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Annual Events 

  • Venture Pitch Competition: Every Spring teams of students present their ideas competing for prize money and glory.
  • Various Winter Study Courses:
    • SPEC 26: Customer Discovery in Technology (Travel Course to the Bay Area) This course is designed to give students interested in Entrepreneurship in-depth insight into the Customer Discovery process, i.e. how startups figure out if their ideas are worth pursuing. We will meet with the founders of 10-15 start-ups in the Bay Area and track their professional and personal journeys. We will look at the impact of company culture, the Bay Area ecosystem and values, financing, and how a Liberal Arts background prepares students for the challenges of entrepreneurship. Student teams will have the opportunity to work on an actual project for one or more of the companies to be visited and present their findings to senior management. We will also visit the Google campus and Stanford d.School While many of the companies will be technology driven, no technical background is needed and we will strive to have a diverse background in the class.
    • Please Note: Selection of courses change each year. 
  • How Did You Get There and How Do You Do That? Alumni Speaker Series – Occurs throughout the academic year.
  • Williams Summit on Entrepreneurship – Student-run annual conference with heavy alumni participation

entrepreneurship student groups

Williams students present their venture ideas in front of a panel for a chance to win prize money to further their projects! The overarching goal of the competition is to help students understand the process for creating and building new ventures. Participating students work extensively with alumni mentors, all of whom are experienced entrepreneurs or new venture investors.
As a part of the winter study course, Customer Discovery in Technology, students visited startups in the Bay Area to talk to founders about how they figured out if their ideas were worth pursuing and what they did after.