San Jose State has expanded its entrepreneurial opportunities for students through the Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center.
The center opened on Jan. 3 as a part of the university’s strategic plan, Transformation 2030.
“We are expanding our mission beyond the university walls and we’re going to the community,” said Mohamed Abousalem, vice president for research and innovation. “By doing this, we’re bringing resources and opportunities from the community by connecting them with our students and faculty.”
One of the goals of Transformation 2030 is to connect and contribute to the larger Silicon Valley community, Abousalem said.
There are 62 Small Business Development Centers in the country, according to the U.S. Small Business Administration website.
Abousalem said historically, those centers have been hosted by community colleges, but larger universities can create larger opportunities for student entrepreneurs.
The Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center is funded by federal and state governments, making its services free for SJSU community members, according to the center’s website.
Michael Cohen, Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center director, said the program is unique because of its location in Silicon Valley.
The center helps businesses ranging from restaurants to daycare centers, according to its website.
“There is just a wide range of smart people doing really smart things,” Cohen said. “I mean there is just an endless flow of smart people with fantastic ideas and that’s our purpose here is to help them get to where they want to go.”
The Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center connects with tech companies more than other centers around the country. Those high-growth tech companies require different levels of expertise.
Companies that the center has helped include Sentio Solutions, Optimizing Mind and Cappasity, according to its website.
Cohen said the program has a group of contracted advisers for various fields to work one on one with student clients.
He said most commonly, people need help with getting money to kick start their businesses.
“They have a really strong technical understanding of whatever product or service they are bringing to the market, but they are not typically experienced business people,” Cohen said.
The center’s purpose is to help clients with the business side of their companies, which are usually looking for equity financing or similar forms of investments.
Cohen said investors are successful in their fields with access to large amounts of capital.
He said they typically invest in several companies with hopes that one of them becomes successful and gives them substantial returns.
“We know that they are not all going to succeed but everybody deserves to have a chance to succeed and that’s where we’re kind of coming from here,” Cohen said.
He said the clients he and the Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center advisers work with are at varying levels in their businesses.
Some only have entrepreneurial ideas that they are looking to pursue while others have prototypes and are looking to get their products out in the market, Cohen said.
He said from the prototype stage, there are various steps of investment and grant opportunities.
Cohen said having the Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center dealing with tech companies is in line with the SJSU’s goals toward being recognized as a research-oriented university.
Apart from the center, SJSU has other programs that support research and innovation on campus.
Students involved in Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity can compete in a schoolwide research competition.The top ten students are honored at an annual event and are then qualified to enter a California State University-wide competition.
Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity is the Division of Research and Innovation’s term used to describe creative work on campus, according to the Division of Research and Innovation webpage.
It is also an inclusive term for all the investigative, experimental and creative work students and faculty engage in, according to the same webpage.
Mohamed Abousalem said on-campus research opportunities are available to all students, allowing them to get real-world experiences while being trained by faculty members.
“We really pride ourselves in the opportunity that we're able to give our undergraduate students to get involved in research,” Abousalem said. “That is very unique for universities when it comes to research and we're very proud of this.”
Through Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity, the Division of Research and Innovation has a funding program that brings students opportunities to get further involved in different research areas.
“I mean, there's no more real world experience to me personally than entrepreneurship,” Director of Innovation Abby Queale said.
Queale said entrepreneurship is where people are breaking the mold, which is why student entrepreneurs need those resources because there’s no protocols.
She said the Division of Research and Innovation protects the intellectual assets of the university. When a student or employee comes up with a new idea or discovery, it is protected by the university.
As a part of Transformation 2030, the Division of Research and Innovation works toward increasing the number of research opportunities for students, staff and faculty.
The Silicon Valley Small Business and Development Center also hosts workshops at the Martin Luther King Jr. Library once a month, in which there is free admission and a featured keynote speaker.
The upcoming workshop is expected to be held on Sept. 21 and will focus on intellectual property.
