Utah Valley University (UVU) alum Shane Murphy’s entrepreneurial idea Boostly earned a $500K boost destined to launch it into reality. His startup is an SMS marketing system for restaurants and seeks to help eateries by putting their text marketing on autopilot.

Murphy and his team applied for Y Combinator, a startup accelerator company that has helped advance companies including Airbnb, DoorDash, Dropbox, Quora, and Twitch. Y Combinator accepted his application for their three-month program.

“I don't think I got a lot of sleep [the night we were accepted]. I was just on cloud nine,” Murphy said. “Y Combinator is like Harvard for startups. It’s really an awesome opportunity for us at Boostly. It's opened doors in the broader network that would have been really hard for us to open up.”

Y Combinator invests $500,000 per company twice a year in a list of startups chosen from the many that apply. Selected companies then spend three months getting their startups kicked into high gear, perfecting pitches and innovating products.

“The timing to apply for the investment worked well for us,” Murphy said. “We’re super glad that we got in and that we have this opportunity.”

For the past 2 1/2 months, Murphy has been working with Y Combinator to help accelerate Boostly from a small startup to a thriving enterprise. It is one of the many companies that found its home in the UVU Business Resource Center (BRC), a center dedicated to incubating startup companies in their infancy by providing much-needed and otherwise expensive office space.

Business Resource Center Director Peter Jay said Boostly is one of the several companies the BRC has waived its lease for in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Our goal is to increase the odds of businesses being successful by teaching them the right lessons and giving them the right tools,” Jay said. “We have the flexibility and the space and the services that provide exceptional care to these businesses and help them to be successful.”

Murphy expressed his gratitude to UVU for providing him with a flexible, relevant approach to his education while working full-time. He is proud to be forever a Wolverine.

“UVU really does provide those amazing opportunities for people who are working and still want to get a quality education,” Murphy said. “I’m super grateful for UVU and the structure they've had before the world went remote.”

You can learn more how the UVU Business Resource Center’s services by visiting their website.