Entrepreneurship Education in Action

This quarter, I have been serving as a mentor to a class team participating in the University of Washington Entrepreneurship 370a: Introduction to Entrepreneurship course.  This course is designed to be approachable for undergraduates in all majors who seek to understand the entrepreneurial process.

My job as a mentor, has been to meet with my assigned team three or four times and assist them in thinking through their Opportunity Assessment and Opportunity Execution projects.  For the Opportunity Assessment project, students learned how to tell the difference between a good idea and a scalable business opportunity.  they had to identify and define a market opportunity and pitch the opportunity to their classmates.  For the Opportunity Execution project, though students were not required to write a full business plan, they explored how to actually assemble a company; thinking through how they would sell, distribute, create demand, attract a team, build and fund their project which then culminated in a 10 minutes pitch.   To help expand their vision, I invited them to attend one of the recent ZINO Society Roundtable Investment meetings where they got to see "real" entrepreneurs pitching.

"Find-a-Kid" - The Pitch

This morning, I attended my team's pitch along with other team pitches in front of their classmates and other mentors in the room.  The course was presented by Emily Cox, Assistant  Professor of Management and Organization, at the University of Washington Foster School of Business.

My mentees participating in the development of their "Find-a-Kid" business were Hannah Jackowski, Daniel Matson, Ailyne Halim, Jessica Allison and Catherine Dubois-Boutet.  Great job of presenting! 

I must say that I was impressed with the quality of the presentations of these teams and look forward to seeing at least some of them in the Business Plan Competition later this school year!