Welcome to the Entrepreneurship Academy Blog!!

The Academy is a university-wide initiative led by the Stuart School of Business. Its purpose is to advance the spirit and understanding of entrepreneurship across the campus through the Entrepreneurship Minor and related co-curricular activities available for all university majors.

The Academy organizes a full array of complementary activities that provide opportunities for undergraduate students, and graduate students as appropriate, to have a real-world experience in innovation and entrepreneurship and apply business fundamentals and innovative and entrepreneurial thinking to a variety of situations, in entrepreneurial endeavors, in research, in business and social organizations.

The Entrepreneurial Law Clinic at Chicago-Kent College of Law represents entrepreneurs in transactional matters common to early-stage and small companies, including but not limited to choice of entity and entity formation, contract review and drafting, corporate governance issues, review of leases, legal research projects as appropriate, and basic trademark searches and filing. The clinic’s rates are below-market for transactional legal services, and project-based flat fees whenever possible. For more information, please contact Heather Harper, Clinical Assistant Professor and Supervising Attorney, at hharper@kentlaw.edu.

EFactor Event – Angel Investing Summary

eMotion’s first product, BBF Gemz, provides the next generation of girls with a stylish and safe gateway to social networking.

Co-founders of eMotion Group, Inc, Avelo Roy and Ed Suda, were undergrad students at IIT when they began their company with the asistance of the Knapp Center.

eMotion is selling their product December 3rd through the 23rd at
Westfield Hawthorn Mall (park near JCPenny/Sears), located at 122 Hawthorn Center Vernon Hills, IL 60061. They are at a kiosk located on the second floor between Justice and The Icing

Their product can also be purchased on-line at their website:

http://www.bffgemz.com/

Power2Switch, a Chicago-based Internet startup that allows power users to choose among energy providers, has raised $1.3 million in funding from a group of Chicago investors.

Power2Switch is a member company of the Illinois Smart Grid Regional Innovation Cluster (ISGRIC). IIT is a partner in the ISGRIC and business support for Power2Switch was provided through IIT Stuart School graduate students as well as the Knapp Center staff.

Power2Switch Co-Founder, Seyi Fabode, was very satisfied with the assistance he received from IIT and was complimentary about the support and coordination provided by Dave Winkin, Knapp Center Associate Director.

Click here to read the full announcement about Power2Switch

The ISGRIC provides a platform to promote business growth and entrepreneurial activity by providing technical and business support to smart grid start-ups and small businesses.

Click here to learn more about the ISGRIC

Idea To Product Competition
Sponsored by IIT Armour College of Engineering and the KIEA Program
Idea To Product ® (I2P) is an international competition with branches in Asia and Europe as well as several campuses in the United States. The program is based at the University of Texas at Austin. It is a three-tiered idea competition beginning at the campus level, then the two-state level, and on to the global forum.

I2P is open to all graduate and undergraduate students, and multidisciplinary teams are encouraged. Although winners receive cash prizes, the greater benefit is the opportunity for participants to receive substantial feedback on their early stage ideas.

IIT Armour College of Engineering and the KIEA program will send up to five student teams to compete in the next regional I2P competition being hosted by St. Louis University in March 2012.

Interested teams should complete the submission form below
and review all the competition rules prior to submitting:

http://www.slu.edu/x19099.xml

Schedule for IIT Submissions:
· Submission Deadline: Dec 19 by 5 PM

· Submissions Review: Dec 20-22

· Announce teams to present a 5 minute pitch to IIT staff/faculty, other: Dec. 23

· Teams present: Jan. 18

· Winning teams selected (top five) Jan. 19

· Teams prepare/refine their submissions: Jan. 19 – Jan. 30 (Two pages)

· Submissions due to I2P: Jan. 30

· If selected as semifinalists, then the team prepares a five-page submission due Feb. 27.

· Semi-final presentations are on March 2 and finals in March 3 in St. Louis.

Apply here: http://tinyurl.com/6wlrrr4

The Knapp Center Venture Accelerator Program (KCVAP) is a program to provide mentorship and support to enable IIT students, staff, and faculty to pursue their new entrepreneurial ventures.

