Supporting student entrepreneurs is the primary goal behind Marshall University’s recent enrollment in the ZinnStarter Network.

The ZinnStarter Network will support student entrepreneurs through pitch events, mentorship, leadership training and grants.

Olen York, assistant professor of entrepreneurship and director of entrepreneurship education, led the effort to bring the program to Marshall University.

“ZinnStarter was started by a gentleman named Ray Zinn,” York said. “He is a successful entrepreneur out of Silicon Valley who wanted to take some of the lessons that he learned, and also some of the revenue that he generated over the years, to try to invest in especially student-led entrepreneurial activities and potential new ventures.”

York said the program received $10,000 from the ZinnStarter Network to distribute to student entrepreneurs in support of their ventures. He said he expects the program to support between five  to 10 student groups this year.

“We try to distribute that to as many worthy student ventures as possible to help them do a variety of things,” York said. “Get technical assistance from attorneys, engineers or accountants, to run business experiments and various other activities.”

York said the program has a board of students who help identify and evaluate student entrepreneurs to be supported by the ZinnStarter program.

“You have a student board that helps oversee what ventures get funding. Part of that is to get students involved that are not necessarily entrepreneurial themselves, but get them thinking entrepreneurially,” York said. “Especially students who have finance, accounting, some of the non-entrepreneurial business disciplines, but also students from across the campus. You might have an engineering student or a science student.”

York said the student’s diverse perspectives help  the student board look at various  ventures and analyze them from several different lenses.

“You kind of get all of these voices in the room together and they’re seeing the problem and the proposed solutions from all these different perspectives,” York said. “You get this well-rounded analysis of whether the student venture is headed in the right direction.”

York said the program also brings in mentors to guide the discussions and assist  the student board effectively evaluate the student entrepreneurs.

“The mentor network is people that have been successful entrepreneurs or business leaders themselves running a small business or reaching medium sized businesses,” York said. “A mentor network that helps guide the discussions, because as a venture matures, there’s always different questions that need to be asked at different times based on different circumstances.”

By having a wide variety of mentors guiding the program, York said they’ll be able to have both  diverse viewpoints  and be able to effectively manage the workload.

“We’re going to be tapping into a lot of different folks, and the advantage of that is not only the different perspectives, but you also aren’t just relying on just three or five individuals to do all of the heavy lifting for these groups,” York said.

Students interested in participating in the ZinnStarter Network can reach out to Olen York at [email protected], Tricia Ball at [email protected], or David Wiley at [email protected].

Ashton Pack can be contacted at [email protected].