Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship 2019 Stats
Since opening May, 2017, things have been busy at the Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Here are some stats (as of December, 2019)
- Over 11,000 visits to the Center:
- 51% students, 49% non-students/community members They come for mentoring, educational events and to work on their business ideas.
- On average there are 40 events and meetings in the Center each month, including 1Million Cups and Social Media Breakfast and that is steadily increasing.
- Completed five large company consulting projects with students giving them real-world experiences and generating about $70k in income to support the Center.
- Active connections with existing regional organizations like Greater Mankato Growth, the Small Business Development Center, Region 9, Otto Media Group, SMIF, GreenSeam, SCORE, DEED, the Mankato Makerspace and Old Town Association help link students and faculty to the regional community - which aids in retention.
- Received two SMIF grants for $35,000 and have given $20,000 of that to assist the Mankato Makerspace and Connections Shelter for the homeless.
- The Big Ideas Challenge student venture competition has given away $70,000 in the past five years. Twelve of the businesses are still in operation.
- Coaching and mentorship for student businesses to compete in venture competitions. In the last 5 years for Entrepreneurial Bridge, our students have placed 1st or 2nd every year but one. We've had two students in the Student Division of MNCup and they placed first and third.
- Initiated a Women Entrepreneurship Week event in October 2019 in cooperation with the Small Business Development Center that had 75 attendees to three events and resulted in three more female student entrepreneurs starting to work with the CIE and SBDC.
- Coordinated EIGHT Global Entrepreneurship Week events this November in cooperation with various regional partners to celebrate and assist entrepreneurs. 257 attendees to those events included community members and students from all Colleges.
- As of December 5, 2019, there are 65 students with businesses or business ideas being mentored at the CIE. 23 are Not College of Business majors, 33 are students of color and 24 are female.
- Mentorship to help develop and accelerate a wide variety of student businesses including: CEED Energy (vertical-axis wind turbine kits for greenhouses), Coconut Whisk (vegan baking mix), EnduraMark (refillable dry-erase markers), 2True Headbands (headband manufacturing), Social Butterfly (video/social media firm), Cubic 3D (3d printing and filament sales), Telitox (package-carrying drone), Webytor (websites), Infinity (costume manufacturing), O-Cam (oven camera and app), LacedbyFaz (wig manufacturing and wig/lashes resale) and more.
