Inside the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business is a small office dedicated to helping big entrepreneurial ideas take shape. The Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship offers academic programs and real-world experiences for undergraduate and graduate students interested in the startup process. By empowering early-stage founders to embrace a sense of discovery, new ventures have formed, blossomed, and enriched the greater Seattle ecosystem for 30-plus years.
Students need a proving ground to test their assumptions. The Buerk Center distinguishes itself from campus partners focused on specialization and commercialization through a broad cross-disciplinary approach.
- Undergraduates: Dozens of majors are represented in the multi-year Lavin Entrepreneurship Program and the Entrepreneurship Minor for non-business students.
- Graduate students: Options include the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship or the highly ranked MBA program.
- PhDs: Step away from the bench for courses in the Technology Entrepreneurship Certificate and Innovation Practicums.
After graduating, these students become the heart of biotech, cleantech, retail, hardware, and software companies that uniquely define Seattle’s business landscape. Meanwhile, those who choose to disrupt the world with ideas of their own create a similar toolset gathered through a combination of extracurricular experience and education.
The Buerk Center hosts annual innovation competitions focused on two of the key problems facing the world today—our health and the environment around us. These events focus on validating ideas that break down the barriers between what is traditional and what is transformational.
From prototypes to services, students pitch and receive direct feedback from the very professionals who will one day be their peers. Ideas poised to develop into a viable business move on to compete in the Dempsey Startup Competition (formerly known as the UW Business Plan Competition).
Since 1998, thousands of business plans and student participants have come through this multi-stage event and earned millions in seed funding awards.
As the startup world has evolved, so has the competition experience:
- Expanded Access: All three events are now open to students at accredited colleges and universities across the Cascadia Corridor—Washington, Oregon, Idaho, British Columbia, and Alaska.
- Focus on Ideas: The ideas, not borders or geography, take center stage. Dozens of colleges and universities around the region are represented annually.
In this way, entrepreneurship helps make the University of Washington a nexus for translational innovation that draws others in for a better tomorrow.
The Buerk Center also employs the same collaborative process taught to students through a deep and impactful partnership with the community.
- Community Engagement: Serial entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, angel investors, startup legal firms, and alumni founders directly engage eager young minds inside and outside the classroom.
- Roles in Competitions: As judges and sponsors, these seasoned professionals provide direct feedback and significant prizes to student teams hoping to create their own businesses.
- Instructors and Mentors: They lay the groundwork for understanding how to embrace and overcome failure, earn funding, pivot, or innovate from within as an intrapreneur.
These efforts help transition students’ teams to fully formed early-stage startups in the Jones + Foster Accelerator by challenging them to make progress and achieve milestones.
However, the approach is not strictly linear. Wherever a student is in their entrepreneurial journey, the Buerk Center will meet and guide them. Wherever an alumnus is in their post-graduation career, they will find a community.
Together, entrepreneurship is integrated into the very fabric of the University of Washington and the Pacific Northwest, shaping a new, better future.
