UK STEM Symposium 2011

Experiential
Entrepreneurship
Education for
Engineering Students
Nick Such | Director of Labs |
nicksuch@gmail.com | @aerosuch
 Who am I?
• Grew up in the Midwest (Omaha, NE)
• Moved to KY at 16 (South Oldham HS)
• Mechanical Engineering at UK (2009)
– Solar Car, Tau Beta Pi, E-Club
– GE, Toyota, Budapest
• KSTC internship
• Founded Awesome Labs in 2009
• Stanford MBA in September
 What we do
• Take risks
• Promote role models
• Build support system
 What we actually do
• Identify market opportunities
– Propose relevant projects to senior design
teams
• Mentor student teams
– 3-month program, meet weekly
• Incubate high-potential companies
– Space, funding, leadership, network
Example: AwesomeTouch
 Timeline: AwesomeTouch
• Summer 2009: learned about NUI Group via UK VisCenter
• Fall 2009: submitted project proposals to UK EE & CS
• January 2010: started mentoring 1 EE, 2 CS teams
• April 2010: Business students & EE team place 2nd at IdeaStateU
• May 2010: Demo for Lexington CVB
• June 2010: Form AwesomeTouch, apply for KSTC funding
• July 2010: Win $1k from KHIC BIG Idea
• October 2010: Install first screens at CVB, LexArts during WEG
• November 2010: Awarded $30k from KEF
• December 2010: Pitch at VatorSplash NYC
• January 2011: Win $5k from KHIC BIG Idea
• March 2011: Sell 3rd screen to Lexington Hilton
 Goals
• Take risks
– Small downsides, huge upsides
• Build awareness of role models
– At least 6 buildings on UK’s campus are
named after engineers → entrepreneurs
• Build support structure
– Entrepreneurship is really hard
 Influencers
• Steve Blank
– Customer development
• Eric Ries
– Lean startups
• Alex Osterwalder
– Business Model Generation
THE NEWS
we’re mostly talking about

SOFTWARE
Start with software
Elon Musk is my hero

Then move onto the more

difficult engineering
challenges
 Similar programs
• NC State EEP
– SV trip, professors w/ startup
experience
– http://www.engr.ncsu.edu/eep/
• Stanford BASES
– Competitions, ETL speakers
– http://bases.stanford.edu/
• Seed-stage accelerators
– YCombinator & TechStars
– Funding, focus and mentorship
 Lessons Learned
• Startups are really hard
• You can’t teach entrepreneurship; it must be
experienced
• Culture matters
• Ideas don’t
• Failure is good
• Engineers can make a great career out of
starting companies
• KY needs more tech entrepreneurs
 Resources in Lexington
• Awesome Inc
– Startup Weekend
– StartupDigest
– MobileX Conference
• In2Lex
– Startup Advantage
– April Is
• 5 Across & Venture Club
• UK E-Club & Wildcat Investors
• Bluegrass Angels
• ICC & Von Allmen center
• KSTC & KHIC
 Terminology
• Advisor or Mentor
– Someone with valuable skills or experience who help s startup founders, often without compensation
• Angel Investors
– High-net worth individuals who invest personal money in startups. See gamblers.
• Business Plan
– A lengthy document that is often wrong by the time it is completed. Requested by some investors.
• Bootstrapping startup
– Running off founder money, or customer money (not external investment)
• Co-founders
– People who start a company together
• Funded startup
– Running with angel or VC money. Typically involves trading an equity stake
• Mature company
– A startup that has achieved PMF and has a repeatable business model
• Product-Market fit
– The stage at which a startup begins to transition from experimentation to execution
• Project
– A defined course of action that a group decides to pursue
• Revenue
– Customer funding, the only sustainable (and most sexy) type
• Startup
– A company that has not yet found product-market fit
• Venture Capitalists
– Institutional investors (someone else’s money)