Checking In On The Dorm For Dreamers
from the still-sounds-great dept
Last year we had a post about the special dorm for entrepreneurs at the University of Maryland. It’s a dorm for students who want to start businesses. The dorm is set up to make it easier for students to run their own businesses, with full wireless connectivity, professional looking conference rooms, offices, white boards, and lots of typical office amenities. They also bring in speakers and have sessions on some of the more important aspects of starting and running your own business. Finally, they encourage students to go off and build the business of their dreams. The Boston Globe now has an article looking at how the program is doing, and it sounds like it’s doing great. Lots of companies have been started, and the students seem to love the experience they’re getting. They especially seem to enjoy the fact that they get to be around other like-minded students who they can share stories with and learn from. It sounds like there are even more companies this year than last year, and quite a few are making money. Whether or not any of these companies turns into a sustainable business is less important than the experience the students are getting. It will be interesting to see if other universities follow suit.
Comments on “Checking In On The Dorm For Dreamers”
The Welfare Dorm
Given that UM is only a few miles from Washington D.C., and given that anyone who grew up in that area knows that the way to make good money is to become a government contractor, it will be interesting to see if this program continues to incubate truly private sector businesses. Lots of people have tried to start non-government businesses in that area before, but found it difficult to acquire local resources (people, venture capital). Whenever anyone “starts a business” in the DC area, the assumption is that they want to feed off federal contracts.