On April 27, the School of Engineering of the Universidad de los Andes held the First Meeting of Entrepreneurial Alumni, a space to hear firsthand their experiences, main challenges, learn about the support they received from the university and the School to follow this path of entrepreneurship and seek, together, alternatives to continue encouraging and strengthening entrepreneurship among our students.
This is because the university wants to continue strengthening its entrepreneurial DNA, which has allowed six out of 10 startups in the country to have a leader graduated from Los Andes, as stated in the Colombia Tech Report 2021, and that, of the 30 business promises of 2021, highlighted by Forbes, 12 have been founded by uniandinos and 7 of the 11 "next unicorns" also have a graduate of the institution at the helm.
This first meeting, which took place in the Founders Hall of the national headquarters of Uniandinos, was attended by more than 15 entrepreneurial graduates, who were accompanied by Silvia Restrepo, vice rector of Research and Creation of the university, Jairo Escobar, director of the Office of Innovation, Transfer and Entrepreneurship Ecosystem of the Vice Rector of Research and Creation, Rubby Casallas; Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, Juan Manuel Cordovez, Vice Dean of Research and Innovation of the same faculty, Yenny Hernandez, Vice Dean of Research of the Faculty of Sciences and David Bigio, Director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering.
For the dean of the Faculty of Engineering, these types of spaces are vital to create the connections that allow students to find references that motivate them to see entrepreneurship as a path, and that are definitely only found in people who have already done it.
"That is what we are looking for, to facilitate the path of entrepreneurship among students. To sow this seed in them so that many more of them will make this decision and make it much easier," added the dean.
An assessment with which Nicolás Villegas, co-founder of Tul, the e-commerce platform for the hardware and construction sector, which is emerging as one of the next "Colombian unicorns", who participated during the meeting, agrees, He pointed out that in order to make this seed of entrepreneurship grow, it is necessary to bring entrepreneurs closer to students, make them part of their academic life, either by teaching classes, as guest lecturers or leading discussions, so that they understand, are surprised and motivated by the real business world, unknown and new to many.
"Tul, in particular, would very much like to be able to host talented students from the university for internships. We are interested in having an approach with the institution so that they can help us, with their degree projects and master's theses, in the solution of various challenges that we have today as a company. This would be very beneficial for everyone, for the students because they could work on real cases, for the companies because it would help them to solve many of their daily problems and for the university because it would enhance their training, in general it would make a great contribution to the entrepreneurial ecosystem", added Villegas.
For the director of the Department of Biomedical Engineering, the presence of all these entrepreneurial graduates and their willingness to participate in these meetings demonstrates the enormous opportunity that exists to make these types of connections and thus facilitate the path of potential entrepreneurs.
"Today's meeting showed us that the university's entrepreneurial community is willing to support and teach our students, to provide them with spaces to learn first-hand about the real world of entrepreneurship. We need to have a closer link with entrepreneurs because they can help even more than what we can do from the university. Our entrepreneurial graduates want to have our students in their companies; they want to return to the institution to make visible the real problems and challenges they face. If we get closer to them, we will learn a lot from them," said Bigio.
Thank you to our entrepreneurial alumni for attending this type of meeting. We hope to see them soon to continue working together.
