The university hosted a three-day intensive HIVE Startup School on entrepreneurship and innovation

The university hosted a three-day intensive HIVE Startup School on entrepreneurship and innovation

Recently, on September 26-28, more than 400 students from five higher education institutions of Ukraine: Ivan Franko Lviv National University, Bukovyna State Medical University, Dnipro Polytechnic National University, IT Step University and Lviv Polytechnic National University - became participants in a very interesting and rich intensive HIVE Startup School. This is a project implemented by LNU named after I. Franka, Bukovyna State Medical University, Dnipro Polytechnic University, as well as partners: "Ukrainian Startup Fund", Sigma Software Group, UNICORN ( Sigma Software Labs ). In general, the idea was implemented within the framework of the international project "HEI Innovation for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship", which Lviv University joined in March 2023 and whose goal is to develop a startup culture among students.

It was a great opportunity for our youth to fall in love with entrepreneurship and to realize that creating something unique and getting funding for it is quite possible. Our students were helped to understand the topics and features of working with business ideas by professionals in their field, speakers:

Olga Sych is an associate professor of the Department of Financial Management, coordinator of the Jean Monet Module project "Urban revitalization - EU experience for Ukraine", EUStadyDays lecturer, teacher of the disciplines "Creating your own business" and "Taxation system".

Nazar Demchyshak - Director of Ihub Science Park Lviv University, Doctor of Economics, Professor of the Department of Finance, Money Circulation and Credit of Lviv National University. I. Franko.

Oleksiy Solntsev - CEO and co-founder of the industry-tech startup SmartZavod, DAAD and EXIST-Gründerstipendium scholarship holder, Ukrainian volunteer in the military field.

Pavlo Herman is the CEO and co-founder of WheelKeep.

Olena Moseichuk is the head of R&D at the Ukrainian Startup Fund.

Daria Yanieva is the investment director of Sigma Software Labs, the organizer of the largest startup competition in Ukraine - UNICORN (IT_EUREKA).

Oleksandr Reminny is an IT entrepreneur, co-founder and CEO of the StepShot startup, built a successful career as an IT developer and architect of software products, and hosts a channel about IT entrepreneurship.

During the training, the participants had the opportunity to hear about new opportunities in the field of innovation and entrepreneurship, as well as see live practical business cases and visit the Sigma Software office on an interesting tour. It is also important to mention that the format of the school was mixed, so it combined the opportunity to participate live and online from different places, but also included as much practice as possible for those who could attend the event offline.

One of the participants, Valeriya, a student of Lviv University, shared her experiences from the business intensive: "Thank you very much for such a great opportunity to get something new for yourself! It was really cool and atmospheric. This event left me with warm memories and impressions, and probably helped me take the first step towards Sigma Software. Thank you to the organizers and lecturers for the motivation I was able to receive during these 3 days."

Finally, it should be noted that the HIVE Startup School is only the beginning, because in the future, within the framework of the "HEI Innovation for Knowledge Intensive Entrepreneurship" project, another novelty awaits our students and teachers - a distance learning platform, on which everyone will be able to master the maximum of business at an arbitrary pace - skills in a convenient form and with the help of various interesting materials. It is important that this training will take place in English, so the almost 100-hour course will definitely have a positive effect on improving your knowledge of this language. A certificate of course completion will be available once the participant completes all three modules, which will be available from  October-December 2023 on the platform. Therefore, this training will definitely become a cool case in the resume or another confirmation of your qualifications. Register by link.

We are convinced that a startup is cool, and we believe that after this intensive and future initiatives, every willing, motivated student and teacher will be able to realize their interesting ideas and even get a grant opportunity for their implementation.

The author of the article and the organizer of the event is the Marketing and Development Center of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv