With the prevalence of Startup Weekends, it’s awesome to see the model being refined and taking on niche foci. One of those is the Tech4Change Portland Startup Weekend that’s being hosted by Mercy Corps. But another awesome one just crossed my desk: Oregon State Startup Weekend. It’s focus? Student athletes.
Oregon State Athletics is taking a new approach to student-athlete development by hosting its first Startup Weekend, an entrepreneurship event in which participants will collaborate to build potential business ventures.
“Yes, we definitely want student-athletes to jump into this,” said said Akili King, managing director of the OSU Athletics Leadership Institute. “But this is open to everyone. The university hadn’t hosted a Startup Weekend before, so we’re taking our mission and trying to get the wider community involved. It’s just as useful for everyone else as it is for anyone involved with athletics.”
“This sounds like a really great opportunity for our athletes,” said Mike Riley, OSU’s head football coach and the opening speaker for the weekend. “It’s so much about setting goals and executing, which everyone in athletics understands. And getting them involved with the whole community to work together makes this even better. I’m looking forward to this.”
For more information or to register to attend, visit Oregon State Startup Weekend or follow @StartupBeavers on Twitter.
