viable startup without being for profit?

Baruch College’s own Hillel group may have the answer everyone has been looking for. On February 25^th the Hillel group held a Startup Technology Fair in which Baruch students could come in contact with upwards of thirty different startup companies all with the same non for profit goal in mind and some of these companies are definitely worth sharing.

RefreshBox is a company cofounded by Erik Brodch (pictured left), who is already a startup veteran with several companies under his belt, that hopes to ease to the gap between small websites and their consumers.

Brodch says that the idea is very simple and boiled it down to Pocket equivalent for delivering stories rather than storing articles to read. He says that any website creator or individual could use his tool to compile all the latest and greatest stories from your blog and distribute it to thousands of people as a streamlined newsletter with no real cost to the blog owner. That means smaller blogs do not have to worry about coding and maintaining an email list for their customers, and the best part is that every click is monetized and half of the money goes right into the bloggers pocket.

Brace yourselves and buckle up for a fun time it is time to talk about Scientific Research papers, but not in the boring old written medium. A company called Vikki Academy is trying to make research papers a whole lot more appealing by turning the arduous journey of reading a research paper into an animated short for all to watch and understand.

Co-Founder and CEO of Vikki Academy, Nofar Sinai says that growing up in Israel has prepared her for this company in many ways but the best preparation was her career as a Journalist. She believes that even though research content is tough for some to understand, her roots as a Journalist have taught her to always try and delineate the message to as many people as possible.

Both RefreshBox and Vikki Academy seem to be making great strides to getting their companies known by a larger community and it is no doubt that the Hillel group at Baruch College helped achieve this.