RIT hosts Entrepreneurship Conference on Friday

Rochester Institute of Technology’s Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship welcomes the public to its 14^thEntrepreneurship Conference at Rochester Institute of Technology on Friday, Oct. 26.

From 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the RIT Student Alumni Union and Campus Center, participants can attend informational networking sessions, observe the student Tiger Tank competition and enjoy a keynote address from Mark Gentile, the founder of Odyssey Software.

Gentile is a 2010 graduate of RIT’s applied arts and sciences program. In 1996, he founded Odyssey and served as the company’s chairman, president and CEO until the company was acquired by Symantec Corp. Now, he works for Symantec as chief architect for Enterprise Endpoint Security Productions.

“Mark has a great story of how one can come up with an idea, start and grow a business and sell it to a large company,” said Rupa Thind ’06 (MBA), associate director of the Simone Center. “We want to show people that the success Mark had with his business is possible for anyone if they have the right skills and resources.”

In addition to workshop sessions, attendees can also watch RIT students participate in the Tiger Tank competition semi-finals at 9:15 a.m. in Ingle Auditorium, SAU. Tiger Tank allows students to pitch their business ideas to a panel of judges in hopes of winning a cash prize to help fund their ideas. In this round of the competition, 30 teams will present 90-second elevator pitches. Five of them will be chosen to compete in the finals on Monday, Nov. 5.

During the conference, there will be several workshops discussing entrepreneurship including “Social Media and Marketing in Entrepreneurial Ventures,” “Software Entrepreneurship,” “Technology Commercialization,” “Funding your Entrepreneurial Venture,” “Digital Entrepreneurship,” “Intellectual Property and the Entrepreneur,” “Entrepreneurship for Designers – How to Jump In,” and others.

“The Simone Center believes it’s important to teach students these entrepreneurial skills. These skills and concepts are transferable to all types of work, from getting their own start-ups running to working for a large corporation,” said Thind. “Seeing students from all majors and backgrounds come together through their passion for entrepreneurship is a perfect example of the interdisciplinary and collaborative spirit of this university.”

This event is sponsored by RIT’s Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and RIT’s Saunders College of Business and is open to the public.

For more information about the conference and to register to attend, go to https://www.rit.edu/cob/entconf/.