In this sixth episode of The Studentpreneur Show, Cliff Holekamp and Taegan discuss how Cliff, as a professor at Washington University, has helped students, what personalities work best in the business world, and his opinion on internships.
Clifford Holekamp about Washington University and its Entrepreneurial Programs
Based in St. Louis, Missouri, Washington University has one of the top entrepreneurial programs in the United States through its disruption based education.
Cliff Holekamp serves as the current Academic Director of the Entrepreneurship Program at the Olin Business School. As an entrepreneur and venture capitalist himself, Holekamp’s real world experience greatly informs his teaching.
His story began much like that of his students. Holekamp started at Washington University as a MBA student. During his time in business school, Cliff developed his business plan. He himself is a studentpreneur! The experience at Washingon University was invaluable for him in developing his business. Now Holekamp offers the same level of wisdom and resources to his students.
After running his company for six years before selling it, Cliff shared his story with his former professors. Impressed by his story, they encouraged him to begin teaching. He started with one class and is now the director of the program. Although he sold his profitable business, Cliff continues to be an active venture capitalist.
Here are a few of the insightful points Cliff Holekamp offers us in this episode:
- The importance of finding team members with complimentary, diverse hard skills along with similar ethos and goals.
- The insights provided in the book Lean Startup can help studentpreneurs begin their businesses with little capital.
- Entrepreneurship isn’t for everyone. Cliff states that entrepreneurship is “unstructured, unsupervised, and uncertain.” If you are comfortable with those, entrepreneurship may work well for you.
- Consider the long term impact of the decisions you make today, especially when it comes to internships.
Considering business school? Cliff shares how Washington University benefits students through disruption based education.
The Benefits of Disruption Based Education at Washington Univeristy
- Owning your own business is full of complexities. At the Olin School of business they address this through combining best practice research with application.
- The Entrepreneurship Program at Washington University is rich with insight from multiple perspectives. They push for an interdisciplinary focus by engaging with students in every single college at the university.
- They help students apply their knowledge as they are learning by connecting them with venture capitalists and the local community. St. Louis is one of the most supportive for entrepreneurs.
- Washington University helps students understand their clients who are not like them. This is critical since being customer focused should be top priority for every entrepreneur.
Cliff offers that what is great about entrepreneurship is that you can make an impact in your industry no matter your age and you can express yourself as creatively as you’d like!
He also shares his thoughts on the future of business. The current generation of entrepreneurs will further expand the automation of processes, which has endless potential.
Two businesses started by Washington University students:
Varsity Tutors – one of the largest peer to peer tutoring platform.
Schoology – leading K-12 classroom management platform used by thousands of schools all over the US.
After listening to this episode, I feel like I am halfway to a MBA! Cliff shares so much insight with us.
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