Hello, Penn!
Welcome to Penn‘s How to Start a Startup community.
We’re here to provide an enriching classroom setting, catered to Penn students, to supplement YCombinator President Sam Altman’s How to Start a Startup course.
With the Facebook group, viewing events, and this blog, we hope to cultivate discussion, instill an entrepreneurial mindset, and motivate students to participate in the startup community. Whether you’re currently involved in startups or not, this class will provide valuable insight into how businesses are built, based on the experiences of leaders in the Valley. So, dive in!
We’re excited to be bringing this course to Penn, especially since we have such a vibrant and growing entrepreneurship community here. Budding entrepreneurs at Penn have access to a variety of resources, including PennApps, the first student-run hackathon in the world, and Dorm Room Fund, a student-run branch of First Round Capital. We’d like to bring awareness to all these resources here at Penn, and enable entrepreneurs to build. Furthermore, we'd like to foster conversation and collaboration. Perhaps your future cofounder is taking this course with you right now!
Penn has also been the home to some of the best-known entrepreneurs and companies we know of today. Tesla, SpaceX, StubHub, Paypal, Zynga, First Round Capital, Venmo, Flatiron Health, and Twice all had their origins here on our very own campus. These companies are a testament to the capabilities of our students -- we take our learnings and experiences from campus and apply them, fulfilling some unmet need and making the world better in the process.
It isn’t a stretch to imagine that the next big company will be started somewhere between 33rd and 40th Street.
We will be featuring Penn startups of both current students and alumni, as well as curating your learnings from the course in this Medium collection. Be sure to chime in on our Facebook group and come out to our events — we always love to hear your thoughts.
Your community managers,
Karan Hiremath, @karan_hiremath
Nilesh Kavthekar, @niles_h
Claire Lee, @clearlyclairely
P.S. Kickoff at First Round Capital at 7 PM tomorrow! Hope to see you there.
