Thirteen Middlebury College students are spending their January semester learning about entrepreneurship at the Vermont Center for Emerging Technologies, a business incubator in Burlington.
To qualify, each student must have their own business to promote. According to VCET President David Bradbury, about a third of the students in this year’s class are already earning.
Bradbury and Vice President Sam Roach-Gerber teach the course, now in its ninth year.
One of the students, James Heath, is building a website called Dormplex that allows students to offer goods and services to others on their campus. Heath, a sophomore, said Tuesday that he and his partners plan to launch a beta version of the website this week at the Claremont Colleges in California before launching it at Middlebury in February. (One of his partners attends Pitzer College, one of Claremont’s seven colleges.)
Heath said he hopes the course will teach him some of the fundamentals of building a company.
As part of the course, students go to field classes and work on their business plans. They learn sales, accounting, pricing and how to raise capital, Bradbury said. The course includes guest appearances by venture capital investors and other entrepreneurs.
Ultimately, students decide whether to pursue their careers while in college, and about a third do so, according to Bradbury.
One concept he and Roach-Gerber teach students, Bradbury said, is discovering your customers.
“And that means going out and talking to people who aren’t your roommate, mom or teammate,” he said. They have to prove that their idea is an opportunity — something they can consistently make money on and scale up to support the team.
Bradbury said VCET helps start-up companies at as many as six colleges in the state, but he sees Middlebury as the best entrepreneurial campus in Vermont.
“They have been focused on student creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship for over a decade,” he said. “It’s an unexpected place of entrepreneurial energy.”
Heath, who is from Detroit, agreed. “I think it’s probably one of the best places in the country,” he said.
Middlebury launched its first entrepreneurship program about 15 years ago, said Heather Neuwirth Lovejoy, director of Middlebury’s Innovation Hub. She said the college provides student entrepreneurs with courses, mentorship, funding and space.
“It’s a really amazing vehicle that shows students how much Vermont has to offer,” she said of the course in January.
One of the more recognizable entrepreneurs to come out of Middlebury is Corinne Prevot, who founded Skida, a Burlington ski cap company. She expanded the company while at Middlebury, although Bradbury said she did not take his course.
Senior Sophie Hiland, whose company Over Easy makes faux fur hoodies, uses the space Middlebury makes available at its Old Stone Mill to run her company. Last year, she attended the January entrepreneurship course.
“Getting together with other students and mentors to actually talk about the challenges and empathize was really valuable,” she said.
Hiland, who grew up in Chicago’s North Shore suburbs, said it’s unlikely she’ll stay in Vermont to run her company after graduation. He plans to move to New York and focus on getting a job at an elementary school. But she said she plans to continue running Over Easy on the side.
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