Back in April, Colgate University hosted Sir Richard Branson during Entrepreneur Weekend. Along with Branson’s conversation, there were sessions for students involved in Colgate’s Thought into Action program.
Thought into Action is a program on practical entrepreneurship in which passionate students collaborate with parent/alumni mentors with genuine entrepreneurial experience on taking some thought/idea and turning it into reality.
During the weekend, Katie Finnegan ’05 was asked to sit on one of the panels.
As Forbes reports, something very “entrepreneurial” happened:
“During the course of the event, she was asked to pitch her new business venture to the crowd of hundreds. She was completely unprepared, but her pitch, she says, went something like this:
“Hukkster is a win-win for the shopper and the retailer. Retailers cast a wide net of offers and it’s push, push, push. Hukkster gives shoppers the ability to pull and receive notifications only when the styles they covet go on sale. And retailers can rest assured that the most relevant content is arriving promptly in the hands of their customers.”
The audience seemed enthusiastic but none so much as General Catalysts’s David Fialkow, a Colgate alumnus and an investor in e-commerce success Rue La La, who more than liked the pitch. “He actually asked the room who was interested in investing,” she recalled. “And was like ‘I’ll invest too.’ All of a sudden the whole room was raising their hands.””
Read more at Forbes. Take a look at the Hukkster beta site to see how the company has evolved.
The Thought Into Action program is teaching entrepreneurs to think about solving problems. Colgate students like Maggie Dunne ’13 are identifying a need and putting their ideas into action. Take a look at some of the new projects for the fall class. Which one do you think has legs?