SURGE Tech Startup Bootcamp

I’m on the team for the SURGE program (@mohawksurge) at Mohawk College. The program has been stirring the entrepreneurism pot on campus with educational events for the startup-curious and free mentorship for students actively working on new businesses. One of the objectives is to act as a funnel into the wider ecosystem.

This winter at SURGE we’re trying a new series of events we’ve called Tech Startup Bootcamp. It’s three workshops on market validation, minimum viable products, and sales & marketing. The speakers and content of the workshops, as well as the marketing of the workshops, has been done in a way that’s been oriented and branded towards technical students. Terms familiar to a technical audience were used when possible, for example.

We actually sold out the first workshop due to the fire code limits for the room! The students seemed pretty engaged, and the vast majority of them were technical-subject students, many of whom hadn’t been to a campus entrepreneurism event before. Many indicated they were interested in going further than attending the workshops, and we’ve encouraged them to perform market validation of their ideas as a starting point. I’m hopeful we’ll see some students turn the enthusiasm into action – I know I’d love to see it happen!