Engineering entrepreneurship: Learning by doing

Abstract

The University of Florida College of Engineering offers an entrepreneurship course targeted to graduate engineering students and working professionals of all engineering disciplines which mimics, as completely as feasible in an academic environment, the real world experiences of enterprise formation and growth. The course structure includes executive team formation, building the company, and fundraising through multiple capital rounds. Each graduate engineering student takes dual roles of company executive and technology investor. Participants invest in each other's enterprises at valuations negotiated between the students themselves as both investors and entrepreneurs. Critically, at the end of each semester, external investors and serial entrepreneurs review final presentations and "acquire" each student company, providing a Return on Investment for each student as a technology entrepreneur and also as a technology investor based on dilution through three rounds of fundraising and company acquisition terms. Lessons learned are explored to provide for instructive advice to others who may wish to explore a similar offering. © 2011 American Society for Engineering Education.