How to Start a Startup: The NYU Entrepreneurial Institute is Here to Show You How
How do you go about starting a startup, or another business? For anyone with entrepreneurial ambitions, it’s a daunting, but necessary question to ask. For those seeking answers, the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute has you covered. The institute is a university-wide initiative that provides students with support and education on how to become successful startup founders and entrepreneurs. Recently, the institute’s Executive Director Frank Rimalovski held an informational session for CDS, “How to Start a Startup”, on how the Institute guides and empowers students who are interested in starting their own businesses. (This workshop was a part of the NSF NRT grant awarded to the Center for Data Science.)
The Institute offers students workshops, events, co-working & meeting spaces, and one-on-one coaching to support you at any stage of your startup journey. Whether you’re just beginning to conceptualize your business or have reached the fundraising phase, the Institute has resources available to you. Specifically, the Institute includes the Startup School Workshop. The free workshop series is instructed by industry experts and designed to teach startup skills and relevant topics in entrepreneurship. Additionally, the institute includes the NYU Startup Accelerator Series, which is a step-by-step program that begins with a coaching session followed by a number of internal workshops such as the Startup Bootcamp, Startup Sprint, and culminating in Summer Launchpad. Some successful companies to emerge from the Institute include Brooklinen, Kinvolved, Ephemeral Tattoos, Dathic, and Revelio Labs — each of which formerly participated in the accelerator program and are revenue-generating companies that have raised millions of dollars in venture capital funding.
In addition to their robust educational resources, the Institute also has developed programs for diversity and inclusion. In fall 2019, they implemented the Female Founders Fellowship. Currently, over 50% of the founders of the twenty-five portfolio companies invested in by the NYU Innovation Venture Fund have at least one female founder, and a third of which have a female CEO.
“One of the things we’re particularly proud of is that NYU has been cited on numerous occasions as being the number one university for female founders with the highest percentage of female-led companies raising venture funding over the last five years, and that’s not a happy accident,” Frank emphasized.
Frank’s dedicated team of eight startup experts officially work out of the Leslie eLab, (currently set to re-open February 7, 2022), a space that includes meeting rooms and co-working spaces where students can meet, collaborate and take advantage of the many resources offered by the Institute.
For more information on the Institute, please visit the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute website.
By Ashley C. McDonald
