With its new Summer Founders Program, the University of Delaware’s Horn Program in Entrepreneurship is supporting the efforts of eight UD student teams to develop their business venture ideas.

The program is a 12-week long pre-accelerator used to validate members’ novel business models, and it provides students with stipends while they work to develop their ventures. Participants have weekly mentoring and educational sessions, progress meetings with philanthropic investors and access to free and discounted services at the Horn Program’s Venture Development Center.

On Fridays throughout this summer, the Summer Founders Fridays series will highlight one venture and how its creators hope to impact the world.

This Friday, the series focuses on venture creators Jordan Gonzalez and Keith Doggett. Last year, the team won $6,000 and in-kind services at the Horn Program’s Hen Hatch pitch competition for its tutoring startup The Practice Set.

The team has since moved on from The Practice Set, and is creating new ideas and sharpening its skills. In this interview, they discuss how working with the Summer Founders Program helped them to take their next steps as entrepreneurs.

How did you decide to pivot away from The Practice Set?

Doggett: “[The Summer Founders Program] challenged our ideas in the beginning, and it made us rethink everything we needed to do.”

Gonzalez: “We were working on a business that, based off the numbers, didn’t have an appropriate upside for the amount of effort.”

Can you elaborate on that?

Gonzalez: “The market simply isn’t large enough, especially for low margins. [Fellow participants] challenged our assumptions and made us give detailed explanations of everything we thought of. Our answers weren’t good enough, so we quit while we were ahead.”

Doggett: “Content marketing we did certainly improved things, but not enough to remain a business.”

What makes the Summer Founders Program unique?

Gonzalez: “It’s much more intensive. They don’t force you to be here every day, but we choose to be here all the time… We can focus more on the business too during the summer, because classes don’t get in the way. “

What is it like to be a young entrepreneur?

Gonzalez: “Being able to make choices for myself, with the chance of making money, is all very exciting.”

Doggett: “There’s a lot of risk to it, but the freedom to make decisions for yourself… seeing what you can make of something, and adapting to different situations, makes everything incredibly exciting.”

What are your plans for the future?

Gonzalez: “We’re looking into the sales space and working on customer discovery… The lean method states you don’t just build a project and hope people come to you. You need to test for customers and their problems. We’re trying to figure out the problems in the selling space. We’re also looking into internet-based software programs [since] Keith has a lot of knowledge in coding and programing.

“I [also] spend most of my time when I’m here working with Jason and Geoswap. Keith and I are both working with him as potential partners. Just because you start working on another team doesn’t make you a non-entrepreneur. You can still take ownership of something even if you weren’t there at the start.”

How else has the Horn Program benefited you?

Gonzalez: “They gave us a place where we could make more mistakes and get quick feedback on them, so that we could know how to change going forward.”

About the Horn Program in Entrepreneurship

The Horn Program in Entrepreneurship ignites imaginations and empowers world changers through entrepreneurial education.

The program’s offerings emphasize experiential learning, evidence-based entrepreneurship and active engagement with entrepreneurs, business leaders and members of the broader entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Participation in Horn Program courses and co-curricular activities empowers students by providing them with the knowledge, skills, connections and access to resources needed to successfully manifest innovation and thrive in a rapidly changing world.