Powered by the Herb Kelleher Center for Entrepreneurship and the McCombs Blockchain Initiative, the Blockchain Entrepreneurship Practicum Program offers Blockchain startups access to top-notch talent and advice over a meaningful amount of time to help develop their startup, including increasing the viability of their startup and positioning it for growth. 

The course requires students to work in teams on projects with early-to-growth stage blockchain startups, focused on helping the startups accelerate their growth, as well as attend weekly class sessions.

Each Blockchain startup will receive a dedicated team of 4-5 interdisciplinary students (32% Business, 17% Engineering, 17% Natural Science, 20% Liberal Arts) to work on their startup for the entire semester to work on projects that will assist in the acceleration of their new venture, including developing a strategy and business model, conducting market validation, refining the value proposition, creating a marketing strategy, and developing a funding model.

At the start of the semester, teams will work with their respective startups to identify the scope of their project, a project timeline, and deliverables. During the semester, students will contextualize their experience through in-class lectures and discussions, will track progress through report outs and interim presentations, and will be provided mentoring and guidance on their work with the startups.

Toward the end of the semester, teams will share their projects in Demo Day presentations. 

Commitments:

A representative from the blockchain company must be able to engage with the student teams on a weekly basis, preferably focusing on a key startup growth initiative such as market research, organizational growth, scaling, financial planning, marketing strategies, and product/service sales channel growth. Each participating company is encouraged to make a one-time financial contribution of $2,000 to the program. If the cost to participate is prohibitive, please email us at hkc@mccombs.utexas.edu and we'll work with you.