The Rhode Island School of Design has long been known as one of the premiere art and design colleges in the country.
But if you go to any pitch competitions in the Ocean State, it’s easy to see that there is also a strong contingency of entrepreneurs at the school. After all, is an artist not an entrepreneur at heart?
Now, a group of students is ready to bolster this community of innovators and give them the support they need to turn ideas into real companies.
RISD’s entrepreneurship club E’SHIP has recently launched what they say is the country’s first student run art and design driven accelerator that provides mentorship and funding to RISD-born student ventures and startups.
The program, which is called UpStart, completed its first cohort earlier this year and is gearing up to launch another in the beginning of 2020.
“There was no tangible resource on campus to aid student entrepreneurs in their pursuit of turning their ideas into legitimate ventures or taking ideas beyond RISD,” said Shivin Khanna, co-founder of UpStart and a former member of Rhode Island Inno’s 25 under 25 list. “That’s why the idea of Upstart was born: To provide an entrepreneurial platform for students to execute ideas.”
UpStart runs from the beginning of January through the end of April. During this time, student startups are paired with mentors, typically RISD alumni who have some sort of entrepreneurial background.
Student founders are taught about all aspects of running a business, from protecting intellectual property to manufacturing a product, and even to raising venture funding if need be.
UpStart also provides financial support to student startups in the program. It does this through equity-free grants that help alleviate some of the financial burden that comes with being a student, while also trying to launch a company.
The program concludes with a “Demo Day,” where the ventures in UpStart are given the opportunity to show what they have been working on to members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The first cohort that ran earlier this year was a tremendous success. Two of the four participating startups in the first cohort, according to Khanna, have continued to grow their companies and are working on further developing or commercializing their ideas.
With the concept now validated, Khanna said UpStart is preparing to launch a new cohort in January that could potentially take more companies than the first cohort depending on the number and quality of applications, which opened Nov. 1.
Khanna said the program is also in talks with the administration to provide students with office space like other college accelerators.
Additionally, he said UpStart is looking to expand its network of mentors and even raise a fund to provide greater financial support to student startups in the program. The initial plan is to have the fund housed within the RISD endowment.
“Right now, E’SHIP is a big part of entrepreneurship education on campus,” said Jooyeon Cho, president of E’SHIP. “We want to continue to be a support system, but we are really working to build this ecosystem so even without our program, RISD can provide help to these students and be a breeding ground for student entrepreneurs.”
