UMD Alumni Entrepreneurs Get a “Jumpstart” from Dingman Center

Would you (or someone you know) buy customizable fashion jewelry? It’s a question entrepreneur Seble Alemayehu, MBA ’12, hopes to figure out by the end of her eight weeks participating in a new program at the University of Maryland. She and 16 other UMD alumni hoping to launch startups this year are getting the help they need to get their venture off the ground with the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship’s Jumpstart program.

The proprietary program, designed by the Dingman Center at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, helps entrepreneurs increase their odds of building successful businesses by learning how to reduce “customer risk” and develop clear action plans. Participants convened in College Park January 9-11 for an intense weekend boot camp of workshops and customer discovery exercises to apply the principles of the Lean LaunchPad methodology, where the goal is to test ideas to quickly determine whether a business is viable.

The timing of the program was perfect for Alemayehu, who learned about Dingman Jumpstart from a UMD Alumni Association email. She left a federal consulting job last spring with dreams of starting her own business. She joined forces with a fellow Smith alumna in their native country, Ethiopia, to plot out ideas. Both avid jewelry lovers, they hatched an idea for a platform for consumers to customize fashion jewelry, similar to Nike’s successful online shoe customization options, where shoppers select styles then personalize them with color choices and other options.

“I am so glad that I signed up for Dingman Jumpstart,” Alemayehu said. “Just the first weekend of lectures and workshops was a big eye-opener.”

Her two big takeaways: Figure out whether your customers have a need or a problem before you go out and start something, and don’t get lost in your idea.

“This has definitely put us on pause from going the route that we were about to go if I hadn’t taken this program,” she said.

Dingman Jumpstart is a newly revamped iteration of a Dingman program that formerly focused on current students. The new program fulfills a goal to expand startup help throughout the university community and beyond the current student population.

 “We are excited to bring alumni back to campus to help provide them the tools they need to start new businesses,” said Elana Fine, managing director of the Dingman Center. “We are already using these methods with current students and now we can help former students discover entrepreneurship, regardless of whether they studied business while here.”

On the instructor panel, ​Fine ​was joined by Dean Chang, UMD’s associate vice president for innovation and entrepreneurship; ​Edmund Pendleton, director, VentureAccelerator, Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (MTech); and Ed Barrientos, serial entrepreneur and Dingman Center Entrepreneur in Residence. The university’s Academy for Innovation & Entrepreneurship and MTech were key partners, as was the National Science Foundation-funded DC Innovation Corps, or I-Corps, a program to foster innovation in the region. Dingman Jumpstart is the university's first endeavor to bring the I-Corps curriculum to alumni. 

Dingman Jumpstart participants will provide an update on their progress at a February check-in session. The group reconvenes in March for a final half-day to discuss lessons learned and help founders decided whether to proceed with their startup.

In the meantime, Alemayehu and the other entrepreneurs in program are hard at work figuring out their target customers and whether there is enough market need for their ventures.

 “We want to start as strong as possible, but before we even start we want to know if the idea is even worth starting,” she said. “This whole exercise is about validating if we have enough customer bases to give it that go or no-go. That is a major phase for us right now. We are going to take all the exercises very seriously so that by the end of the eight weeks, at least we know if our idea is viable.”