Entrepreneur Expo | Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

What’s happening at the Dingman Center?

Every two weeks, the Dingman Center distributes The Pitch, which highlights important happenings in our community. In case you missed it, here’s a look at what’s up in entrepreneurship:

Dingman Center Offers Lean Startup Program Exclusively for UMD Alumni

The Dingman Center has created a unique program to help UMD alumni entrepreneurs jumpstart their startup ideas. Dingman Jumpstart will help alumni de-risk their ideas using the principles of the highly effective Lean Launchpad methodology. The eight-week program kicks off with a boot camp weekend (Jan. 9-11) featuring interactive workshops, lectures and intense customer discovery. The program continues with two additional workshops in February and March. In the end, alumni should be equipped to make a “go or no-go” decision on their idea.

Campus partners include the Academy for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, DC-ICorps and Mtech. The full schedule, program materials and registration information is available online.

Don’t miss the opportunity to jumpstart your business idea. Register by December 12.

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Global Entrepreneurship Week Roundup

Global Entrepreneurship Week at the Dingman Center was a huge success! With at least one event every day of the week, we contributed to a global movement of more than 112,000 events with 25 million participants worldwide.

Monday: We kicked off the week with movie night as we screened the documentary “Extreme by Design.” The screening lead to an interesting discussion on using design thinking to create businesses that solve global problems. The same day, the Dingman Center Angels saw three-minute pitches at the Fast Pitch session during TEDCO’s Entrepreneur Expo.
Tuesday: Elana Fine participated in a panel on technology commercialization during Bioscience Day. In the evening, we hosted an Entrepreneurship Connector that brought together students from across campus who are interested in sharing their ideas and passions.
Wednesday: Terp Marketplace was buzzing with more than 20 student vendors testing the market and selling their products.
Thursday: It was standing room only at the Pitch Dingman Competition which drew more than 260 attendees. Timothy Chi, Founder & CEO of WeddingWire delivered an inspiring keynote and lead the judges in choosing the winners. Harrison Baum took home top prize winning $2,000 for SellMyOldTech.com. Sam Feldman took home $1,500 winning both 2nd place and the Audience Choice award.
Friday: We wrapped up the week with a record number of students at Innovation Fridays and six DC startups presenting at Dingman Center Angels Review Day.

Thank you to everyone who participated in Global Entrepreneurship Week! For more photos, go to the Dingman Center Facebook page.