What used to be the abandoned co-op bookshop site on the corner of Harris St and Broadway, the busiest street corner in Sydney - adjacent to the upcoming Tech Central developments, has become quite a spectacle of late. Strange displays in the windows showing different products from UTS startups, and their stories each week, frequent gatherings of strangely-enthusiastic people, even a painting exhibition depicting entrepreneurial journeys with beautiful impressionist art. It’s all been part of UTS Startups’ plan to make tech-enabled entrepreneurship normal, desirable and accessible for all.
“People often ask me: What does UTS Startups do?” said Director of Entrepreneurship, Murray Hurps.
“We do two things: we create entrepreneurs through role modelling, and support entrepreneurs through peer learning.”
UTS Startups launched in August 2018 and has just celebrated the addition of its 1,000th startup. According to Hurps, the recipe for success is actually simple.
“To create entrepreneurs through role modelling, we visit 100 high schools each year, run workshops for 5,000 UTS students each year, and use the busiest street corner in Sydney to show 2.5 million people each year, entrepreneurs like themselves, so they can all see what they can be.”
“To support entrepreneurs through peer learning, we provide hundreds of desks for free, to bring the right people together. We run events continuously to bring the right people together. We provide introductions between community members to bring the right people together, and we have intensive cohort-based programming, to really bring the right people together.”
“Both of these bodies of work are enabled by a unique attribute of UTS: our community of over 500 active UTS Startups, all being supported free of charge, but in return for their help inspiring and supporting the next generation of tech entrepreneurs. This provides an incredibly realistic introduction and guidance through entrepreneurial journeys.”
Audiences have been gathering at UTS Startups @ Central on the corner of Harris St and Broadway in Ultimo, to be inspired by entrepreneurs sharing their stories as part of a weekly livestream series. Photo by Aaron Ngan.
Last year 57% of incoming UTS students reported that they would like to pursue entrepreneurship while at UTS, an increase from 39% five years ago.
“As well as a steadily increasing desire from young people to pursue entrepreneurship, we also see immediate increases in the desire to pursue entrepreneurship from our audiences whenever we run workshops with our entrepreneurs - currently we average 5% of audiences wanting to pursue entrepreneurship before our workshops and 30% after” says Hurps. “We have a new startup joining us pretty much every day from this work.”
“As excited as I am about reaching our first 1,000 UTS Startups, I’m much more excited for how quickly our community will be able to continue growing from here.”
If you’d like to get involved or help us celebrate, come join us every Friday at 3:30pm at UTS Startups @ Central for our UTS Startups Confessions series, with startup networking and the best pizza in central. If you’re a current or past UTS student with a startup, head to startups.uts.edu.au to join us.