Hero Video Transcript

ZIP Launchpad is an on-campus incubator. We help students, faculty, and staff at SDSU start with an early-stage idea and launch a startup. We started 11 years ago with just a concept, and Irwin was the initial donor who the center is named after. ZIP Launchpad is an innovation platform. He interacted with engineering students from SDSU and provided them with a challenge. He saw how innovative they were in solving that problem, and he wanted to give them a home. He wanted that home to be for all SDSU students and the entire SDSU community so anyone who had an idea and the passion to bring that idea to life would have a place to do it and be supported. That's the genesis of how we started. We built our program brick by brick, person by person, and tailored everything to the unique environment of SDSU. Thank you. This is an amazing program. I teach entrepreneurship, but this is giving me a whole new perspective on what that means. I don't think we would be where we are without ZIP Launchpad. They have so many resources and domain experts that guide us in the right path so we don't just launch and make the mistakes many entrepreneurs do. When we talk about ZIP Launchpad, we talk about our success in launching companies but we also measure success through the hands-on experience students receive. They're learning how to present with impact, build teams, understand cap tables, explore investment, and develop financial models based on real businesses. They're gaining problem-solving skills that enrich them far beyond the classroom.