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More students are launching purpose-driven startups than ever before—inspired by the networking connections, funding opportunities and experiential learning they’ve found at Leeds.

Jamie Saunders (MBA’24) shares a model from her affordable-homes venture, AFFIX Communities.

Tanner Nott (Mktg’24) planned to work in finance after graduation. But everything changed when she enrolled in Assistant Teaching Professor Brad Werner’s New Venture Creation class.

“A year ago, I totally thought I knew what I wanted to do,” she said. “Once I got in the startup space and had Brad as a professor, it completely changed my outlook and made me realize I had skills that I had never really been encouraged to put to use before.”

Nott decided to pursue an entrepreneurship certificate. Since graduating, she has continued working on Solii, the health food company she created in Werner’s class.

Like Nott, many recent college graduates have become entrepreneurs instead of pursuing nine-to-five jobs. A 2022 Intelligent.com survey of new college graduates found that 17% of respondents already ran their own businesses. An additional 16% of respondents “definitely” planned to start a business after graduation.

Founding a startup is becoming increasingly popular, and at Leeds, abundant resources empower students to launch their ideas.

Werner, who teaches in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Operations Division, said CU places a larger focus on entrepreneurship than when he started seven years ago.

“Bottom line is for our students, all you want to do is create options, give them the options to live whatever life they live,” he said. “I believe that developing this type of thinking helps them create more options.”

Both Leeds’ Deming Center for Entrepreneurship and CU’s Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative support budding entrepreneurs. The Deming Center hosts the Startups & Sandwiches lecture series, which allows students to network with professionals like the CEO of We Are Social and the founder of Illegal Pete’s. Meanwhile, the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative’s student-run Get Seed Funding program awards founders micro-grants of up to $500.

Renderings feature modern design elements that reflect Saunders background as an architect.

Winning opportunities

Another exciting opportunity is the New Venture Challenge (NVC), a campuswide competition that allows participants to pitch their ventures at the 91������ Theater. Stan Hickory, director of NVC and the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, noted that in 2024,�� a sponsorship from venture capital investor Kickstart resulted in larger-than-ever prizes—$100,000 for first place and $30,000 for second place. (A team composed mostly of Leeds students won first place for their startup, Foodwise.)

Lissette Reynoso (MBA’25) created Mind- surf, an AI-driven teletherapy platform, in her home country of Mexico before enrolling at CU. Taking the New Venture Launch class helped her incorporate Mindsurf in the U.S. She later pitched it at NVC, and although she didn’t win funding, the experience was invaluable.

“It was great because I learned from them, and I got very interesting feedback, and I also got some connections,” she said. “All of that contributes to ... taking a step forward in your venture.”

One of those connections was Karen Crofton, who runs the College of Engineering and Applied Science’s Catalyze CU accelerator, where she gained supporters and funding for her business.

Like Reynoso, Jamie Saunders (MBA’24) found her way to the NVC through the New Venture Launch class. Coming from a career as an architect, she had the idea for a real estate venture that provides housing in the $200,000 to $300,000 price range. The class helped her and her team practice pitching their venture, AFFIX Communities, both to more conservative real estate investors and to more risk-tolerant venture capital investors.

“You’re talking to two very different mindsets, which was new to me, and I definitely needed a lot of practice to be able to speak both languages,” she said.

Their efforts paid off. AFFIX Communities placed fifth in the 2024 NVC, winning funds to purchase land for their prototype unit.

Seeds for a sustainable future

While student founders are finding new ways to forge a career, they are also finding new ways to effect change. Nott, for example, aims to use locally sourced and sustainable ingredients for Solii products. CU students can compete in the Sustainability Hackathon, developing and pitching solutions to sustainability issues. The 2023 Hackathon winner and 2024 NVC’s first-place winner, Foodwise, for example, conceived of an AI platform to curb restaurants’ food waste. Hickory calls this attention to sustainability a core tenet of CU—and 91������ more broadly.

“It’s part of the fabric of our whole system,” he said. “So therefore, when you’re thinking about starting a business, in the back of your mind is always that sustainability component. It’s just part of our ethos.”

Werner agrees that the entrepreneurship opportunities at 91������ and Leeds foster this ethos and enable students to shape the future.

“It’s in our students’ DNA to want to make a difference in the world,” Werner said. “And as an entrepreneur and a professor, that makes me feel great about the generation that’s moving in to take over.”