Northeastern University today announced the launch of the new Center for Entrepreneurship Education, a university program intended to teach entrepreneurship and business skills, while bringing students and alumni together to develop new ventures.

IDEA, the student-run venture accelerator at Northeastern, played a role in developing the center and will lead the experiential component of the center.

“The announcement of the Northeastern University Center for Entrepreneurship Education is a huge step forward for not only IDEA, but for the entire Northeastern Community. It truly shows the University’s commitment to entrepreneurship,” said Chris Wolfel, CEO of IDEA.

The center will offer undergraduate students access to entrepreneurial programs, adding more options to the established business classes, theEntrepreneurs Club, and the renowned co-op program. The center also benefits graduate students and NU alumni. Graduate students can participate in the “Lab to Venture” program, assisting researchers at Northeastern to create successful businesses. ”Startup Boot Camps” will be offered to alumni, helping them to create business plans and network with local investors.

Ventures from the Center for Entrepreneurship Education will be directed towards IDEA. With the help of IDEA, the entire Northeastern community – from undergraduates to alumni – has the ability to receive coaching, mentorship, and all of IDEA’s resources.

“IDEA has proven that a university-wide program can not only expand Northeastern’s entrepreneurial community, but help them achieve real success in student and alumni ventures,” said Wolfel. “The announcement of the Center for Entrepreneurship Education enforces what we do and the bright future of Northeastern’s entrepreneurs.”

To view the article released by Northeastern University, visit: www.northeastern.edu/news/2012/05/entrepreneurship-education/

About IDEA
IDEA, Northeastern’s Venture Accelerator, is a student-created and run university program at Northeastern. Our mission is to educate and cultivate the entrepreneurial community at Northeastern University. We achieve this by providing student, faculty, and alumni ventures with coaching, connection to resources, and funding with the end goal of developing self-sustaining and investment-ready ventures.

IDEA is proud to welcome 6 new officers to the management team. 

As we say goodbye to those graduating and wish them luck in their future endeavors, we are happy to announce the new additions to IDEA’s Management Team!

Kevin Walther, Libby Kober, and Ashley Roth: Communications Officers
Kevin, a political science and communications major, interned last semester at Howard Consulting Group in Washington, D.C. He has interned previously in Governor Deval Patrick’s press office and is active in PRSSA.

Libby completed her first co-op at The Boston Globe, working in the public relations and community affairs division. As a communications major with a concentration in media studies, Libby is the Outreach Coordinator for PRSSA, where she has been a member since her freshman year.

Ashley is pursuing a degree in English with a minor in business administration. She recently completed a co-op in New York City at The Association of Magazine Media and was previously the Marketing Chair for NU’s Relay for Life committee.

Kelly Samoiloff: Events Manager
Kelly joins IDEA as an Events Manager. Majoring in business administration, she completed her third co-op this spring with EMC’s events department. Kelly says she is “excited to join the IDEA management team. Everyone has already been so welcoming and it seems like a great group of people to work with.”

Tyler Welsh: Management Team Assistant
After completing his first year at Northeastern, Tyler is “excited to be surrounded by so many people that have more experience than me and can teach me how to excel in the business world.” In addition to joining IDEA, he recently began an internship at a San Diego-based start-up.

Sarah Park: Webmaster
Sarah is a graphic design & interactive media major. Sarah is in her junior year at NU and on co-op at Above the Fold, a user experience design agency. In her spare time, Sarah co-runs a mobile app company for smartphones.

We are excited with the new additions to IDEA and look forward to a great year!

Part of our mission at IDEA is to educate and cultivate the entrepreneurial community at Northeastern. This is accomplished through coaching, connecting, and funding.

An important yet sometimes underestimated part of startup success is being informed and learning from others who have had similar entrepreneurial experiences. We decided to feature three non-IDEA, successful ventures to demonstrate what it takes to truly make your mark. These startups arePolyvore, Spool, and Yammer. Each of them have received coaching and venture funding from various companies and as a result, have gained a tremendous amount of success and popularity.

Polyvore is the leading community site for online style where users are empowered to discover their style and set trends around the world. The company collaborates with prominent brands such as Calvin Klein, Diane Von Furstenberg, Lancome, Net-a-Porter, Gap and Coach to drive product engagement; and its user-generated fashion campaigns have been judged by celebrities such as Lady Gaga and Katy Perry.

Polyvore was founded in February of 2007 and is funded by Benchmark Capital, Matrix Parterns, DAG Ventures, Goldman Sachs, and Vivi Nevo (NV Investments). With the help of investments the company has gained over 15 million monthly unique visitors. Additionally, Polyvore’s global community has created over 44 million sets that are shared across the web.

The web is more than just text. Spool allows you to save videos, images, and articles to your smartphone device by simply using WiFi. Point Spool to a URL, and your SpoolBot will grab the content and sync it to all of your devices. This means you can access your content on your phone, laptop, work computer, and tablet at anytime. Then when you’re on a train, plane, subway, boat or anywhere without Internet access, your content is available! You are also able to share your favorite webpages and videos with friends and family simply by adding it to their Spools.

In late 2010, the company’s co-founders, Archival Garg and Curtis Spencer, developed an engine that could record a video from the Internet, play it on any device, and move videos between devices without having to worry about network connectivity. In 2011 this initial technology was generalized to include any type of content. Spool has received over $1M in venture round funding to reach their current success. Investors include, SVAngel, Felicis Ventures, Yuri Milner’s Start Fund and YouTube founder Steve Chen.

Yammer is an enterprise social network, providing a secure way for employees to communicate, collaborate, and share information. Employees using Yammer can discuss ideas, post news, ask questions, and share links and other information. Yammer also serves as a company directory in which every employee has a profile and as a knowledge base where past conversations can be easily accessed and referenced. The basic Yammer service is free. Companies can pay to claim and administer their network

The company was founded in September of 2008 by David Sacks formerly the COO of PayPal. Yammer grew out of the genealogy app Geni as a way for organizations to communicate. The company has received $142M in venture funding. During 2011, Yammer’s total users increased from 1.6 million to 4 million (2.5X growth), and employees increased from 80 to 250.

All of these companies had an innovative idea, and they were able to use venture resources to truly explode in their individual markets. Let the inspiration begin!