A research mission aimed at 1. discovering the challenges that startups in the ecosystem are facing and 2. quantifying the impact that Founders is making on the entrepreneurial community at UIUC.
Our Goal:
Hi, we are the Founders Research Intitative Team. Our goal this semester was to gain a better understanding of the Illinois startup community. We wanted to determine which challenges prove to be the most difficult for startups, and identify which resources Founders could provide to help. Additionally, we wanted to measure Founders' impact on the entrepreneurial community, and see if there were any ways for us to better engage and connect with startups on campus.
Methodology
We designed a questionnaire in order to collect data from startups and students interested in entrepreneurship. This helped us understand which part of the entrepreneurial process startups were struggling with as well as general statistics about the makeup of the Illinois startup community.
While we waited for the results of our questionnaire to come in, we generated a mock dataset to build and test functions needed to analyze and visualize the data. This will allow us to quickly import the real data we collect into useful statistics and visualizations.
Findings
We are still actively in the process of collecting data, however by aggregating data collected at past Founders' events and workshops we can confidently say Founders has had a significant impact on the Illinois startup community -- helping over 200 startups over the past few years. Our latest impact report is viewable here.