Think you have to major in business to become an entrepreneur? Think again. Or, to put it another way, dream on. A few years ago, we might have said entrepreneurship is having a moment. Now we know it’s having a momentous impact. At Wake Forest, we know this in part from the work of our alumni, who include Vimeo co-founder Zach Klein (’04); James Beshara (’08), a pioneer in crowdfunding whose first beneficiaries included Hurricane Sandy victims in 2012; and Olivia Wolff (’16) and Lauren Miller (’17), whose healthy tea and wellbeing company, UpDog Kombucha, began in their dorm rooms and is now sold at more than 130 locations throughout the Carolinas. But we mainly know it because our students can’t stop telling us. Entrepreneurship and social enterprise (ESE) has been the most popular undergraduate minor at Wake Forest in eight of the past 10 years. But even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Nearly 75% of ESE minors declare their primary major in humanities or social sciences, not business. But as with everything else, the classroom is only the floor of this Forest. Wake Forest’s Center for Entrepreneurship delivers the greenery. In its fullest form, it helps turn ideas into fully functioning businesses. But for all participants, it teaches problem-solving and public speaking skills, and it instills perseverance and poise through these programs:
■ Idea Sandbox allows students to test the viability of their idea. ■ Deacon Springboard helps them develop a prototype, create a website and formulate a pitch to investors. ■ Startup Lab is a three-credit course in which students receive seed grant funding and make actual pitches to live, in-person, potential investors. ■ Entrepalooza, the largest event of the year, gives students a chance to present ideas to judges for cash prizes.
You provide the vision. We help magnify it. You own it.
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