Two Tech students who participated in Tech Start-Up Summer, the pinnacle of Create-X’s “learn-make-launch” start-up program, won Georgia’s TAG Business Launch Competition.
Create-X is an organization led by its Director, Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, PhD., who collaborated with the faculty and staff at Tech along with investors and other start-up initiatives to create the program. The program currently has three components, starting with the “learn” portion, which is a for-credit start-up lab where students learn about entrepreneurship and explore their own start-up ideas.
Next is the “make” portion called Idea 2 Prototype, where students get to prototype their designs for credit. The “launch” session is Start-Up Summer, which is a highly selective program reserved for promising start-up teams. A number of businesses have grown from Start-Up Summer over the past few years, including Gimme Vending, Grubbly Farms and FIXD.
Create-X’s programs are also available to students who are not currently in the process of initiating a start-up. Sivakumar believes the success of Create-X’s programs reach more broadly than through the successful companies it produces.
“You learn a lot, your ideas are grounded, and you get experience about what exists out in the world,” Sivakumar said.
He also explained that big companies such as Google are interested in entrepreneurially minded students coming into the workforce because they will be “change instruments within their institutions.”
Create-X isn’t the only start-up organization that offers resources to Tech students. Start-Up Semester and Venture Lab both have their own style of startup related opportunities, and Create-X additionally works to support students involved in these organizations as well. Create-X also plans to implement a speaker series, junior version of Start-Up Summer and a scholarship for students interested in entrepreneurship in the near future. Create-X’s eventual goal is to have 100 student start-ups per year from Tech.
Roughly 100 teams can participate in Tech’s start-up summer. During the program, students form companies using $20,000 of funding, a team of mentors, physical space and access to lawyers. Early-bird applications for the program open Nov. 10.