A national entrepreneurship program is helping Syracuse University students and Syracuse community members gain insight and feedback on business startups.

The 1 Million Cups program provides a forum for emerging entrepreneurs to hone their business pitches and public speaking skills every Wednesday morning throughout the year. Developed by the Kansas City-based Kauffman Foundation, 1 Million Cups was founded in 2012 and has spread to 90 locations — including Syracuse — across the United States, said Amy Wyant, one of the Syracuse program organizers. 1 Million Cups has been in Syracuse for a year and a half.

The Martin J. Whitman School of Management’s Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship has taken the lead role in introducing the program to SU. Still, the 1 Million Cups program is open to anyone, not just SU students, said Lindsay Wickham, the events and communications manager for Falcone.

“So that’s kind of why we want to do this, to bring community and students together, through entrepreneurship,” Wickham said.

The Syracuse-based 1 Million Cups takes place every Wednesday downtown at Syracuse CoWorks, located at 201 E. Jefferson St., from 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

The Syracuse program is unique in that non-profits also have the opportunity to present every Wednesday. The Syracuse program is locally sponsored by Expressive Consulting, Glenn Allen, Harris Beach, Launch NY, the Syracuse CoWorks, Tech Geekery and Coffee Mania. Coffee Mania provides free coffee for presenters and audience members. All 1 Million Cups program locations offer free coffee, while the program itself is named after the goal of having 1 million conversations over coffee.

Braden Croy, one of the two current community-based organizers of Syracuse’s 1 Million Cups program, explained what SU entrepreneurs get out of the program, and why he believes it’s valuable.

“Anytime we can get students off of the Hill, it’s a really important opportunity,” said Croy, who is also SU’s Blackstone LaunchPad program manager.

Croy said entrepreneurs highlight “key aspects of their business” while presenting during the program, opposed to giving an “investor presentation.” He said the program focuses on small businesses, and an audience of peers helps emerging entrepreneurs find solutions to problems inevitable with any startup, such as products’ market fit, business growth problems and customer attraction.

On Wednesday, two SU sophomores kicked off the first 1 Million Cups event of the 2016-17 academic year, using the opportunity, to get advice and feedback on their startup, Croy said.

Lawrence Lin and Quentin Rosso, two international students from China and France, respectively, presented their global media writing website Savofair before a crowd of 11 gathered in the stark, wooden and concrete CoWorks office. Lin is an international relations major while Rosso is a finance and political philosophy dual major.

The students’ slideshow described the website as a “community of curious people,” looking to learn more about the world. The entrepreneurs said their website currently has 93 contributing writers from across the world that create content on travels to different countries.

Lin said Savofair is going through a transition from a content-driven website to an online platform promoting and organizing “offline meetups” between international students and people.

Lin and Rosso presented for nearly 10 minutes, before getting feedback from the audience for 30 minutes on how to branch out and successfully transition to an offline meetup platform.

“I enjoyed it very much, we got some really valuable feedback,” Lin said. “I don’t get a lot of this being in school, so it’s great to be in a room full of strangers … it’s good to get that third party experience.”

Following Lin and Rosso’s pitch, Croy said they are creating an energy and vibrancy in the community. He added that people are now aware of two more entrepreneurs.

Wickham said this year she is hoping to get an increase of student participation in the program.

Published on August 31, 2016 at 10:11 pm

Contact Sam: sfogozal@syr.edu | @SamOgozalek