Application Deadline: Entrepreneurs Unplugged – Track 2: The Founder Toolkit

Entrepreneurs Unplugged brings Booth Chicago Booth students together monthly, led by a facilitator with deep experience in the entrepreneurial space who guides and shapes the conversations. These sessions cover entrepreneurial frameworks, models, and strategies, but the real engine of the program is peer-to-peer sharing, collaboration, and support.

It’s lonely at the top, and early-stage founders tend to face the same practical questions when they start out. The group walks through those questions together. There’s no blueprint for success, but surrounding yourself with founders and founders-to-be provides a sense of community and calm in the middle of the startup storm.

The program is led by Andrea Zechmann, who earned 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.

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 Chicago 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.

Session dates: October 21, November 18, January 13, and February 10. March–May dates will be announced after the new calendar year.