Students attending KickStart Weekend listen to a program presentation.
KickStart Weekend, a two day event held at Portland State University (PSU), took place from October 23rd-24th and gave students an in-depth introduction to startup design, research, industry/consumer trends, and prototyping. KickStart Weekend is part of a series of events put on by the Center for Entrepreneurship (CE) that take place periodically throughout the academic year, each focusing on a specific theme. This term, Kickstart Weekend focused on consumer goods and aimed to provide students with a solid foundation through which they could develop their own startup.
The event highlights important steps to the startup process from ideation to product development. Along with this step by step guide, the weekend also provides students with essential connections and resources they might not find elsewhere. Now in its 10th year, Kickstart Weekend stands as a vital educational tool for students interested in an entrepreneurial future.
“At the Center for Entrepreneurship, we have developed a year round program to provide PSU Students a pathway to explore how to take a concept from idea to reality,” said Juan Barraza, director of student innovation at the CE. “Kickstart Weekend is the first step for PSU students in their entrepreneurial journey.”
The weekend provides students networking opportunities with entrepreneurs from the startup community, including the judges and presenters of the event. The combination of thoughtful exercises and network connections creates a hands-on experience for students they may not receive through their academic studies.
Javi Güemes, an undergraduate marketing student, found the event to be “really nourishing.” After learning about the time, effort and patience it takes to turn an idea into a business, Güemes said that she saw herself “in the position of an entrepreneur. I experienced first hand how complex businesses are; from the ideation step all the way to the launching of the product or service.”
Another student participant, MBA candidate Rowena Paz Norman, found value in working with a team to figure out a problem they wanted to address, how to develop a solution to the problem, and how to work in a way that highlighted the team's diverse backgrounds. She found it especially remarkable that the CE was able to pack so much learning into one weekend.
Paz Norman added “With Kickstart Weekend, I learned how to identify a problem and create a solution from nothing. Even better, there was so much joy in learning, collaborating, and creating together as a team. The experience was thrilling and reinforced that I am meant to be an entrepreneur."
While Kickstart Weekend is a powerful event on its own, it’s also followed by Invent for the Planet, a three day workshop held in February that delves deeper into prototyping and how to take an idea to market.
“We always hope, in all of our programming, that students leave with an understanding that they can and will achieve total greatness,” Abigail Van Gelder, assistant program manager at the Center for Entrepreneurship said. “Kickstart Weekend gives people an opportunity to try something new and understand where it fits into the total global economy and their own futures.”