A club aiming to spark interest in starting new businesses and hosting events that foster entrepreneurship has had their kick off meeting.
Ronald Ekambi and Godfrey Joekumar, both final year students in the computer programmer program, led the first event of this year’s club. Currently sponsored by Algonquin alumni-created incubator Singularity XL, the club hopes to incorporate the abilities of many students across the different fields found at Algonquin.
They believe the success of a good idea is dependent on cooperation and contributions from many different skill-sets.
“Event planners, business students and programmers all have roles to fill in a start up,” said Joekumar.
Joekumar and Ekambi aim to host a variety of workshops that range from technical topics to tips on how to dress for a networking event.
“We want to shine the flashlight on already existing student innovators and help new ones gain a foothold,” said Ekambi.
There are many forces which can derail the start up process and Start Up Algonquin wanted to create an organization that helps implement ideas. With support from people and companies who have already survived the trials of working in the early stages of a company, they hope the prior experience can help newcomers avoid common pitfalls.
“Community is key to get ideas off the ground,” said Ekambi.
The initial meeting was held Oct. 13 and hosted over 20 people. A GitHub tutorial talking about the popular software sharing and collaboration tool was hosted Oct. 22 and registration for future events will be found at http://www.startupalgonquin.com.
“The key is to build a student network of entrepreneurs who help each other do awesome things,” said Joekumar.