I run the Entrepreneurs Society at my college (Georgia Tech). We are rebooting the group and what is the best things we can do for our members next year?
One of the major advantages to actually making things is that the students will be making things with each other. As many have said before, figuring out who to build a product with is just as important (or more so, even) than figuring out what to build.
Instead of a business plan competition, how about a competition where students must create and refine a value proposition and launch a real product or service (alpha version). The new ventures in the competition can be judged based on a range of tangible criteria, such as (a) how many customers have agreed to trial the product, (b) what kind of feedback have customers provided, (c) how much revenue has been generated, etc. I think such a competition would provide much more value to students than a traditional business plan competition, in part because it would force students to not only formulate a venture idea but also execute and test the idea with real customers.
From my personal experiences, I don't think that would work as well for a few of reasons:
- Students don't have that much time - just creating a business plan and convincing presentation/pitch was hard enough for most groups at our school. Actually funding an idea and executing is much harder and more time consuming, especially if you're taking a lot of credit hours.
- With our business plan competition, we would start out with a large number of interested students and that number would drop with each meeting. I'm not sure how many students would be able to manage (or have interest) in pursuing their business until the end of the competition.
- This would only work for certain businesses and eliminate ones that require research or a significant time investment. When I took part in the competition, we were competing with a group working on a medical product that will hopefully save lives one day. They were at the very early stages of their prototype after having researched the principles behind it for a couple of years. They won the competition and I think(hope?) used the funds for their business.
- I assume it would also be harder to judge, as different businesses have different measures of success (based on revenue, # of customers, etc.)
All that said I do wish students would actively pursue a business to learn the ins and outs of it through active involvement. I just don't think it's feasible to do it through a competition. Maybe the whole entrepreneurship club could work on a business together though? Or find a struggling local business and help them - that would be an immense learning experience in itself (I wish there was a class that did that).
You could start a business plan (or elevator pitch) competition. Find sponsors to donate a few thousand as the prize money and get local entrepreneurs, angel investors and VCs to judge.
- inspires and motivates students to start a business
- brings attention to the entrepreneurship club or business school
- provides funding to a new company (if the students choose to run with it)
Here's what it shouldn't do: have meetings where they read many different theories of entrepreneurship off a powerpoint. That represents our Entrepreneurship club.
I'd recommend checking out University of Michigan's entrepreneurship club, called MPowered: http://mpowered.umich.edu/
I don't actually go there, but I subscribed to their mailing list when I considered starting something similar at my college. Definitely a great group to model!
NC State also hosts some great entrepreneurship events for their students, including spring break trips to Silicon Valley and China.
http://www.ncsu.edu/ei/events.php
Finally, I'd say Stanford BASES pretty much sets the standard for student entrepreneurship groups.
http://bases.stanford.edu/
I'm a member of MPowered at the University of Michigan. I can answer any questions anyone has.
It's not listed on the website, but I'm on MPowered's team that's launching a new program in the dorms that groups a bunch of entrepreneurial students together to live and work together and mentor each other.
your previous submission suggests that you go to georgia tech. i think you should encourage students of the club to participate in the already established events such as:
Leverage that alum network. Host a forum. Invite successful entrepreneur alums to give keynote speeches and participate on panels. Invite vc / angel alums to network with students.
Make sure that you don't put people in charge who enjoy talking about being an entrepreneur and who merely love the idea of being an entrepreneur. The entrepreneur society at my school (which I helped run) was about 50/50 among the membership. Once a few from the wrong side start running it, things will stop getting done (but at least everyone will look really good doing it).
I agree with doing a business plan/idea competition. I would also do a startup weekend where people can come together on a weekend and do a 48 hour competition where people come together to start an idea and implement the business in the 48 hours. Then hold a panel of judges from professors to give feedback and vote for the best.
i'll offer a snarky comment followed by a constructive one (so i hopefully get a net vote count of zero)
1.) at my college (a top 10 engineering school)
why the mention of 'top 10 engineering school'? is that relevant to your entrepreneurs society? if so, you should just name your school. perhaps start-up hackers or founders living near your school could offer some in-person help. if not, then there's no point in 'half-boasting'.
2.) Find somebody who you look up to in the entrepreneurial world, contact him/her, and figure out a way to get him/her to engage in a live discussion with your group. Ideally, it would be an in-person visit, but more likely, a group video chat could still be useful (e.g., 10 students could huddle around a webcam and ask questions for the 1 expert)
Don't have idea competitions. Have an MVP competition.