The Vault

A Place For The Anvil's History.

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This Is Our Story.

It all started with an idea. A group of hackers, people who had ideas and had the drive and the passion to make it happen wanted to execute and create their own businesses. Unfortunately, the entrepreneurship scene at Purdue around 2012 was virtually nonexistent.

Early 2013
Through intellectual curiosity and determination, founders Mike Asem, Chris MacPherson and Andrew Linfoot and their team created The Anvil as a not-for-profit organization.
Mid 2013
The Anvil moved into their first ever co-working space location. The location was a 20 minute walk from Purdue campus, just past horticulture park.

The aim of creating a co-working space is to have a place where Purdue students can share their project/startup ideas while making lifelong connections.

"Having access to resources that are beneficial to these projects such as mentorship and legal assistance made a huge difference when creating new things."

Laolu Adeyo | Purdue Student

Late 2013
The Anvil partnered with Purdue Hackers to host a large-scale hackathon on November 22nd and 23rd. It was a massive success and started a strong relationship between Purdue developers and The Anvil.
Early 2014
Due to the incredible success of the co-working space, there simply wasn't enough space to sustain all of the demand. The Anvil partnered with the City of West Lafayette and the Purdue Research Foundation to begin migrating to an all-new space inside the old university church.

"We've always thought of ourselves as being the epicenter of hacker, startup and creative culture at Purdue and in West Lafayette. Now we're actually in the epicenter and will be able to offer a lot of great resources like learning and networking events for the students and community. All those will definitely be taken to the next level."

Grant Gumina | President ('15)

Mid 2014
🚀 The Boiler Launches
The first ever cohort of The Boiler culminated with a Demo Day in May. The Boiler is an all-new startup accelerator to support student founders prepare to raise in the pre-seed round. Boiler teams competed for $10K in equity free funding. FundSponge, Mimir and Vendo were the top 3 winning teams and received $5K, $3K and $1K respectively in addition to the $1.5K in microgrants to all startup teams.

"The Boiler competition is unique because it runs over an eight-week timeframe, and that is important because it gives the student finalists several weeks of invaluable advice and mentoring from experts."

Mike Asem | Co-Founder of The Anvil

Late 2014
The Anvil was able to raise over $250K from various supporters and completed the move-in to the old university church. With a location closer to main campus, the building instantly became full of aspiring builders.
Link To Press relase
Early 2015
For the first time ever, The Anvil team ran the largest hackathon on Purdue's Campus called Hack The Anvil. It was an incredible success as it was backed by sponsors such as Apple, Cisco, Microsoft, Wolfram Alpha, and more.
Link To Video
Mid 2015
The second cohort of startups participating in The Boiler pitched at Demo Day in April. Teams competed for equity free funding. Spotter, Dunmo and UPrint were the top 3 winning teams and received $5K, $3K and $1.5K respectively in addition to the $1.5K in microgrants to all startup teams.

"The sheer cost of figuring out how to make the technology work wouldn't have been possible without the support and training we've received through The Boiler."

Daniel Golant | Co-Founder of Spotter

Late 2015
The Anvil officially is recognized for the successes of the co-working space by the mayor and Purdue President Mitch Daniels.
Link to article

"Having a coworking place for community members to go and network or work quietly is an important amenity for entrepreneurs, and the Anvil filled that need. I am not surprised that it has such a successful track record in supporting startups, and I am confident that the success will continue."

John Dennis | Mayor of West Lafayette

Early 2016
The Anvil launched the first ever Forge Innovation Series in order to bring entrepreneurs to campus and to inspire students to create startups. The goal was to provide the community with valuable knowledge from startup founders about starting a business. Speakers included Jessica Tenuta, Riana Lynn, and Jason Tennenhouse to help kick off this series.
Mid 2016
The third cohort of startups participating in The Boiler pitched at Demo Day in April. Teams competed for equity free funding. Aerial Agriculture, Socio and OWL were the top 3 winning teams and received $5K, $3K and $1.5K respectively in addition to the $1.5K in microgrants to all startup teams.
Link to article

“The point of accelerators is to take your startup from A to B. For most it’s idea to a tangible product, but we already had a working product, so it was moving our working product to monetization. These last eight weeks we’ve been able to acquire our first paying customers, so it has been great being part of the competition.”

Yarkin Sakucoglu | Co-Founder of Socio

Today
We are incredibly excited at the trajectory The Anvil is heading towards. We want to become the ultimate student resource hub for entrepreneurship not just at Purdue, but in the entire Midwestern region.

Follow us as we continue our ambitious journey to support more students.