Franke Honors Launches Venture Studio Supporting Student Entrepreneurship

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new york city skyline

As a collaboration with Parsons School of Design, selected Franke Honors students will travel to New York City in February for a hands-on hackathon, where they will build SaaS ideas from scratch.

The W.A. Franke Honors College is excited to announce the launch of The Venture Studio at Franke Honors, a new initiative aimed at cultivating entrepreneurial thinking and empowering students to transform their ideas into real-world impact. The program is open to all Franke Honors students regardless of their academic discipline, and offers structured support for idea‑generation and venture-building. 

Scott Hessell, Strategic Partnerships and Innovation Officer, oversees this new program. He emphasized that the Venture Studio at Franke Honors is more just than a startup incubator.  

“This is a place where students will develop an entrepreneurial mindset that they may apply in a variety of settings,” he said. “The hope is that this leads students to not only found startup ventures but contribute with that ‘get it done’ mentality in many professional pursuits.”
  

At the core of Venture Studio is a flexible ecosystem of workshops and events designed to guide students through every phase of the entrepreneurial process. Each engagement will empower Franke Honors students to cultivate collectively the entrepreneur’s foundational mindset, build confidence and communication, and develop the key skills for founding a new venture.

students standing in front of brick wall

Along with Hessell, six Franke Honors students have been instrumental in the ideation of the Venture Studio. Yona Kleinerman, Emma Stevenson, Kian Sadat, Andrew Pongrátz, Dylan Weaver, and Izzy Marcy have aided in developing the various activities and the overall structure of this initiative. 

The early student leaders attended Bear Down for Franke Honors this fall to recruit more students to join Venture Studio.

This semester, Venture Studio will be hosting a series of events on product ideation, customer validation and pitching.  These workshops will prepare interested students to pitch an idea for a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution – think Etsy, Spotify, and Canva – that will be developed in New York City in collaboration with the Parsons School of Design.  Selected students will travel to New York City in February for a hands-on hackathon, where they’ll collaborate with Parsons’ students in designing a basic framework of their solution and pitch to leading investors in the NYC area.    
 
To kick off the pitch competition, Parsons’ professor, designer, and  start-up builder Sally Chung will visit on September 29th to lead a workshop, where she and Hessell will share more details about the upcoming hackathon and NYC experience. 
 

The Franke Honors College has long championed experiential learning and student leadership. With the introduction of the Venture Studio, it deepens its commitment to interdisciplinary thinking and bold exploration. 

“Venturers aren't only going to learn skills to build their own companies, but they'll learn skills that are applicable across industries--to make them impactful leaders, creatives, and innovators in different fields,” said Franke Honors Advisor Gabrielle Karcheski. “I think we'll see our Venture graduates become important voices in everything from tech to non-profits in the next few years.” 

The Venture Studio at Franke Honors

The Venture Studio at Franke Honors is focused on developing an entrepreneurial ecosystem geared toward our highly diverse, knowledgeable and creative Franke Honors students. Offering a broad set of activities that are designed to develop the critical mindset and toolset of an entrepreneur, the Venture Studios are open to any Franke student at any point in their entrepreneurial journey.  

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