The KCVAP is open to all IIT students, staff, faculty, and alumni. Teams should be limited to 2-3 people and multidisciplinary teams are preferred.

Upon acceptance into the program, a Catalyst (mentor) and a KCVAP Associate are assigned to each entrepreneur/team. They will assist and guide the entrepreneurs through the program and assist in preparing them for their final presentation.

The entrepreneurs commit to three hours per week attending a weekly class (over 12 weeks), working with the Catalyst and KEC Staff, and will focus on developing a clarity of their product or service, obtaining customer validation, developing and refining a financial model, and understanding their market. Each team will make a final presentation at the end of the semester at Demo Day.

Program Outcomes:

Over the twelve-week period, participants will learn from successful entrepreneurs and apply the latest methods, such as “lean startup” and “business model generation canvas” to their ventures. This course will help prepare for application to national accelerators such as Excelerate and TechStars.

Schedule for IIT Submissions:
· Accepting one-page executive summary submissions (see application below): Nov. 28 – Dec. 30
· Submission Deadline: Dec. 30 by 5 PM CST
· Submissions Review: Jan. 3-9
· Announce teams to present a 5 minute pitch to IIT staff/faculty, other entrepreneurs: Jan. 10
· Teams present: Jan. 17
· Winning teams selected: Jan. 18
· First class: Week of Jan. 30
· Demo Day: Week of May 7

Apply here : http://tinyurl.com/7yqozoc

When Neil Gupta and Muhammed Fazeel, now at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, met in their first year in college, little did they know that this friendship would bloom into a partnership in a company. Having participated in competitions relating to entrepreneurship together throughout their college life, they were used to throwing around random ideas, and figuring out what clicks. This synergy came in especially handy when they started to think about ways to improve the classroom learning experience. The result was Tabule, a complete package that could possibly revolutionize the way that classes are taught across universities.

The origin of Tabule was with the two of them just talking about how they could use existing technologies to improve how students participate during lectures, and finding that a large group of people agreed that the traditional lecture model needed to be changed. The way that Tabule works is that it allows students to log in and actually see their discussions in real-time. In the same screen, on the left, they can take notes during class. To the right, students are able to pose questions and look at questions asked by others in class, so that if people have similar questions, they can all be attended to at the same time.

Once this idea was born, IIT gave them free iPads to experiment with, and the Knapp Entrepreneurship Center gave them access to their office, so that they could focus on building the product. Once the Idea Shop was completed, they were given one of the rooms in the building as their office. One of the driving ideas behind Tabule is that a lot of schools are now giving their students iPads, but most schools have not been able to find effective ways to incorporate it into the classroom, and use iPads even more effectively as a tool to better educate students. With Tabule, students can take notes, while looking at questions that other students had, while at the same time having access to old quizzes and notes as well. While it was developed mainly to be used in the classroom, it can also be used at home to go through notes or quizzes. Like other online systems, Tabule is web-based, but it is better in that it is faster, and it allows people to vote on the answers, like the iClicker.

Currently, they are carrying out trials in various classrooms around IIT and even expanding outside IIT. By bringing together two very common things in college classrooms in America, the need to participate and technology, Tabule may well be the answer to a lot of the problems students face, and hopefully, we will soon be seeing it in every classroom across the country.

The elevator pitch contest is about idea generation, connecting with others who have similar interests, and learning how to present your pitch to a potential investor in a moment’s notice.

Deadline for submissions: October 4, 2011 at midnight

Winners will be announced October 5
Filming equipment can be provided on request.
For further information, contact David Winkin at dwinkin@iit.edu

Submission Instructions

1. Record your elevator pitch. It must NOT exceed 90 seconds in length (Make sure you record it in an acceptable format)
2. Upload your video to YouTube (Click here for instructions)
3. Fill out the contest entry form (Click here for the entry form)

 

Here are some sample elevator pitches from one of our previous elevator pitch competitions

• I.C.E. – Muhammed Fazeel
• The Q Card – John Brophy

Last semester, when Stephanie Salem and Noah Spitler entered the Idea to Profit competition, little did they know their Clue-Me-In Impairment App was going to place in the top four! The Clue-Me-In Impairment App is an integrated Smartphone application featuring a series of three tests to assess the user’s cognitive skills and reaction time by detecting key impairments of one who is intoxicated, to prevent them from driving while intoxicated.

