The College of Wooster will host the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour in Freedlander Theater today. This tour comes for a second time to the campus to help motivate young entrepreneurs to create their own success. Considering today’s economic climate that college students and new graduates face, the tour’s message becomes increasingly important. The forum will be in session for three hours, and during this time there will be workshops, question and answers sessions, and notable keynote speakers.
The co-founders of the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour are 2005 graduates of New York University Sheena Lindahl and Michael Simmons. Business Week recently named Lindahl and Simmons among the country’s top-25 entrepreneurs under the age of 25. Simmons began his first business at the age of 16, and since then has gone on to win three yearly entrepreneurship awards from the National Foundation for Teacher Entrepreneurship, Fleet, and the National Coalition for Empowering Youth Entrepreneurship. Lindahl became financially independent at the age of seventeen and was able to pay for her NYU tuition while still achieving academic success. Together they co-founded the tour, hoping to motivate other students to find the early success they achieved.
The Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour was inspired by and based on the book “The Student Success Manifesto,” written, not surprisingly, by Lindahl and Simmons themselves. They are also authors of “All or Nothing, and Now or Never.”† The Student Success Manifesto is available for free download at their Web site, www.extremetour.org. Prior to and after the event, the Extreme Entrepreneurship Tour Bus will be featured on University St. between McGaw Chapel and Scovel Hall. Additionally, during forum breaks and after the event there will be student projects along with information tables featured in the lobby of the Center of Entrepreneurship. These will include COW 2010 Student Projects, 2009/2010 Idea Competition Winning Projects, 2010 Summer Internships sponsored by C4E, start up of COW student business, E-Group, and a C4E information table.
Sheena and Lindahl will bring many other impressive young entrepreneurs under the age of 30 as keynote speakers at the forum. Young entrepreneur Blake Ross, currently a sophomore at Stanford University, will be one of the many featured speakers. Ross created the popular Web browser Firefox at the young age of 17, and recently began a new company. He will be accompanied by Darren Herman who will be speaking about his success. While still in high school he made his company millions of dollars, and has started and sold several companies. The forum will include these and many other successful entrepreneurs to answer questions, offer advice, and share stores of their successes and obstacles.
Along with keynotes, workshops, and the panel of successful young entrepreneurs, the tour will offer “speed networking;” which will help students connect with one another based on, “shared visions for the future.” For additional information on the contents of the tour, and more opportunities as a young entrepreneur, the tour’s web site has a wide array of information that is easily accessible. The forum will take place from 3p.m. to 6 p.m. in Freedlander Theatre, sponsored by the Center for Entrepreneurship. It is recommended that those interested pre-register online to reserve a spot; however, the forum is free and open to the public so registration is not required beforehand.