Announcing Collegiate BizLaunch Week
On March 30 – April 3, 2020, hundreds of universities/colleges nationwide will participate in a week-long celebration of entrepreneurship on their individual campuses. Collegiate BizLaunch Week, powered by Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization (CEO), is a national celebration in which campuses will honor and support the irrepressible spirit of entrepreneurship among their students.
While programs will vary across campuses; the demonstration of human capital talent generated by universities and colleges, in particular the entrepreneurial mindset, will not. Participating campuses will host New Venture Expo’s, Idea Mentoring Sessions, Masterminds, Field Trips, Boot Camps, Workshops, Accelerators, Speaker Series and community events to further cultivate the entrepreneurial ecosystem within their on-campus community.
This week-long celebration is open to any campus regardless of their affiliation with CEO. There is no cost to participate and corporate partnerships are welcomed to provide mentoring, speakers, judges and sponsorship support to each campus and their efforts to develop a strong and vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem.
CEO Executive Director James Zebrowski said that CEO has for a long time supported the advent of regular entrepreneurial co-curricular experiences for its member campuses.
“Collegiate BizLaunch week allows for CEO to expand its support to campuses outside of its network in an effort to initiate a regular campus tradition that will support entrepreneurs and grow with every year,” Zebrowski said. “This grassroots movement is vibrant in that campuses can create their own events or use events that are pre-planned (provided by Collegiate BizLaunch week) and easily implementable on their campus.”
As there is no cost to participate, the barriers to entry and incredibly low and seeing that the event is solely focused on the collegiate space, distractions are limited. This program directly impacts the growth and development of on-campus programming supporting entrepreneurs and it works to bring together corporate partners and foundations that support this direct effort.
Collegiate BizLaunch week has prepared guides for the following programs that can easily operate on university/college campuses during the week:
New Venture Expo featuring student ventures, business concepts and products in a tradeshow style for campus and local community members to connect with nascent entrepreneurs.
Idea Mentoring Sessions for budding or established founders, to discuss their idea for five minutes and receive 10 minutes of actionable feedback from successful alumni or business founders.
Group Mastermind, powered by Future Founders and MillionStories.com, a project of the Singleton Foundation for Financial Literacy and Entrepreneurship, Group Mastermind & Mixers expands upon the supportive community built between student founders and entrepreneurs in residence. These events promote a safe space to build, fail and grow your venture. To help facilitate conversations, MillionStories.com video content provides entertaining and inspiring stories of entrepreneurs, including the value of their failures on the path to success.
Field Trips to local start-ups, powered by Future Founders, create intimate meetings with the founding team to inspire and motivate collegiate entrepreneurs.
Venture Valley is a mini-Esports event in which you have an opportunity to participate in - or watch - a 3-player competition of an early game build before it launches. The game is a fun way to experience setting up a pet-walking business, and then turning your start-up into a huge futuristic empire! You can also sign-up to be a Game-Tester that could qualify you for a big CEO event later this year!
Women in Business Speaker Series helps to increase the impact of female entrepreneurship and the advent of female founders.
Collegiate Entrepreneurs’ Organization, a 501(c)(3) not for profit charitable corporation founded in 1983, supports more than 16,500 emerging collegiate entrepreneurs annually. CEO believes that any student, regardless of academic discipline can launch a business. Through our global network of more than 250 college and university chapters, we support and inspire the growth and development of any student that seeks to be entrepreneurial.