Tag: startups

A team of researchers has been studying the St. Louis startup community for clues to why there is a lack of diversity and if there are some ways to improve inclusion of women and minority business founders. Olin alumna Karren Watkins, BSME’09, MBA’13, who is currently pursuing her PhD at Wharton and fellow researchers presented their case study of St. Louis on best practices for inclusion within innovation communities at a recent Venture Cafe session at CIC in the Cortex district.

The research team, with support from the Kauffman Foundation, based their study on more than 80 interviews and observations throughout the St. Louis startup community including support organizations such as accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, and networking groups.

They found while there are many good practices for recruiting entrepreneurs in general to the innovation community, “invisible barriers” are keeping women and minorities segregated. The study proposes some best practices to improve diversity and shares the concerns and reactions of women small business owners who feel marginalized from the city’s main support organizations.

Image: Karren Watkins at Venture Cafe presentation

Global  Entrepreneurship Week continues with the first Urban Youth Startup Challenge to be held Friday, November 20 at Olin. 60 high school students from Normandy and U-City High Schools will be on campus for an all-day event of educational workshops, lunch, and a campus tour. Dean Gupta will be the keynote speaker.

Michael McLaughlin founded Unite4Kids organization while a student at Olin. He hiked the entire Appalachian Trail (and others), to raise funds and bring attention to the needs of abused and abandoned children around the world.

Michael McLaughlin, MBA’14, organizer of the event with Ricardo Perez, BSBA’17, said, “Best of all, we are fortunate to have WashU student entrepreneurs, as well as WashU professors, leading the workshops to share their expertise with these high school students.”

The workshops will prepare students for the final startup competition that will take place in April 2016. According to McLaughlin, “The Urban Youth Startup Challenge has been made possible by generous contributions from the Olin MBA Program and the Institute for School Partnership.”

For additional information, please contact:

Ricardo Perez (ricardoperez@wustl.edu)

Michael McLaughlin (mclaughlinm@wustl.edu)

Great ideas for startups to solve problems from excessive food waste to wardrobe choices for socially active college women, were pitched to a pack audience in the Frick Forum on Nov. 4 at the IDEABOUNCE co-sponsored by the Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital Association and the Skandalaris Center.

Ideabounce judges

Four participants won the judges prize for best pitch and worthy of investment. Each winner received $100.

Hanger – Charlotte Jones  & Ishi Metkar  metkari@wustl.edu BSBA’16

The Women’s Bakery, Inc. – Markey Culver markey.culver@wustl.edu

SnapPEAS – Jeffrey Gamble

Patch Life Utilities – Andrew Zheng

Hanger

SnapPEAS’ Jeffrey Gamble

The audience selected another venture as their choice for best in show at the Ideabounce event:

East St. Louis Initiative – Wyatt Gutierrez

Guest Blogger: Jamie Stroble, MBA’16

Ideas for startups will be bouncing in the Frick Forum at 4 p.m. on Wednesday, Nov. 4. If you haven’t signed up to pitch an idea, come hear the dozens of ideas students and community members will present to a team of judges. You can checkout some of the ideas that will be bounced  here.

Co-sponsored by Olin’s Entrepreneurship & Venture Capital Association and the Skandalaris Center, this Ideabounce will award $500 in cash prizes.

According to statistics tracked by the Skandalaris Center, graduates of Olin’s Hatchery course have been very successful at launching startups, securing funding and creating jobs. From 2008 to the present, The Hatchery can boast:

170 total projects
77 launches
49 still operating – a 64% success rate
$33.8 Million raised
375 full-time positions created
15 provisional patents filed
51% of companies launched in St. Louis

Hundreds of students have taken Olin’s popular entrepreneurship course, The Hatchery, since it was started in 1996. In the beginning students worked for outside entrepreneurs, but since Cliff Holekamp took over the course in 2008, students come to the class with their own startup ideas and develop a business plan during the semester  – many with a goal to launch the business.

“I am delighted by the resourcefulness of our students,” said Clifford Holekamp, senior lecturer in entrepreneurship and director of the Entrepreneurship Platform at Olin. “More importantly, my objectives for the course are still academic. My goal is to teach our students the lessons that will help them be more successful in any of their future endeavors — whether it be a startup right out of school, or a business initiative years down the road.”

See more statistics on The Hatchery compiled by the Skandalaris Center, here.

To learn more about startup initiatives on the Washington University campus, visit Fuse​, the new website dedicated to entrepreneurship and innovation.

Erika Ebsworth-Goold contributed to this post.

https://infogr.am/hatchery_impact_2008_present

How can a community help its aspiring entrepreneurs to turn their dreams into successful businesses? Especially if some of its members come from less-privileged backgrounds with little training in business acumen? Our client, David Stiffler seeks to provide an answer to these questions through his proposed project, Entrepreneurship for All. By devoting a floor in the T-Rex building to an entrepreneurship-mentoring program for the low-income high performance college students, David hopes to extend T-Rex’s excellent entrepreneurship offerings to previously unsupported demographics of the St. Louis Community.

Many cities across the United States are struggling with urban development trends that divide neighborhoods based on their residents’ social-economic status. This is particularly apparent in our city of St. Louis, where city blocks from the same street can differ so drastically that they are unrecognizable from each other. The large gap in economic incomes also partially contributed to the recent demonstrations that have gripped our city and raised serious questions regarding race, social status, and economic equality. Entrepreneurship can be a potential solution for enabling economic development in low-income neighborhoods and reducing the number of under-educated/unemployed youths in the city. By providing students from these areas with the training needed to build their own businesses, the students can then increase economic activity in their neighborhoods and provide employment opportunities. This new focus on entrepreneurship has already been identified as a paradigm shift in cities such as Pittsburgh or Detroit.

The successful business owners of St. Louis have been working hard on improving the city’s entrepreneurship ecosystem through enticing aspiring entrepreneurs from across the country to relocate to St. Louis. This system is gaining momentum through initiatives like Venture Café, Arch Grants, and Coretex… where members are carefully nurtured and are producing better startups every year. Opening up the ecosystem to underprivileged youth can potentially provide the economic force necessary to reinvigorate our city, especially if a program is developed specifically for them at T-Rex, one of the centers of entrepreneurship located in the middle of downtown ST. Louis.

Our client David Stiffler, is the Community Affairs Manager at Equifax. David has identified this need and wishes to bring the program into existence. Our objective is then to conduct a feasibility study on the Entrepreneurship for All project. We need to first identify the physical requirements necessary to launch such a program. We then need to validate the fit and sustainability of moving such a program into the T-Rex space. Finally, we need to identify the demographic segment targeted by this program as well as any potential existing programs that are helping the same demographic.

We will be reaching out and conducting one-on-one interviews with the leadership at T-Rex, Arch Grants, Coretex… to analyze the current entrepreneurship ecosystem. We will also be researching existing programs in other cities and if their success can be adopted for St. Louis. Our results should enable us to better understand the gap that can be filled by the Entrepreneurship for All program and its potential success in helping the community.

This post was written by Finn Liu, MBA ’16, Kenneth Mao, MBA ’16, Colin Stapleton, MBA ‘16, Greg Scharine, PMBA