Virginia Tech’s Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity house has turned into a home for budding entrepreneur students.
Virginia Tech invited freshmen with “entrepreneurial spirits” to apply to live in the $5 million brick mansion after the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity was kicked off campus in May for bad behavior.
The program is called Innovate and the plan is to fill the mansion with innovators, give them some guidance and then watch startups roll out the front door.
The Roanoke Times reports that the program has been a success in its first semester.
Shafwan Khan, a freshman biology student, is working on a nonprofit startup called AlmTree. People donate money to college students in the form of loans. Students later repay the loans to charity organizations after they graduate.
“If we’re bored, it’s like, ‘Let’s just build a startup; let’s just build something; let’s make the next Facebook.’ It is ingrained in everyone’s mind, this entire atmosphere. The fact that we’re in here, makes us feel obligated to come up with something like that. That in itself introduces discussions in which people just stumble upon ideas,” Khan told the newspaper.
His roommate, Jay Desai, also is working on a startup called CrowdBucket, a crowd funding platform that raises money to let people check items off their bucket lists.
