Spring 2020 Ambassador Workshop dedicated to failure and rejection
As a part of the Start@Shea Ambassador program, all ambassadors get to sit in on workshops that teach them about the essential skills of entrepreneurship. One workshop last year was about failure and rejection. Although this is not a skill one needs to be an entrepreneur, it taught all of the ambassadors that failure and rejection are key realities of being an entrepreneur.
The workshop, led by Maggie Yan (CSOM ‘22), was brilliantly designed to show both other students’ rejection and share some of our own. At the end of the…
This Fall, the Start@Shea center was lucky enough to partner with Drizly to host the first ever Start@Shea Case Competition in which six finalist teams of Boston College students across all grades competed to solve an issue Drizly was facing.
The prompt that Drizly provided us with is a real case the company is currently facing and allowed students to become consultants presenting a viable solution to the company. In the first round, Contestants were to submit a two page executive summary of their solution. …
This Fall, the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship Elevator Pitch Competition had an awesome turnout, with 25 participants across all grades and schools. 10 of the teams made it to the final round which included a 60 second pitch of their company plus a Q&A session with the judges. The judges were Dean Amy LaCombe ’90 from Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, Ivan Alo ’12, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of New Age Capital, LaDante McMillion ’12, also a Managing Partner at New Age Capital, Cory Munchbach ’09 , CEO of BlueConic, and finally, Joe Popolo ’89, CEO of Charles and…
In the winter, we run a comprehensive 9-week accelerator for BC startups to help them develop their business ideas. Weekly workshops featuring accomplished startup founders teach teams a wide variety of topics from need-finding to design thinking to fundraising. A $1,500 check is given to each team to help them overcome their first financial barriers, and accelerator teams are also matched weekly with Start@Shea’s wide network of mentors.
This year’s Demo Day featured 11 companies with 11 amazing ideas. Due to COVID-19, Demo Day was moved to a live-stream on our Youtube page. The event was open to everyone —…
We hope you’re all doing well and staying healthy during these challenging times. All of us have had to find new ways of working, learning, and sharing space while sheltering in place to help slow the spread of COVID-19. Every day is bringing new challenges, but also opportunities to help others, learn new skills, and adapt to a more virtual life. We have compiled some resources below that we hope you find interesting and helpful!
Continue to build your network and participate in programming designed to help students develop an entrepreneurial mindset.
Looking to bring your startup to the next…
As any successful entrepreneurs do, Drizly co-founders and Boston College alumni Nick Rellas, Spencer Frazier, and Justin Robinson identified a problem to solve through starting their own business: why was almost anything available through an app, except for beer? They realized the entire alcohol business had not evolved much since Prohibition ended in 1933, so their goal was to figure out a way to integrate technology into the industry.
The company was founded in July of 2012 by Boston College alumni, and since then has raised over $69 million in venture funding and has expanded to serving over 180 markets…
Founded by former Boston College students Tom Coburn, Jonathan Lacoste, and Chase McAleese, Jebbit has grown from a student startup founded on Boston College’s campus to the world’s leading Declared Data Platform.
In 2010, Coburn and his then freshman Shaw House roommate, Jeb Thomas, decided to work on an idea for the Boston College Venture Competition (BCVC) and it’s $10,000 first-place prize after Thomas introduced BCVC to Coburn. The competition has since been renamed Strakosch Venture Competition and has become a program under the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship, with increased prize money as well. During his sophomore year, Coburn came…
Michael Gordon ’16, Christian Nicholson ’15, and their team won first place at the Strakosch Venture Competition in 2016, formerly known as the Shea Venture Competition. Gordon and Nicholson’s app EchoMe took home $10,000 after they placed first in the Traditional Business Track group of the competition. EchoMe, formerly known as Emocean and MusicSplitter, lets users listen to and stream music simultaneously. This app is perfect for when friends want to listen to the same tracks together but are not near each other. …
Branick Weix ’19 and his team placed first at the 2018 Strakosch Venture Competition. As a result, Aryeo was written a $115,000 check to support the continuing growth of the real estate content platform. Founded while Branick was still at Boston College, Aryeo still continues to hire Boston College students for full-time or part-time positions just as they did when Branick was still at BC and looking for engineers to create the backbone that Aryeo started from.
Start@Shea is the student executive team of the Edmund H. Shea Jr. Center for Entrepreneurship at Boston College. Learn more at startatshea.com