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Generation Entrepreneur
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Joey Aquino, founder of The Entrepreneurs Club, created these marketing posters to inspire others by highlighting the passions of everyday UH students. Photos by Allen Chen | ||
Oahu |
Think you or your business can help The Entrepreneur's Club at UH Manoa?
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One early morning in May, before going to sleep at 2 a.m., University of Hawaii at Manoa junior Joey Aquino started an interest group on the social networking Web site Facebook. By the time he woke up at 9 a.m., 12 people had joined. By the end of the week, more than 100 UH students had committed to his new idea.
Aquino’s idea was The Entrepreneurs Club, and the explosion is a telling demonstration of how the always-plugged-in Generation Y — young people who embrace entrepreneurship and collaboration as social norms — operate today.
“I have a friend who has a whole wall full of shoes and would love to open a shoe shop and another friend who really wants to own her own bakery,” Aquino said. “There’s this trend of people with these really big ideas for businesses. The problem is, they don’t know the first step.”
The club’s Facebook interest group is part of months of planning by Aquino and his executive board, all of whom are students at the Shidler College of Business. At the start of the fall 2008 semester, Aquino will hold a screening period to slim the group of members down to 60 dedicated students.
Those accepted will be organized into committees based on their interests, such as marketing, human resources and finance, and allowed to create projects for the club, such as events and marketing campaigns, recruitment drives and fundraisers.
Aquino has also partnered with the Pacific Asian Center for Entrepreneurship & E-Business for educational opportunities, and he plans to enter the business plan generated by his club’s committees in PACE’s 2009 UH Business Plan Competition.
“I want to treat this just like a business startup, just on a smaller scale,” Aquino said. “In everything that club members do, they should be getting something out of it and gaining the tools they need for starting their own businesses.”
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