Do you have a million dollar idea? Do you know how to share it? The world is forever growing, changing, and improving, and it needs your ideas to move forward smoothly. But where do you start?
The McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship has designed a combination of entrepreneurial-focused curricular and experiential opportunities to help with such dilemmas, and the McFerrin Methods workshops are a great place to get your feet wet. The final event of this fall’s Methods series, Tapping into the Crowd, will be held Thursday, November 1, from 6 p.m. – 8 p.m. in Rudder Tower, Rm. 601.
Sophia Bishop, Program Coordinator with McFerrin, states that the name of the workshop, Tapping into the Crowd, stems from wordplay on the concepts of crowdfunding and crowdsourcing. Bishop says, “Using crowdfunding gives you the ability to be more creative in solving problems in many industries, and our speaker, Jaime Raijman, has experience in multiple crowdfunding campaigns where he has raised over 1.5 million for novel products. He specializes in giving individuals realistic expectations for running successful crowdfunding campaigns.” Proof that Raijman knows what he is talking about can be found in a fast-growing Houston startup called Knocki, which under Raijman’s leadership became Kickstarter’s most funded Texas technology company.
The workshop will focus on today’s society and how the internet plays a major role in advancing ideas, business and societal change. Crowdsourcing and crowdfunding can be major components in today’s entrepreneurial scene, so if you have even an inkling that you might one day want to start your own business, come sit in on this McFerrin event and learn. “Crowdfunding can be a not-so-easy concept to grasp,” says Bishop. “So we’re trying to apply crowdfunding to more of a student perspective. We want to help students think outside the box and do something with their own business without seeking large investments, and to encourage them to try this out themselves. We’re hoping that anyone attending will become more confident in approaching crowdfunding for their own problems, ventures and goals.”
The McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship has a history of helping entrepreneurs learn, grow, and connect with the right resources. Begun back in 1999 with the desire to enhance the Texas A&M and BCS area through innovative ideas and education, the center provides training, networking, and assistance to those seeking help, and has also given businesses start-up acceleration, competitive opportunities, and work experiences.
Thus the McFerrin Method workshops are one of the best places to go when you don’t know how to begin moving forward. Whether you’ve got your idea drawn out with a detailed plan or you’ve never even imagined yourself as an entrepreneur, McFerrin Methods workshops invite anyone and everyone—from students of any major to the general public. The Methods series was created to provide potential entrepreneurs with the skills and tools to empower their ideas and to assist with communicating those ideas in a clear and concise manner. Methods workshops are an excellent place to network, meet people, ask questions, and get familiar with the entrepreneurial atmosphere, if you’re not already.
Attending this event could potentially open doors, so why not go and see?
The workshop is free, but you will need to RSVP on the McFerrin Center for Entrepreneurship website.
