Consider two successful Nebraska businesses: Hudl, a video editing company in Lincoln, and Venel, a marketing and communications firm in Omaha specializing in orthopedics.
Both companies carved out viable niches for themselves. These two Nebraska-born companies have something else in common:
They got their start as business concepts pitched by students during the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s annual business-venture competition. Venel won the first competition, in the 1980s.
This year’s annual New Venture Competition concluded last week at the Student Union. Forty- six teams competed, with undergraduate as well as graduate students participating.
The top winner was Grant Suddarth, a junior agricultural economics major from York, for Terrace Ag, a software company developing a tool to improve the asset valuation process.
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The New Ventures competition provides an appropriate moment to note the importance of entrepreneurship education in Nebraska in general and the longstanding work in particular by UNL’s Center for Entrepreneurship. The center, launched in 1986, is one of the nation’s oldest such facilities.
The heart of the annual business-pitch competition is the interaction, feedback and networking that occurs as students meet with Nebraska businesspeople serving as judges, says Samuel Nelson, director of the Entrepreneurship Center.
“The entrepreneurs here in Nebraska really take the time to give our students very thorough, constructive feedback,” Nelson told The World-Herald. That feedback extends throughout the school year as mentors and guest business leaders work with students, he said.
That supportive attitude commendably is found in the Nebraska business community overall, as many established firms in various sectors provide assistance and guidance to Nebraska startups.
The Center for Entrepreneurship provides a major field of study as well as a minor and regularly works with students outside the program — in engineering, for example — who want to study the basics of startups. In all, about UNL 900 students are studying entrepreneurship to some degree.
One of the center’s aims, Nelson said, is to help students understand the complexity of business startups and real-world economics, regardless of whether they ultimately attempt to start a business themselves. “The challenges are immense in the entrepreneur community, and the more students can understand that, the better their foundation will be,” he said.
Positive, too, is how the center coordinates with UNL’s Engler Agribusiness Entrepreneurship Program. Some of the New Venture Competition teams have featured a blended membership of students from both programs.
Suddarth’s success in the New Ventures competition with his ag-focused project underscores the constructive partnership between the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Engler program.
Entrepreneurship has particular importance in the modern economy. A 2014 report by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation described business startups as “an important source of productivity growth and . . . net job creation.”
UNL’s well-designed efforts are commendable in helping students understand what it takes to launch a business. This work can bring major, long-term benefits to the state.