Get the skills to successively activate your career

What it's all about:

Working with an actual start-up venture, you'll get valuable real world experience while you're on your way to earning a concentration in entrepreneurship. Through this, the Activator program will give you the skills you need to launch your career.

How it works:

At the beginning of the year, you'll be matched up with a venture. Together, you and your team will create a business plan, search out a market opportunity and venture analysis, and create a prototype. If you are selected to become a team leader, you will lead your team through different aspects of the venture.

If you have your own venture idea you can bring it to fruition and become team leader of your very own venture. The  team you will be leading will consist of four or five students from each of the classes you'll take in the fall term.

As the fall term comes to a close, you'll make a pitch on behalf of your venture for SEED funding. The panel of judges you face may also grant you entrance to BMO Apex Business Plan Competition.

Although a great idea, great research and great planning are key to this program, it also helps to have the right contacts. That's why during the year you'll go on a networking trip called a venture track to seek out beneficial contacts for the product. Some of the program's past networking trips have landed our team leaders in hotspots, literally. Brad Pierce touched down in the land down under - Sydney, Australia. Bobby Hennessey and Mike Lee ended up in the magic city of Miami, Florida.

We can't promise your destination will be that warm, but we can promise that you'll form some important lasting networks for your venture. The Activator Leaders 2012-2013 attended the National CEO Conference in Chicago, Novemebr 2012; and this trip availed the opportunity to attend the inauguration of the President of the United States. The program's big finale comes in April when you'll make a pitch for SEED capital to a panel of professional investors.