Hello friends,
As my classmates and friends returned from their spring break trips in Costa Rica, South Africa and many other amazing places with great stories and even better tans I’ll admit I was definitely a tiny bit jealous. I spent most of spring break in the empty study rooms here at Stern working diligently with my business partner on our start-up [you can read more about that here]. At the end of the week we headed off to exotic Dallas, Texas for Dallas market week to attend some fashion trade shows and to meet with brands and suppliers to begin developing relationships and figuring out how the wholesale buying process works.
Despite the fact that I was not sitting on a beach somewhere, it was pretty awesome to have a week completely free of classes and other school distractions to work on my business and I am so proud of the progress we were able to make! Now that graduation is becoming more of a reality (less than two months, ahhhhh!) I have begun to think about life after NYU as an aspiring entrepreneur and I will admit it is both equally exciting and terrifying. Resources for entrepreneurs here at Stern continue to get better and better right before my very eyes and are definitely helping to make the transition a little less stressful. Aside from the annual Berkley Center$200K Entrepreneurs Challenge which you may have heard of, we have just announced a very exciting new program, the NYU Launch Pad!
The Launch Pad, NYU’s own version of a start-up incubator, is a 10 week summer program for graduating NYU and NYU-Poly student teams to accelerate their new ventures forward. Through a combination of workshops, speaker series, and mentorship sessions, startup founders will learn lean startup principles to guide the development of their business models and prototypes, have access to a co-working space at NYU-Poly’s Varick Street Incubator, establish connections with members of the NYC startup community, and Showcase their startup to potential collaborators, investors, and partners at a capstone showcase. You can read more details about this new program here. This is definitely a step in the right direction for all of NYU’s aspiring entrepreneurs and I can’t wait to see what fantastic companies emerge!
Until next time,
Kristin