Episode 1 of Jon’s 12-part series with the Entrepreneur POWER HOUR Club at the University of Michigan.
College entrepreneurship is broken and Barry Sabin and Bobby Housel are working to fix it. College institutions are failing to cultivate the right communities to support their most brilliant entrepreneurs. Not only that, but they’re failing to connect thousands of interested angel investors across the country with their best student founders.
At University of Michigan Barry and Bobby have built a community of 250+ entrepreneurs, incubating some 40 companies and many more in the works. They have created the go to place for founders to meet and build sincere relationships while supporting each other in all facets of building amazing companies. They have begun expansion at Stanford and are working to scale this community across the country. The community is known as Entrepreneur Power Hour and has been built quietly at Michigan over the last 2 years. The two founders are also building a syndicate fund called Founder’s Cupid which is working to connect great college founders with brilliant angel investors.
There are three key components of what they are building.
- Entrepreneur Power Hour: Soon to be nationwide communities supporting the best founders on college campuses.
- Founder’s Cupid Syndicate Fund: Not only have colleges drastically failed at building community for their best builders on campus, but they too have failed to realize the potential of helping the best founders meet the many potential angel investors who would be interested in mentoring and investing in these founders. Right now if you are a successful entrepreneurial minded alumni of University of Michigan, for example, there is no route for you to invest in the next generation of future Michgian Founders. Bobby and Barry are empowering alumni and those interested in college startups across the country to support the next generation of college founders through their syndicate fund, Founder’s Cupid, powered by Sydecar.io, a competitor fund product to the popular Angellist.
- TechCrunch for College Founders: Bobby and Barry are also working on building their own media arm to tell the stories of college founders in the weeds building their companies. They know that these stories are fascinating to so many and there are lots of investors, companies, philanthropists, and more that would love to learn about what is getting built at college before the YCombinators and Sequoias of the world bring these founders into stardom. They also know that empowering founders to keep refining their stories with a nationwide media brand will be immensely helpful to all parts of their business model. Right now there is no clear way to learn the stories of college founders until they get picked up by the biggest funds and investors in the US. Bobby and Barry are determined to change that.
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Bobby and Barry are students building the future of college entrepreneurship and angel investing in college startups. They can be reached at:
Learn more about the community at entrepreneurpowerhour.com
Connect with Jon Dwoskin:
Twitter: @jdwoskin
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonathan.dwoskin
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejondwoskinexperience/
Website: https://jondwoskin.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jondwoskin/
Email: [email protected]
Get Jon’s Book: The Think Big Movement: Grow your business big. Very Big!
Connect with Bobby:
[email protected] / 440-221-8719
https://linktr.ee/bobbyhousel
Connect with Barry:
[email protected] / 248-303-5235
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcsabin/
*E – explicit language may be used in this podcast.
