Successful Internet Entrepreneurs Don't Have To Be College Dropouts: A Model for Nurturing College Students to Become Successful Internet Entrepreneurs

Abstract

Some of today's most successful Internet entrepreneurs didn't graduate from college. Many young people today followed the same path to pursue their dreams however ended up failing, not a surprise because 80% of the startups fail in first 5 years. As technology innovation and market competition on Internet continue to accelerate, college students need guidance and support more urgently now than ever before. Meanwhile most entrepreneurship programs offered in colleges and universities provide only general strategy-innovation-finance guidance for broad entrepreneurship while lack concentration on online startups or connection to Internet technology. We proposed a technology-business-environment model that could help guide universities in nurturing, building, and shaping their students' dreams and goals towards creating a successful Internet startup business. Finally, we demonstrated a course outline for an Internet entrepreneurship course designed for undergraduate students. Such course can be used as a core course in an entrepreneurship program or an elective course in Information Systems (IS), other sub-disciplines of computing programs, or business programs.