CYstarters Spotlight: A 16-part series highlighting student entrepreneurs pursuing their business ventures as part of the CYstarters 2026 summer cohort. Through this program, students have the unique opportunity to prioritize the development of their own startup or business idea. Each individual receives $6,500 and access to resources such as mentorship, networking opportunities, and educational sessions on entrepreneurship and business startup. Learn more and meet our 17 entrepreneurs at Demo Day on Thursday, July 30. Register today!
Wilnuse Riphin is an industrial design student who is passionate about creating and finding inspiration in the world around her.
“I love taking inspiration from different parts of the world,” she said.
That creativity is at the heart of Teraclo, her business and the soft mesh carrier she’s designed for transporting plants.
Outside of her work on Teraclo, she likes doing anything that sparks creativity, whether that’s exploring makeup and different colors and skin tones, reading the works of writers and authors or attending classes at the fitness center.
She is entering her senior year at the Iowa State University College of Design and plans to spend one semester studying abroad through the National Student Exchange Program before returning to Iowa State to finish her degree.
Wilnuse considers herself a Midwesterner. She lived in Missouri from first to sixth grade, before moving to Iowa where she’s lived since. Her parents are originally from Haiti, but Wilnuse is proud of the perspective her Midwest upbringing has given her.
“I say I’m a Midwest princess,” she said. “But I think being in the Midwest, at least for me, my perspective forced me to be alone a little bit more, so it made me look within a lot more and be okay with who I am.”
Wilnuse naturally landed in an entrepreneurship minor during her freshman year at Iowa State. As an industrial design major, she spends much of her time learning to make products and saw the value in learning to sell them, too.
“I talked to my advisor, took a couple online classes, and was just like ‘Alright, this isn’t too bad, I can knock this out.’”
What she didn’t see coming was the difference between taking an entrepreneurship class and applying those lessons to a real business.
“I will say it’s a lot,” she said. “It’s a lot different when you’re taking classes for it, rather than actually applying it and doing it.”
Wilnuse found her business idea through personal experience. During the fall semester of her junior year, Wilnuse was tasked with creating a diffuser product and soft good that complemented each other. She started with a plant pot diffuser, but after weeks of transporting her plant to and from the Armory to develop the product, she knew her soft good needed to be a plant carrier.
“I’m a college student, so I got my energy drink in my hand, my keys in my hand, my backpack on my shoulder, and then boom, this big old plant,” she said. “And I’m running late, so I’m driving like this, holding my plant like this, and it’s just a headache.”
Wilnuse had found her pain point. As frustrating as transporting her plant was for her, the frequent and chaotic trips to campus were also stressful for the plant, which began turning yellow. As she researched the market, she found no other soft plant carriers that were designed to be durable, rinseable, and reusable.
With Teraclo, Wilnuse is solving a problem she knows personally.
“Plants have an emotional tie,” she said. “I’ve cared for all my things for so long, I would hate to have that progress ruined by a simple trip or a simple move.”
Feedback from others reassured Wilnuse as she developed her product back in her industrial design classes. After completing the soft plant carrier and presenting it to her class, she received encouraging feedback from her professor.
“He was like, ‘Yeah, I would buy this product. It’s breathable, you can see the plant through the product, so you know what’s going on at all times. It’s not completely covered up,’” she said.
That advice was exactly what Wilnuse needed to hear. What keeps her excited about entrepreneurship is seeing how she can push herself and her ideas.
“It’s really just a me versus me thing, right?” she said. “I like challenging myself, seeing how far I can push myself to do it and seeing how it impacts other people.”
Although she considers herself a confident person, public speaking has pushed her outside of her comfort zone. Of everything she’s accomplished so far, Wilnuse is especially proud of how much her pitching skills have grown.
“When I first did it, I was nervous as heck, but it’s gotten better, and I’m proud of myself for it being better,” she said.
Public speaking plays a large role in entrepreneurship, but is also an important part of the of a career in industrial design, where professionals pitch new products and share new ideas. Wilnuse is grateful for the opportunities she has had to practice and that growth pay off in her pitches.
A friend, Bolu Ojo (Cohort 10), introduced Wilnuse to the program. The two met when Wilnuse was in high school, and Bolu actually gave her the first college tour she ever experienced.
“Watching what she’s doing with her major and just her life, her business is so cool,” Wilnuse said.
When Wilnuse participated in the first-ever Side Hustle Challenge hosted by the Pappajohn Center in February, she unexpectedly won third place. She had always believed in the value of her idea, but finishing in the top three showed her that other people believed in it too, motivating her to keep pushing forward.
She entered the College-by-College Pitch Off competition. Although the competition did not go as she had hoped, she was proud of herself for continuing to practice and excited to support her friends as they won.
“Having people around you that experience that and have went through those failures, you realize that you can just keep on going to try,” she said.
CYstarters has provided Wilnuse with a supportive environment as she works to build Teraclo into something bigger. Through mentorship at the peer, professional, one-on-one, and group levels, students are surrounded by other entrepreneurs on similar paths.
“It’s such a supportive culture that they kind of just won’t let you give up,” she said.
Wilnuse told a friend that by the end of the summer, she wants to be able to give out a business card and feel proud of her brand. Her first step was renaming Teraclo, and her next steps are developing the brand language and creating marketing materials.
All of this leads to her biggest milestone yet: getting the final design of the product sewn and into the hands of customers. Looking back on her experience, Wilnuse would tell other aspiring entrepreneurs:
“It’s actually so fun. It’s so fun and mistakes are temporary.”
You can support Wilnuse and Teraclo at CYstarters Demo Day on Thursday, July 30. Join us as we celebrate everything our 16 student entrepreneurs have accomplished this summer and support them as they continue to grow their businesses.
Check out our video interview with Wilnuse Riphin below!
