Mississippi State University’s Entrepreneurship Center, which helps make start-up business goals into realities, will move in late November to new quarters in McCool Hall in the heart of the Starkville campus.
The 2,000-square-foot space will better accommodate the needs and aspirations of the program started in 2009.
Entrepreneurship means conceiving and building a business enterprise from the ground up.
When Keith Kakadia started his business, SociallyIn, he had no business connections in the Starkville area.
Daily Journal reporter Zack Orsborn reported Monday through the help of the Entrepreneurship Center, Kakadia was able to get his first client.
The primary focus is for students, but the center is also available to faculty and staff. There is also a component which serves external clients to include individuals, existing businesses, start-ups and communities.
MSU’s center leaders looked at the cutting edge e-centers across the nation to help shape what Mississippi State would seek.
One of the programs used as a model was the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship providing the expertise, support and connections needed for MIT students to become effective entrepreneurs.
The website for MIT’s program says Robert Edwards and Charles Easley of MIT have estimated Martin Trust has produced leaders who’ve founded 25,600 active companies employing 3.3 million people and generating annual world revenues of nearly $2 trillion. The group of companies, if it were its own nation, would be the 11th largest economy in the world.
“It’s going to help put (MSU) on the map,” Kakadia said. “It’s one of the biggest e-centers in the state. For startups, we’re going to have a lot more resources that we are going to be able to utilize.”
Eric Hill, director of the e-center, and his staff began planning the “cutting edge” facility in August 2014 by visiting other hubs at MIT, NYU and Texas A&M.
“We wanted it to be something that when somebody comes on this campus, and of course with all the Mississippi stigma, they say, ‘Oh my gosh, this is literally Silicon-Valley-level awesome,'” Hill said. “That drove so much of the design and cost process.”
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