Sometimes getting started is the hardest part when it comes to creating a startup. That’s why there are programs out there in place to help accelerate the process, but what if you’re a student with limited time between classes and work? Enter the 3 Day Startup (3DS) program.
According to the 3DS website, tamu.3daystartup.org, “3 Day Startup is a 72-hour learning-by-doing campus workshop that teaches entrepreneurial skills to university students in an extreme hands-on environment.”
The most recent 3DS event was held from Nov. 7 – 9th, 2014 at the student incubator at Texas A&M University at College Station (TAMU).
Among those that participated in 3DS this weekend were four students from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi (TAMU-CC):
- Jeremy Cripe, a Psychology major
- Derek Drozd, a General Business major
- Peyton Larkin, A Business Management major
- Avery Pfeiffer, a Computer Science and Business Management major
These four students attended the event to learn the process of the 3DS program in order to help foster a similar program in new entrepreneurship program and initiative at the College of Business at TAMU-CC.
“Three of the students completed the pre-incubation program at the Coastal Bend Business Innovation Center (Innovation Center), which provided them with the tools to participate at 3DS,” stated an article on the tamucc.edu website entitled “Islander Students Selected to Learn Process of 3 Day Startup in College Station.”
David Fonseca, Incubator Manager at the Innovation Center, accompanied them to the event at College Station.
The event, as its title suggests, only lasts for three days, but a lot of ground is covered in that short amount of time.
According to the 3DS website, the event is broken up by days with each day focusing on a different aspect of creating a startup:
- Day 1: Participants arrive—with our without startup ideas—and a facilitator leads the group through dedicated brainstorming, preliminary pitches/ feedback, and team selection modules. Some teams work late into the night and others prefer to rest up in preparation for day 2.
- Day 2: Customer discovery (teams exit the building or hit the phones and talk to potential customers), structured mentorship, intermediate pitches and feedback sessions. Day 2 places heavy emphasis on business model generation.
- Day 3: Continued execution (including pitch workshops) leading into final pitches/ demos to an esteemed panel of mentors and investors.
Although the event is broken down into three main steps it is actually very involved. Students start off the event by giving 30-second pitches to a panel of students who vote for most feasible ideas. Students whose ideas are chosen then create an e-team to help with developing a business model, market validation, prototyping and preparing the final pitch. At the final day of the event each team presents their product pitch to a panel of accredited investors.
According to the tamucc.edu article, seven of the ideas presented at the event went on to give a product pitch to accredited investors at Seed Sumo, an accelerator at College Station that provides a 100 day boot camp for startups.
As evidenced by the list of TAMU-CC attendees, the event is open to all majors and not just those in the business field, and is even open to those who are not students.
Past participants have spanned everything from a freshman in psychology to a freshly minted Ph.D. in Neuroscience, states the 3DS website, and while the majority will be students, 3DS is open to (very strong) non student participants.
At the event, Jeremy Cripe had one of the top 7 most feasible ideas and went on to the next round after the initial 30-second pitches to present a final pitch to accredited investors at Seed Sumo.
For students who may have limited resources and time, 3DS offers an opportunity to create a startup in the span of a weekend. Even if the startups created during the event do not come to full fruition students leave the event with something of value.
According to the 3DS website, “The worst case scenario is that you will work with brilliant people from numerous disciplines toward the common goal of building real companies and products…The best case scenario is that you will be a cofounder of a wildly successful new tech startup.”
For more information:
http://www.tamucc.edu/news/2014/11/112414%203DS.html#.VHygMTHF98E
http://tamu.3daystartup.org/