In the Texas Incubator Practicum, students will learn and use entrepreneurial skills to incubate an idea for a food or beverage business. Student will gain confidence in their ability to test ideas for viability, join a community of like-minded peers across disciplines, and increase their ability to start or evaluate a new venture in the food/beverage industry. By working with real world industry leaders, entrepreneurs, and classmates, students will get hands-on experience managing foreseeable risks and overcoming common challenges.

Designed for students with an entrepreneurial or investing interest, this class will involve guest speakers, class discussions, team-based and experiential assignments, culminating in a final presentation at the end of the semester.

During the Summer semester, students work in teams with F&B startups founded by UT Austin students to accelerate the startup’s development. Those with established startups in the food and beverage industry will use the summer to accelerate the growth of their own company.

Course Information:

Students should plan on spending 3-4 hours outside of class time working on their assigned startup project.

As with all new ventures, the more time founders invest in their startup ideas, the greater and faster their customer insights are, so students are encouraged to apply themselves as needed beyond the minimum requirements of the class to get the most out of the course experience. Weekly assignments are experiential and activity-based, with weekly reports to classmates. The final deliverable is a “pitch” presentation summarizing students’ experience starting or accelerating each student’s venture.

This course satisfies Requirement 5 of the Entrepreneurship Minor Program.