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Entrepreneurs Unplugged

Entrepreneurs Unplugged gives early-stage Booth founders the opportunity to meet monthly as a group, led by a facilitator with deep experience in the entrepreneurial space who guides and shapes the conversations.

These monthly meetups help founders advance their ventures, be inspired, and connect with their peers. Sessions cover entrepreneurial frameworks, models, and strategies, and rely heavily on peer-to-peer sharing, collaboration, and support. The aim is to foster genuine relationships that give students the opportunity to learn from, support, and inspire one another both personally and professionally. The sessions will be held over the lunch hour at the Polsky Center.

The program now runs in two tracks, so students can join at the stage they’re actually in. Please apply to one track only . You should choose the track that best matches where you are right now.

Track 1: To Be or Not to Be… a Founder

Exploration and Ideation | Monthly, October through January
Most people ask “what’s my idea?” before asking “should I actually do this?” This track of Entrepreneurs Unplugged flips that. We cover the financial reality of founding a company, what your life as a founder actually looks like compared to working at a company, and the real conditions under which it makes sense to go for it. Then we get practical: how to formulate an idea that’s actually worth pursuing, how to test it before you’ve committed everything, and how to move forward with conviction. This track will give you a peek behind the curtain of what it means to be a founder and whether this is the right path for you.

Track 2: The Founder Toolkit

Building and Operating | Monthly, full academic year
For students who are currently building, or who are already deeply committed to building while at Booth. If you’re in the thick of it, this track will give you all the tools you need to build a solid foundation for your startup. We will cover the core operational areas where founders get stuck: protecting your company legally and knowing where to focus your legal spend early on, building and running a GTM playbook, deciding whether fundraising is actually the right move for your business, building a team that scales, and allocating resources when capital is limited. This track will help you see around corners, so you don’t make common mistakes that create costly problems for you down the road.

Upcoming Entrepreneurs Unplugged Application Deadlines

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Application and Eligibility

The program is open to current Booth MBA students who are actively working on a startup or fully committed to building one. If you are accepted to this program, you are committing to:

  • Actively participating in all the monthly meetings in person. We understand things come up (sickness, recruiting, client pitch, etc), but the seminar requires full attendance
  • On occasion, completing a short reading in advance of the session that the facilitator will share

Expectations

Both tracks ask for a real commitment. Students should apply to one track only, and are expected to attend every session in person at the Polsky Center and to engage with readings or other content between sessions. The value of Entrepreneurs Unplugged comes from the community that forms in the room, so we ask that you only apply if you can commit to showing up for each other.

About the Facilitator

Both tracks are led by Andrea Zechmann, MBA ’18, who holds a JD from Hamline University School of Law and an MBA from Chicago Booth. Andrea spent time in product at Tesla, where she helped launch 13 new markets across EMEA, and she has built a company of her own. She brings both the operator’s playbook and the founder’s lived experience to the group.