First-year Summer Start Up

As part of the Entrepreneurship Studio, the first-year Summer Start Up combines entrepreneurial problem-research, project-design, prototype-building, and pitch-practice! 

First-year students are the audience, and students do not need to have a motivating idea or problem beforehand.  The process of preliminary exploration, research, and start-up development is central to the Summer Start Up experience. (Even if you have a great idea, be ready to work on a different great idea!)

Since 2016,  Summer Start Up has invited students after their first year to work at the union of science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. The summer starts by identifying big-picture purposes - and problems - that motivate exploration  within the team. These purposes and problems, in turn, spur research and planning. This planning includes business-development research and prototype-building. We lean in to prototype-first development, using all of the LLM tools of our era.

These prototypes often involve human-centered design - and we will look to work with the 5C Hive for these facets. Sometimes projects benefit from a computational interface, perhaps a webapp, other webpresence, or an API by which others connect to the overall capabilities and vision. No prior webdev experience is necessary; often start-uppers find themselves more confident and comfortable with human-centered design, webdev, and other prototyping skills by the end of the summer. 

(Warning: Building this confidence always entails memorable challenges!)

All students in Summer Start Up practice and refine their business research and pitches -- a lot! Like technical prototypes, a pitch is never "complete." Even so, it's possible to build a compelling, engaged narrative -- from idea to instantiation -- in a summer. Join us for Summer Startup!

For the "optional essay" prompt, feel free to include a few sentences on your personal interest and/or background at the overlap of STEM and entrepreneurship.