experiential entrepreneurship education for engineering students

8/7/2019 Experiential Entrepreneurship Education for Engineering Students

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ExperientialEntrepreneurship

Education forEngineering StudentsNick Such | Director of Labs |

[email protected] | @aerosuch

UK STEM Symposium 2011


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Who am I?

Grew up in the Midwest (Omaha, NE)

Moved to KY at 16 (South Oldham HS)

Mechanical Engineering at UK (2009) Solar Car, Tau Beta Pi, E-Club

GE, Toyota, Budapest

KSTC internship

Founded Awesome Labs in 2009 Stanford MBA in September


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What we do

Take risks

Promote role models

Build support system


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What we actually do

Identify market opportunities

Propose relevant projects to senior designteams

Mentor student teams

3-month program, meet weekly

Incubate high-potential companies

Space, funding, leadership, network


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Example: AwesomeTouch


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Timeline: AwesomeTouch

Summer 2009: learned about NUI Group via UK VisCenter

Fall 2009: submitted project proposals to UK EE & CS

January 2010: started mentoring 1 EE, 2 CS teams

April 2010: Business students & EE team place 2nd at IdeaStateU

May 2010: Demo for Lexington CVB June 2010: Form AwesomeTouch, apply for KSTC funding

July 2010: Win $1k from KHIC BIG Idea

October 2010: Install first screens at CVB, LexArts during WEG

November 2010: Awarded $30k from KEF December 2010: Pitch at VatorSplash NYC

January 2011: Win $5k from KHIC BIG Idea

March 2011: Sell 3rd screen to Lexington Hilton


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Goals

Take risks

Small downsides, huge upsides

Build awareness of role models At least 6 buildings on UKs campus are

named after engineers entrepreneurs

Build support structure

Entrepreneurship is really hard


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Influencers

Steve Blank

Customer development

Eric Ries

Lean startups

Alex Osterwalder

Business Model Generation


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THE NEWS


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were mostly talking about

SOFTWARE


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Start with software

ElonMu

skismyhero

Then move onto the moredifficult engineeringchallenges


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Similar programs

NC State EEP SV trip, professors w/ startup

experience

http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/eep/ Stanford BASES

Competitions, ETL speakers

http://bases.stanford.edu/

Seed-stage accelerators YCombinator & TechStars

Funding, focus and mentorship
http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/eep/http://bases.stanford.edu/http://bases.stanford.edu/http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/eep/


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Lessons Learned

Startups are really hard

You cant teach entrepreneurship; it must beexperienced

Culture matters Ideas dont

Failure is good

Engineers can make a great career out ofstarting companies

KY needs more tech entrepreneurs


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Resources in Lexington

Awesome Inc Startup Weekend StartupDigest MobileX Conference

In2Lex Startup Advantage April Is

5 Across & Venture Club UK E-Club & Wildcat Investors Bluegrass Angels ICC & Von Allmen center KSTC & KHIC


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Terminology

Advisor or Mentor Someone with valuable skills or experience who help s startup founders, often without compensation

Angel Investors High-net worth individuals who invest personal money in startups. See gamblers.

Business Plan A lengthy document that is often wrong by the time it is completed. Requested by some investors.

Bootstrapping startup Running off founder money, or customer money (not external investment)

Co-founders People who start a company together

Funded startup Running with angel or VC money. Typically involves trading an equity stake

Mature company A startup that has achieved PMF and has a repeatable business model

Product-Market fit The stage at which a startup begins to transition from experimentation to execution

Project

A defined course of action that a group decides to pursue Revenue

Customer funding, the only sustainable (and most sexy) type

Startup A company that has not yet found product-market fit

Venture Capitalists Institutional investors (someone elses money)

experiential entrepreneurship education for engineering students

Documents