If you haven’t done so yet, now is the time to plan for a fall LaunchPad open house for your school or system. A well-planned kick off is an important low-barrier introduction to what you can offer student entrepreneurs. Depending on your physical location on campus, this can either be hosted in (ideally) your space, or in another central, high-visibility, highly-trafficked place on campus—think student union, general academic meeting space, school performance venues, etc..

To assist you in hosting a successful open house, please review the Blackstone LaunchPad Campus Open House presentation. In addition, we’re excited to offer you access to the playbook for our 90-Minute Techstars Startup Weekend orientation activity. This fun pitching exercise would be a good option for an interactive open house event or a great value-add for campuses where LaunchPad has been active for multiple years.

Four hints for a great open house: 

1. Invite a wide student audience—and advertise on their respective channels. Remember, LaunchPad’s primary target is student entrepreneurs, but the program is inclusive of every student, and we want them all to know that we are here to help them become entrepreneurs. This includes all levels, including both undergraduate and graduate; all schools and programs; and all types of students, full- and part-time. Consider the best avenues for communicating and promoting your event to these different audiences.  For example, dorm building flyers might work for on-campus students, but an online portal might be more important for remote students. Consider as well how to reach out especially to women and POC—populations that have been historically underrepresented in entrepreneurship and tech. Are there campus organizations for these student populations? Can you work with them to advertise your programming?
2. Involve your cross-campus advisory board. Think of your advisory board as your “influencers,” and as such, think of your communication to them as an “influencer campaign.”  Many LaunchPad programs have found referrals from existing faculty and staff across campus to be an excellent source of student leads. These campus leaders often maintain relationships with some of the most ambitious and motivated students in their programs—just the kind of students that would benefit from the opportunities available in LaunchPad.  Bonus points for you if a professor will give students bonus points for attending!
3. Work with non-academic university contacts. Your school’s marketing and communication teams likely have ideas about how to share information with students (as well as faculty and staff), and your alumni relations and advancement/development staff may know of the perfect young, successful, entrepreneurial alum who would enjoy speaking to students—the better known the speaker or their company the more of an impact he/she will have on attendance. This benefits everyone, as it tips marketing off to a future source of stories and provides fundraising staff an easy donor cultivation opportunity (and possible future sources of funding for trips like this).
4. Food works—sometimes. Often the draw of food and drink works best with undergraduates, though that influence is usually strongest when they are running low on meal plan funds—at the end versus the beginning of the semester. Regardless, if your event is planned around a meal time, offering food can be one less excuse not to attend.   Even if it isn’t around a meal time, offering snacks that attendees can take with them when they leave gives their friends a reason to ask, “Hey! Where’d you get that?” and gives them a reason to share, “LaunchPad!”