Calvin Startups, a student organization that formed this year, encourages collaboration of ideas among budding entrepreneurs in the student body.

“Our mission is to be a collaborative and welcoming community of students from across Calvin who help each other create and develop culture-shaping ideas,” said Yeri Kim, COO of Calvin Startups. “We are an entrepreneurship-based organization that hopes to incorporate a diverse group of thoughts from all fields of study to build ideas and hopefully develop them into business-models that will reflect restoration in God’s kingdom.”

Anyone in the Calvin student body can join the organization. They want to stress a more holistic view of community in terms of the establishment and growth of ideas.

The group has already hosted a few “pitch nights,” where students begin with a warm-up exercise and then proceed to freely exchange ideas. As the night goes on, those initial ideas are refined through feedback into more concrete models.

In the future, they will be hosting an event called Calvin Pitch Competition. There, students will pitch their own ideas to a panel of judges as well as the larger Calvin community.

“Calvin Startups is essential to the college because of how important entrepreneurship is on a college campus. It allows innovation amongst young, creative minds — especially in a small liberal arts school,” said Kim. “Also, with our Christian values, we can exemplify redemptive entrepreneurship and how, through our desire to pursue God’s will, we can create a culture of restoration through the work we do. God also gave us the gift to create in his image.”

Kim also mentioned that in many urban regions, entrepreneurship is what diversifies and grows the community on a local level. College allows students access to resources for research and is a prime time for growing, shaping and expanding their opportunities and careers.

Calvin Startups has been seeing regular attendance and interest as more people hear about this organization and their emphasis on the importance of entrepreneurship, and Kim expects the organization to grow through leadership development and event hosting.