​Entrepreneurship

We’ll help get you started on the path to entrepreneurship. Ideas and innovations from WashU students, faculty and staff are fueling a thriving startup community in St. Louis. Business incubators such as Cortex, T-REX, and CIC St. Louis give startups the support they need to prosper. Advance your own entrepreneurial aspirations with a variety of courses, workshops, and competitions.

Entrepreneurship Fellowship

Developing an entrepreneurial spirit is a pillar of the student experience at WashU Olin. The Entrepreneurship Fellowship is awarded to Full-Time MBA students who are looking to influence business and society in areas globally such as equity, diversity and inclusion; sustainability; and social responsibility. Fellows receive full tuition remission, networking opportunities, one-on-one mentorship, housing within the Lewis Collaborative and more. For more information, download the Entrepreneurship Fellowship information sheet (PDF).

Entrepreneurship Curricula

• BSBA students can major in entrepreneurship or sample elective offerings.
• Undergraduates from other WashU schools can earn a second major, a minor, or enroll in courses.
• Our Israel Summer Business Academy, a seven-week immersion in venture capital and entrepreneurship, is open to undergraduates from any accredited university.
• MBAs can concentrate their studies with a 20+ credit hour Entrepreneurship career platform that includes at least one experiential project.

Experiential learning is a major component of our entrepreneurship curricula: consulting projects with early-stage startups, business plan development, business plan competitions, management of a venture capital investment fund, and the opportunity to form startup teams with students from multiple disciplines campus-wide.

Entrepreneurial consulting course

In CELect, you engage in consulting projects for resident entrepreneurs to better understand the challenges of a startup and advise the new ventures on best-practice business strategies. The program has office space at T-Rex, a tech incubator in downtown St. Louis. Or take Olin's Venture Consulting in Budapest elective for start-up consulting with a global flavor.

With the Metrics Clinics course, focused on finance or marketing challenges, small teams of students provide fresh thinking and strategic recommendations to enterprises in the startup ecosystem.

Business plan courses and competitions

Olin’s BIG IdeaBounce® is a 2-minute-video elevator pitch contest open to all WashU students who compete to win up to $2,500 from our $20,000 in prize money.

In the Hatchery course, you work with entrepreneurs and investors to develop a business plan of your own, or one brought to WashU by individuals interested in a group startup. At the end of the course, teams present their analyses to a group of business startup and venture capital experts.

Extracurricular entrepreneurship activities also are offered by WashU’s Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurial Studies, which promotes corporate innovation and the commercialization of new business ideas. The Skandalaris Center was founded in 2003 when Washington University was selected as one of eight Kauffman Campuses, in recognition of Olin-invented programs including the Hatchery and the Olin Cup business plan competition. The Center sponsors business plan competitions, speakers, internships, and mentoring programs.

WashU students and faculty are frequent participants in the Arch Grants business plan competition, which provides $50,000 grants to startups and takes no equity in return.