Center for Technoentrepreneurism Opens Competition

The Center for Technoentrepreneurism at Dakota State University (blessedly abbreviated to CT@DSU) has fired the starting pistol in the race for creating new tech businesses in Madison. Fifteen curious DSU students and potential technoentrepreneurs attended the opening informational meeting and call for business plans on campus yesterday over the noon hour. CT@DSU review board member and DSU professor Josh Pauli noted that 15 is a pretty good crowd -- "and we got that without free pizza."

Pauli laid out the goals of this new project, a joint effort of DSU and the Lake Area Improvement Corporation (who we hope will not have to cut funding for this project after the budget hits it took from the Lake County Commission). CT@DSU wants to promote tech start-ups by capitalizing on the skills and ideas floating around the DSU campus and the surrounding area. CT@DSU plans to offer assistance, but to get started, the project is focusing on DSU students, encouraging them to come up with "quick, small successes."

And when CT@DSU says quick, they mean quick, and they have money to encourage that quickness. Pauli asked for interested students to submit one-page business summaries by September 28. The review board, consisting of Josh Pauli and fellow DSU professors Wayne Pauli (yes, Josh's dad), Kevin Streff, and Tom Halvorson, will hand $100 to each student who submits a summary that looks like it has potential. Students must then submit full business plans by October 19. Students whose plans are accepted get $250 and are then expected to set up shop in the Heartland Technology Center by November 2 and legally form and register their company by November 16. Students (and eventually other interested entrepreneurs) who form a business receive $500 a month, as long as they continue to show progress in building their companies.

Whoa. Take a moment to picture this: if a third of those in attendance at the meeting yesterday follow through and create reasonable business plans, we could have five new tech businesses buzzing about town in two months. That's big-thinking ambition!

Why all this money? Simple: as Josh Pauli put it, he knows there are technoentrepreneurs on campus with really good ideas. But they have to work to pay their tuition and other bills, and they may not have time to start a business. The stipends CT@DSU is offering provide the equivalent of 15 hours a week stocking the shelves at Lewis or delivering pizzas. If we have technoentrepreneurs who can create businesses that will ultimately create jobs and revenue and keep more high-knowledge, high-income DSU graduates in Madison, then we should help them get into business as soon as possible instead of sapping their energies in jobs anyone can do.

As one student in attendance, Matt Paulson, noted, many of these students may be hard-core programmers and not have business background. That's why CT@DSU isn't just offering the above stipends; the project offers numerous services to help new technoentrepreneurs develop their businesses and business skills:

1. Scholarships and paid internships: again, students with these great ideas need more time to focus on developing their businesses and business skills. Scholarships and internships can take the place of part-time work that wouldn't be related to their business plans and studies.
2. Company formation: CT@DSU will cover the legal costs of signing the papers and formally creating the business.
3. Travel: CT@DSU will help technoentrepreneurs find and cover travel costs to business workshops, conferences, and competitions.
   
4. Advice, advice, advice: each business will have a Board of Advisors consisting of academics and local businesspeople to help guide the new business through the rocky first years. CT@DSU will help the aspiring technoentrepreneurs connect with other experts among faculty and the business community. CT@DSU will also identify external agencies, like the Enterprise Institute in Brookings, that can provide help.
   

Streff noted that for him and his fellow review board members as well as for students, this is an exciting time. Since sitting in these very classrooms as a student 20 years ago, Streff said, he has seen DSU grow significantly. The university has become an important source of employees for big corporations like Premier BankCard and Citibank. However, DSU hasn't sparked the creation of many tech businesses around Madison. CT@DSU and its participants have the chance to get in on the ground floor of a new chapter in job and wealth creation. Streff urged potential technoentrepreneurs to imagine themselves twenty years from now as the leaders of local businesses who would be right here at DSU's doorstep, with first pick of the crop of DSU's tech graduates.

If there was any downside to yesterday's meeting, it was pointed out by DSU instructor and graduate student Pam Rowland, who looked around and asked, "Where are the women anyway?" Indeed, the demographics resembled those of the July 24 forum on the role of universities in commercialization: of the fifteen potential technoentrepreneurs and four review board members in the room, she was the only woman. There are lots of women on campus (DSU is not the School of Mines -- last year the female-male ratio was 53:47); a ratio of 1:14 at yesterday's meeting disappoints this observer. Ultimately, business is business, and DSU grads eager to work in the area may not care much whether it is a man or a woman handing them their $60K starting salary. But let's hope there are more technoentrepreneurial women out there ready to rumble with the men in what CT@DSU hopes will be a vibrant Madison market.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to write up my plan for turning the Madville Times into an international e-publishing house. Silicon Valley, Bangalore, here we come!