ENCOURAGE
Engagement with entrepreneurship
Encourage | Speak
Educate | Mentor
Empower | Judge
HKEC Advisory Board
Lead a Forty Acres Founders Seminar
Guest speakers in the Forty Acres Founders Program
will lead a one-hour seminar on a topic related to
establishing product-market fit. Some guest speakers
may also be asked to attend an additional “check-in”
session, where they will provide feedback to undergraduate
founders on their progress through the customer discovery process.
Examples of weekly seminar
topics include, Customer Discovery, Interviewing,
Analyzing Findings, Customer Segments, Pricing, Prototyping,
Customer Relationships, and Storytelling
Interesting in leading a seminar?
About Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator
Launched in Spring 2020, the Forty Acres Founders Pre-Accelerator Program at the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center offers undergraduate student founders the opportunity to study potential customers, improve their product, establish product-market fit, and position their product for success within the marketplace.
Students learn to vet their ideas, develop skills for researching and understanding customer needs, and develop tools for building a product or service that appropriately fit a market need.
Spring 2020 Cohort: Final Pitches
Twenty student founders spent the Spring 2020 semester rigorously establishing if a market need existed for their product or service. Some are continuing their project with new tools and funding, while others are using their product-market fit skills to develop new ideas.
Four founders advanced to the pitch competition in the final week of the course. Sebastian Brau, Anel Cuarenta, Vaishnavi Lakshmanan and Thomas Smith competed for $20,000 in seed funding.
Watch the Final Pitch highlights below: