ABOUT AMOS MEEKS
Amos Meeks is an Olin alum who founded LilyPad scales, a startup that enables wheelchair bound users to weigh themselves. He started Lilypad because he wanted to challenge himself to create a company from scratch. He has interned at several companies, including Metal Oxygen Separation Technologies, and Coating Technology Solutions, where he was a Materials Science intern. In his free time, Amos enjoys spinning fire and marathons.
Amos graduated from Olin with a degree in Engineering with a concentration in Materials Science. He knew of his passion for materials science before beginning Olin, and explored working with many different materials during his gap year at Massachusetts College of the Arts. Once coming to Olin he expanded his interests to include web development and 3D visualization tools. He also spent a semester abroad at the National University of Singapore, where he took multiple classes relating to material science. Amos is interested in designing practical devices for people. Lilypad was focused on accessibility, but currently this is not a big point of interest for Amos. He has transferred to running Lilypad part time, and will start at Harvard Graduate school in the fall.
Amos considers himself to be successful. He started Lilypad in order to learn how to start a company, not necessarily because he thought it was the best product ever. He gained extensive knowledge of various business strategies such as supply chain management, marketing analytics, and customer service in the process. The company has since moved past the startup phase, so Amos has taken a step back, and is choosing to broaden his horizons through grad school. He hopes to start another company after finishing his doctorate degree.
Olin College Class of 2016
Major: Engineering: Material Science
Olin Activities: Olin Fire Arts Club and Material Science Activities
Known For: CO-Founder and CTO of Lilypad Scales
Interests: Running
Places Worked: Lilypad Scales, Metal Oxygen Separation Technologies, Coating Technologies Solutions
STARTING A BUSINESS
In the spring of his junior year at Olin, Amos enrolled in User-Oriented Collaborative Design and worked to empower people who use wheelchairs. The project that resulted from that class was a scale for manual wheelchairs that could measure the weight of an individual in a wheelchair. With his interest in creating a startup, Amos decided to translate the success of his UOCD project into an actual economic venture, and worked with classmate Molly Farison to found Lilypad Scales.
The summer following his UOCD class, Amos and Molly took part in the MassCHallenge startup accelerator. During that time they began to prototype and test their scale. During the next year, they continued to iterate on their product while gaining their initial “friends and family funding.” In 2014, they won a $20,000 prize in the Babson Entrepreneurial Thought and Action (B.E.T.A.) Challenge for their venture. Amos graduated in 2014 and has since worked part-time at Lilypad while also working at another engineering firm.
ABOUT LILYPAD SCALES
Lilypad Scales is a direct result of Olin’s User-Oriented Collaborative Design course. It focuses on creating accessible solutions for users of manual wheelchairs. As the CTO of Lilypad Scales, Amos focused on transferring insights from his prototype of the portable and configurable low-profile scale to a version ready for marketing, and created a phone app to pair with the scale to track changes in weight over time. He also contributed to business responsibilities such as digital marketing and Google analytics.
Lilypad Scales is now a successful product with a 5-star rating on Amazon that generates $6000 of monthly revenue.
