I heard about the Lion Launch Pad at the Invention 2 Venture workshop this weekend. Lion Launch Pad is a non-profit organization in State College, PA that helps businesses get started. They do this by providing free office space overlooking College Avenue, offering mentoring and advice and some possible Quick Start Capital. Its mission statement seems to be to make Happy Valley the next Silicon Valley. Lion Launch Pad was even featured on the front page of the Daily Collegian today, so it should be receiving a considerable amount of interest from students this following week.
Musa Media Force, LLC applied to be considered for Lion Launch Pad this past Sunday. I am currently working on a major project with a couple other students that will provide an extremely useful service for most of the 43,000 students at Penn State University. This project will be my first major undertaking involving a large amount of capital and legal protection to pull off successfully. You will hear more details about it later as we approach the launch date.
When applying to Lion Launch Pad, I was more interested in the business advice and mentoring than I was in the free office space. After visiting the location today, I was impressed with the office environment and the people. As far as the size of the place goes, there seemed to be about 8 large cubicles and 2 meeting rooms. Nothing terribly fancy, but an ideal setup for fanning the flame of student entrepreneurship. I saw that several people were hard at work on their startups and the sight was very inspiring. The connections one could make at the Launch Pad would be invaluable, because it is difficult to meet and communicate with entrepreneurs at the very early stage of a successful startup. Since everyone is going through a similar phase, you can learn and follow their examples without having to learn the hard way!
On another note, here are 3 reasons to start your business in State College, PA:
- Cheap rent
- University resources
- Access to skilled students who work for cheap(er)
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Thanks for the comments about the Lion Launch Pad! It’s great to see students excited about the program. I also thought that your list of Penn State startups was a good resource.
I wasn’t able to find any email contact information for you on your site. Would you mind sending me an email at sheddr (at) sheddtech (dot) com? I’d like to run a few things by you.
Thanks again for the comments and the interest in the Lion Launch Pad!
-Robert Shedd
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