Campus Resources for Startups: Make the Most of Your University’s Resources to Develop Your Idea

@Columbia Startup Lab grand opening party

Reasons to Start a Business While in College: Campus resources

Startups at a college: campus resources

Your tuition and fees don’t just cover the cost of attending classes; they also help pay for services and resources that you can use to run your venture. Free access to Wi-Fi and library materials and cheap or free copy and printing services can help you save on some of the costs you might otherwise have to pay on your own.

Many universities have their entrepreneurship center or venture studios, which can help students develop their ideas and access resources and mentoring.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Startup Exchange promotes collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, exclusively members of MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program (ILP). MIT Startup Exchange and the ILP are integrated programs of MIT Corporate Relations.

“MIT-connected” startups are based on licensed MIT technology or are founded by MIT faculty, staff, or alumni. Currently, over 1,400 startups are registered with MIT Startup Exchange and monthly additions are helping to shape and define an innovative and entrepreneurial community.

King’s College London is a public research university located in London, England. Amar Mehta, an international student from New Zealand studied for a master’s in neuroscience at King’s College London before joining the university’s King’s20 Accelerator programme. Through this scheme, he has been working on the development of Advicely, which uses artificial intelligence in digital advertising for small businesses.

“I have been impressed by the level of support at my university, all of which has tangibly helped my business,” he says. “I was offered monthly catch-ups to check my progress, access to office space, and time with experts associated with King’s, to name a few examples. I even found my current developer through contacts at the King’s Entrepreneurship Institute.”

Accelerator programmes such as King’s20 can also provide funding and visa sponsorship to international students like Amar. After finishing his neuroscience course, Amar was able to get sponsorship for a year-long start-up visa from King’s College London as a member of the King’s20 project. When a new cohort began on the programme the following year, the university offered Amar the chance to remain as a start-up-in-residence to coach the incoming group of entrepreneurs, and it supported him through a new visa application to extend his stay.

Tanuvi Ethunandan, another student entrepreneur, completed her undergraduate degree at the University of Cambridge before studying for a master’s in entrepreneurship at Falmouth University. Falmouth University is a specialist public university for the creative industries based in Falmouth and Penryn, Cornwall, England.

While there, Tanuvi joined Falmouth’s Launchpad, a venture studio, where she co-founded Data Duopoly to solve visitor congestion and lack of data insights at venues such as theme parks and museums.

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Launchpad is a business incubation programme that is being used to attract inward investment and develop talent.

The model is unique in that challenges are set for graduates by those in the industry and fledgling companies are then established to come up with practical solutions which will create products that can then be taken to market.

And it has attracted some major players locally and globally with Royal Cornwall Hospitals Trust, Amazon, and Google just some of those which have been presenting challenges for Launchpad to tackle.

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