We at the Knapp Center managed to catch up with Stephanie Salem, very busy with graduation preparations, and found out all the inside details of the competition, and how it felt to balance it with school, and ultimately, coming out 4^th out of numerous talented participants.

Q: What is your major? Have you always been interested in things related to entrepreneurship etc? Or was it just to try out something new that you entered?

A: I am a Finance major and took Introduction to Entrepreneurship my sophomore year. We were required to enter the Idea Challenge, but through this class, I became fascinated with entrepreneurship. I used to always think of entrepreneurship as just owning your own company, but it is much more than that: it is about solving problems, making things better, learning how to innovate, etc!

Q: What were the challenges you faced during the contest?

A:  The biggest challenge we actually faced was not having enough time to prepare our    presentation. Last year, we had two ideas that made it to the competition but we didn’t find out we got in until a week or two before the actual competition. We didn’t have time to do research and work on them because of midterms, but we ended up pulling it off and did well with our presentations! This year we didn’t have too many challenges, other than going up against great competition!

Q: What were the rules of the competition, and what were you asked to do?

A: At Idea to Product, you must answer eight simple questions during a ten minute presentation and it’s pretty easy to submit an idea! These are the questions:

1. What is your product or service?
2. What is the technology that underlies your product/service?
3. How is your underlying technology unique?
4. Is your product or service innovative? How?
5. How would you define the best initial set of customers? (Who will buy it?)
6. What marketplace need does your product or service address better than any other option? (Why will they buy it?)
7. Describe how you create value for your customers.
8. What is the market and its size?
9. How do you anticipate developing IP protection/strategy for your technology

Q:  How did this balance out with school-work?

A: Once you make it to the competition, there is a lot of research that needs to go into the presentation. The presentation requires more in depth analysis and explanations than the eight questions from the original submission. It definitely takes some time, especially in the middle of midterms, but it is worth it and a great experience!

Q: What was the single most memorable moment from the contest for you?

A: My single most memorable moment was making it to finals and placing in the top 4! I (also) love presenting, so that in itself was very memorable.

Q: Did you find the tasks you had to complete very challenging, or were they simple?

A: There is a lot of research and planning that you need to do for the presentation, but with some basic knowledge of a feasibility study/opportunity assessment, it isn’t too hard! There are also many faculty members from IIT who want you to succeed and will give you feedback. It’s nice to  have experienced entrepreneurs who are so willing to be involved and want you to do well!

Q:  Did you pick your team, or were teams assigned?

A: You are able to pick your teams. Noah and I worked extremely well last year-he is an engineer and I am a business major. We decided to enter the competition again this year because of our past success.

Q: What were the things you learnt from your experiences? Has this opened you up to new opportunities, and ways of thinking?

A: You definitely learn a lot from the competition. The judges are experienced entrepreneurs and ask a lot of great questions. They also give really good feedback and advice on how to move your idea forward. And it’s pretty cool to hear the other students’ ideas as well.

Q: With all those talented competitors, it must have been nerve racking for you and Noah! Were   you nervous during the events, or was the atmosphere more fun than competitive?

A: I was a little nervous during the competition, but again, I really like presenting. Many students who don’t normally present seemed to be nervous, but overall the competition is pretty laid back. The judges are very nice and make the atmosphere comfortable.

Q: What would be your advice to other students who might want to follow in your footsteps?

A: I would recommend this competition to any student who has an idea for a product or service! It is a really rewarding experience. And even if you don’t have an idea yet, get a group of students together and start thinking of one!

Q: Overall, what would you say about your experience?

A: It was an awesome experience both years I attended and I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity!

So there you’ve heard it (or read it, rather), straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak! The I2P Challenge is a great move towards encouraging entrepreneurship among the youth of today. This competition truly gives students a look into the world of entrepreneurs, with great advice from an experienced panel of judges, as well as a chance to learn from the ideas of others. This competition is a great chance for anybody who has the next great idea, or even just wants to have a taste of the business world.