• Posted on 24 Nov 2022
  • 6-minute read

What used to be the abandoned co-op bookshop site on the corner of Harris St and Broadway, the busiest street corner in Sydney - adjacent to the upcoming Tech Central developments, has become quite a spectacle of late. Strange displays in the windows showing different products from UTS startups, and their stories each week, frequent gatherings of strangely-enthusiastic people, even a painting exhibition depicting entrepreneurial journeys with beautiful impressionist art. It’s all been part of UTS Startups’ plan to make tech-enabled entrepreneurship normal, desirable and accessible for all.

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Descriptive transcript

I’m Murray Hurps, Director of Entrepreneurship for UTS, and I’ve got a very special announcement to share. But you need to listen for a few more minutes to hear what it is.

People often ask me: what does UTS Startups actually do? We do two things: we create entrepreneurs through role modelling, and support entrepreneurs through peer learning. Simple. It’s deliberately simple so we can do this for large numbers of diverse people.

To create entrepreneurs through role modelling, we visit 100 high schools each year, run workshops for 5,000 UTS students each year, and use the busiest street corner in Sydney to show 2.5 million people each year entrepreneurs like themselves, so they can all see what they can be.

To support entrepreneurs through peer learning, we provide 250 desks of free space to bring the right people together. We run events continuously to bring the right people together, provide introductions between community members, and have intensive cohort-based programming to really bring the right people together.

We’re supporting over 500 startups today, and those startups have created one heck of a role modelling and peer learning engine to inspire and support the next generation of startups. And we’ve built this without charging anyone for access, or asking for equity from those we support.

We want to make a genuine contribution to the community around us, and to support the increasing desire we see from young Australians, especially those at UTS, to determine their own way of working through entrepreneurship. By the way, 57% of incoming students at UTS last year said they wanted to pursue entrepreneurship at UTS.

So that’s what we’re doing, but what has it achieved? On the role modelling side, we see the sentiment in our audiences go from about 5% wanting to pursue entrepreneurship to about 30% in the workshops we run. We have a new startup joining us pretty much every day from this work. Our startups created 450 new paid jobs last year. We placed 950 students in our startups last year.

But there’s one big number we’ve just hit that I’m pleased to share today. We just accepted UTS Startup number 1,000, in just over four years. A great young entrepreneur with a very special idea you’ll be hearing about soon, once they get feedback from more experienced community members.

I must admit I’m feeling a bit proud today, but I’m more proud of what this giant community of incredible people is now enabling. Nobody has the track record and capacity to inspire new people that our community has. Nobody has the track record and capacity for real-world peer learning that our community has.

I’m pretty excited, and I’m excited for how quickly we might be able to have the next thousand startups as well. This couldn’t have happened anywhere other than UTS. I love this place and all the people here.

Thank you also to Sam Hordern, Ajay Bhatia, NSW Department of Education, the ICC, City of Sydney, Amazon Web Services and the Deep Green Biotech Hub for your support.

Thank you to our secret weapon, David LT. Nobody else can say they’ve created and led programming that has created a thousand startups, but Dave can, and it’s been an honour and a highlight of my career to work with you, Dave.

Thanks most of all to the thousand startups that we’ve had the pleasure and honour of supporting, and who have supported and inspired each other as well in return.

If you’d like to come and help us celebrate, join us every Friday at 3:30 here at UTS Startups at Central for startup networking and the best pizza I’ve ever had, thanks to Amazon Web Services.

We’ll also be hearing from UTS Startup number one, a really special guest, in the coming weeks. Stay tuned, and if you’d like to be UTS Startup number 1,001, please search for UTS Startups and come join us.

Really special day, and thank you for the chance of sharing this with you. See you soon.

“People often ask me: What does UTS Startups do?” said Director of Entrepreneurship, Murray Hurps. 

“We do two things: we create entrepreneurs through role modelling, and support entrepreneurs through peer learning.” 

UTS Startups launched in August 2018 and has just celebrated the addition of its 1,000th startup. According to Hurps, the recipe for success is actually simple.

“To create entrepreneurs through role modelling, we visit 100 high schools each year, run workshops for 5,000 UTS students each year, and use the busiest street corner in Sydney to show 2.5 million people each year, entrepreneurs like themselves, so they can all see what they can be.”

“To support entrepreneurs through peer learning, we provide hundreds of desks for free, to bring the right people together. We run events continuously to bring the right people together. We provide introductions between community members to bring the right people together, and we have intensive cohort-based programming, to really bring the right people together.”

“Both of these bodies of work are enabled by a unique attribute of UTS: our community of over 500 active UTS Startups, all being supported free of charge, but in return for their help inspiring and supporting the next generation of tech entrepreneurs. This provides an incredibly realistic introduction and guidance through entrepreneurial journeys.”

Audiences have been gathering at UTS Startups @ Central on the corner of Harris St and Broadway in Ultimo, to be inspired by entrepreneurs sharing their stories as part of a weekly livestream series. Photo by Aaron Ngan.

Last year 57% of incoming UTS students reported that they would like to pursue entrepreneurship while at UTS, an increase from 39% five years ago.

“As well as a steadily increasing desire from young people to pursue entrepreneurship, we also see immediate increases in the desire to pursue entrepreneurship from our audiences whenever we run workshops with our entrepreneurs - currently we average 5% of audiences wanting to pursue entrepreneurship before our workshops and 30% after” says Hurps. “We have a new startup joining us pretty much every day from this work.” 

“As excited as I am about reaching our first 1,000 UTS Startups, I’m much more excited for how quickly our community will be able to continue growing from here.”

If you’d like to get involved or help us celebrate, come join us every Friday at 3:30pm at UTS Startups @ Central for our UTS Startups Confessions series, with startup networking and the best pizza in central. If you’re a current or past UTS student with a startup, head to startups.uts.edu.au to join us.

Byline: UTS Startups

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