The NIACC John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center is now accepting applications for the Spring 2022 cohort of the University of Iowa’s Venture School program. The Spring 2022 program will be held as a hybrid in-person/online on Thursday evenings, and will kick-off on February 3. U of I Venture School is a premier statewide program for entrepreneurs and is built from a streamlined curriculum developed by the National Science Foundation I-Corps at Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Venture School emphasizes real-world entrepreneurship and innovation based on a leading-edge curriculum. You will encounter the chaos and uncertainty of creating new ventures while also being challenged to create your new business model, make pivots or preserve your original plans based on your discovery.
Spring 2022 Venture School program will be held as a hybrid class with a combination of weekly classes in-person or online via Zoom. An in-person orientation will be held Thursday, January 27th to explain the course expectations and to meet the Coaches. The last class is the Venture School Launch Day Competition and it will be held on the NIACC campus on March 24th. No classes will be held the week of March 14-18.
Each Venture School team will be assigned a local entrepreneur as their coach. Participating teams will be eligible to compete for cash awards both locally and at the state level during the Venture School launch day at EntreFEST 2022. Last year’s Mason City graduates were awarded $13,000 in prize money during the 2021 EntreFEST pitch competition. The cost for the program is $299.
Contact Mary Spitz at mary.spitz@niacc.edu with questions or if you are a local entrepreneur interested in becoming a Venture School coach. To apply for the Spring 2022 cohort, visit http://www.venture-school.com and select the Mason City cohort in the drop-down menu. The deadline to apply is January 14, 2022.
