Duke students’ expanding culture of entrepreneurship is calling for greater institutional support.
A growing number of students are looking to start their own ventures post-graduation rather than searching for work at large, established firms, said Kimberly Jenkins, senior adviser to the president and provost for innovation and entrepreneurship. With the success of the Duke Start-Up Challenge, subsequent projects and an increasing interest among students, Jenkins and a committee of alumni have been assessing ways to tap into students’ entrepreneurial potential and prepare students to create their own careers in a job market that is still recovering.
“[Entrepreneurship] is what drives our economy, and it’s become a greater priority of the University,” Jenkins said. “It’s seen as how we need to educate our students, to be innovative and entrepreneurial no matter where they are. That’s where the jobs are.”
There are a number of students who have begun their own ventures on campus. Junior Fabio Berger co-founded two ventures: ShelfRelief.com, a website where students can sell their books to one another, and WealthLift.com, an investments education website tailored to young people. Berger is also a founding member of InCube, an entrepreneurship-themed selective living group on Central Campus. Junior Soroush Pour is the other co-founder of WealthLift.com.
Berger noted a need for a refreshed curriculum in entrepreneurship. Although Duke offers many courses in entrepreneurship, he said that many faculty who likely founded firms around 20 years ago, are not accustomed to the new, more technologically focused start-up environment.
“It’s a bit decentralized at the moment—Duke can put resources in place that can help centralize these [start-ups] and ultimately become... more conducive to having start-ups being created out of the undergraduate level,” said senior Daniel Bingyou, vice president of sales at the start-up Hootli and president of the Duke chapter of the Kairos Society, an intercollegiate, entrepreneurial network. “There’s certainly no lack of student enthusiasm— it’s literally putting the pieces in place to accommodate that enthusiasm with faculty and University support.”
To address the growing interest in entrepreneurship on campus, Jenkins and the Innovation and Entrepreneurship Task Force—a team of alumni and professionals in the field—researched and analyzed campus programs over the course of this Fall to issue recommendations on how to support innovation and entrepreneurship at the University. Jenkins said she finished the strategic plan in the first week of December.
Jenkins said she hopes to create both a physical and a virtual entrepreneurship hub at Duke in the next few years. As well as increasing collaboration and dialogue within different student entrepreneurial organizations and business-minded students, the center will include an incubator, where students can develop prototypes and information about courses, summer experiences and resources available to undergraduate and graduate-level entrepreneurs.
Other proposals of the task force include offering more entrepreneurship-focused courses that may lead to a certificate, a minor or a concentration within a major, Jenkins said. Another suggestion is an internship program that actively places students in social ventures, start-ups and venture capital firms nationwide, as well as starting a Duke in Silicon Valley study away program for students interested in innovation and entrepreneurship, similar to Duke in New York programs for students interested in finance or the fine arts.
Legal obstacles are another area in which student entrepreneurs are seeking the University’s help. In developing a start-up, Berger said the administration and faculty can definitely do more to advise, especially in regards to legal issues, like trademark problems, that can prevent a student start-up from getting off of the ground.
Duke Venture Forward, a student organization that focuses on entrepreneurship, is exploring ways for campus entrepreneurs to have access to capital and a lawyer to oversee their business transactions, said DVF President Chong Ni, a senior and member of The Chronicle’s independent editorial board. Many student groups are restricted by regulations that prevent them from fully functioning as a business, especially when they want to use the Duke name.
“[Duke administrators] have done a lot on campus, but there are still a lot of legal barriers and that is the biggest thing that people who want to do entrepreneurship need to overcome,” Ni said.
Ni added that he supports the long-term plans Jenkins introduced but thinks there could be more immediate changes made to accommodate undergraduate entrepreneurial organizations.
“One thing I want to have is more flexibility,” Ni said. “It’s sometimes hard for a student group to open a business to make money off of.... Even just using the Duke name, there’s going to be licensing things we have to consider.”
Berger and Pour are potentially risking their Duke careers to work on their venture. The pair have both taken a personal leave of absence this Fall to develop their start-up in Switzerland. They plan to take the Spring off as well, but taking a third semester off—without a religious or military service exemption—is in violation of University policy, meaning they could not return.
“If things go really well for Soroush and I, and we want to take an extra semester off... we don’t know what exactly the consequences of doing that are going to be with the University,” Berger said.
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