Over the course of a semester, students in ECON 3340/Entrepreneurship in Agriculture explore entrepreneurial opportunities, develop two ideas for startup businesses or farms, and develop a startup business plan. 

Rather than a final exam, there's a final presentation. Think Shark Tank, except no Mark Cuban. 

Business plan presentations happened last week in nine rooms at the Student Innovation Center. Fifty startups. One day. One class.

Haley Holverson (Agricultural Communications) developed a startup, NutriTransplant, that aims to provide meal kits to those who've had organ transplants. The inspiraton arose from supporting a relative through a transplant journey.

“Econ 3340 helped me think like an entrepreneur by showing what really goes into developing a business idea, from brainstorming to building out the key details," commented Holverson. "It was eye-opening to see how much planning, adjusting, and creativity it takes to bring an idea to life.”

Oliver Altenhofen (Agricultural Business) developed a startup, Post Pull Pro, which will offer a post-pulling attachment for skid loaders. Altenhofen had experienced a near-disaster pulling a post, and leveraged that experience into a design for a new product.

"The business plan presentation was a great experience," said Altenhofen. "Getting feedback from professionals in the agricultural industry was terrific, and truly got me thinking about starting a business." 

Edward Counsil (Agricultural Business) developed a startup aimed at the indoor vertical farming space, VertiHarvest.

"I loved the process of putting all our work together for the business plan presentation," commented Counsil. "It was awesome to see how everyone's presentation came together and the dedication we all had for our startups."

Approaching two-thousand ISU students have made business plan presentations in Econ 3340/Entrepreneurship in Agriculture since 2009. A question arising from students taking the course and panelists that evaluate business plan presentations is how many alumni from the course have started a business or farm?

While we keep track of some of our Cyclone alumni entrepreneurs (see Wall of Fame), it's a difficult task to track them all. My back-of-the-napkin estimate is that at least 500 have started a business or farm.

The first hour of this semester's business plan presentations a bit of evidence arrived in my LinkedIn message box. I paste an excerpt below, redacting his name.

It's more than okay to take the leap! 

Start something. It might even start in a class.