CEO Start: A Resource for Business in Hennepin County

Good news for Hennepin County residents! If you’re an entrepreneur at heart who has a great business idea and needs guidance on how to bring it to life, CEO Start is here to start you off right.

CEO Start is a 10-week cohort-based program that provides business owners just like you with insights, relationships, and tools to turn your ideas into viable businesses.

Cohorts of 10 to 15 entrepreneurs will work through a curriculum focused on testing ideas and identifying key assumptions through interviews, peer-to-peer conversation, research, and facilitated discussions on key foundational elements.

Participants who complete the program will walk away with a solid foundation of business fundamentals, access to resources, a community of support, an understanding of their next steps, and the confidence to move forward with their idea. 

In this cohort-based program, a group of entrepreneurs will:

• Build community and peer-to-peer relationships
• Gain business knowledge and learn to keep it simple
• Follow a focused path to develop and fine-tune their idea using the CO.STARTERS lean business model canvas
• Critically examine their idea through real-time collaboration and expert feedback
• Participants will leave the program with a deeper understanding of how to create a sustainable venture, articulate their models, and repeat the process with their next great idea.

The program will run from January 2024 through the beginning of April 2024. Hours of commitment per week will be one evening of 3 hours in person and 2 to 5 hours of independent work to be completed outside of course time. 

To qualify for CEO Start, participants must:

• Be a resident of Hennepin County
• Have an idea or an existing business in an early stage
• Be willing to question, shape and fine-tune that idea
• Be willing to talk about the idea with others