Undergraduates to Live in Entrepreneurship Townhouse

The Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative has invited six undergraduate students to live in the Yellow House for Entrepreneurship, a local townhouse that will serve as an on-campus site for entrepreneurial activity throughout the 2017-18 school year. The house’s spaces, including its living room, dining room, and patio, will host various community building entrepreneurship activities, such as StartupHoyas club meetings and activities, meetings with Georgetown’s Entrepreneurs in Residence, and incubator sessions. The students will assist in the planning and execution of these events.

“We want to use the Yellow House for Entrepreneurship as a way to build our community and to get more students involved. It’s a place where people can come together,” said Jeff Reid, founding director of Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative. “It will amplify the activities that are already happening.”

The students, four seniors and two juniors, hail from both the McDonough School of Business and Georgetown College. Reid hopes that the academic diversity among the group will further broaden Georgetown’s entrepreneurship community and that in future years the Yellow House will host students from all four of the university’s undergraduate schools.

The idea of a designated space for entrepreneurship activities arose from the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative’s Advisory Board, which comprises business executives, entrepreneurs, alumni, and other friends of the university. The group identified that providing students with a gathering space could better foster entrepreneurship activity among students and enhance Georgetown’s entrepreneurial culture.

“Today, for example, I walked past one of our Entrepreneurs in Residence meeting with a student in the atrium of the Hariri Building,” said Reid. “That is where a lot of those one-on-one conversations happen. We would love to have a space where they can be a little bit more private and more comfortable.”

In return for their assistance leading and executing entrepreneurship activities, the students will live in the townhouse at a discounted rate.

There is great excitement and energy among the group, who toured the Yellow House last month.

“Already, we’re talking about having barbeques and other social events and idea-generation sessions that will be open to everyone,” said Britany Maupin (B ’18), one of the students selected to live in the Yellow House next fall. “I think I speak for the five other members of the Yellow House when I say that we want the initiative to be extremely successful. We want to educate people on what entrepreneurship really is, how they can get involved, and also provide people with resources to turn their dreams into a reality.”

–Lindsay Reilly