The smart professors at Cal Poly have clearly “struck oil” with the just recently launched, Cal Poly Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. The center was created by my friends Dr. Louis Tornatzky and Dr. Jon York to accomplish a few very important objectives:
1. Bridge the gap between local entrepreneurial businesses and local community and the aspiring entrepreneurs at Cal Poly by fostering internships and mentoring relationships.
2. Promote entrepreneurial activity, scholarships and dialogue across the university.
3. Build a pipeline of entrepreneurs and supporting start-up ventures.
Fortunately, a buddy invited me to the first public launch of the center and we got to learn about the mission from the founders, learn about a few businesses from Cal Poly students and discuss becoming a “Founder’s Circle” member. In year one, over 100 students from Cal Poly have joined forces and the positive word is spreading like wild-fire amongst business owners in San Luis Obispo County. For us at Meathead, the launch of this great initiative could not have come at a better time. Those who know us well can attest that we’ve had aspirations to go national for quite some time with our business model. We face similar challenges that most small businesses with goals of this scope face, and this group gives us a local resource which broadens our existing circle of entrepreneurial knowledge, experience and support. As a founding member of this great organization, we can now leverage the great talent of like minded Cal Poly students with the experienced leadership of the professors/founders.
At the moment, we are about half way through our internship with some incredibly bright future entrepreneurs who are passionate about contributing towards Meathead’s success. Every Wednesday morning at 7:15am, Evan and I are excited to meet with the group to tighten up our expansion vision, review collected data and challenge each others’ perspectives. I truly cannot say enough great things about this exciting and wonderful group and we are incredibly thankful for being involved.
This is only the beginning of what can happen when you pair "empowered" Cal Poly students with empowering mentors in the community! Need more like the Meathead guys!
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