Supporting the next generation of student founders

For many students, making the leap from a brilliant idea scribbled in a notebook to a fully functioning business can feel out of reach. DCU:Innovate Catalyst is a new student entrepreneurship hub dedicated to transforming those ideas into real-world action. Catalyst offers students a structured pathway from exploring entrepreneurship to taking action, forming ventures, and becoming leaders in the startup community.

There are many opportunities for alumni and supporters to get involved, from mentoring students to funding upcoming programmes. Here, programme manager Joseph Lanzillotta shares his ambitions for Catalyst.

How did you first come to be involved in Catalyst?

I had my own entrepreneurship journey as a student in Dublin. My passion was digitising beekeeping, using machine vision technology to track bee health. I caught the entrepreneurship bug. After that, I spent five years working directly with student founders, before joining the Dogpatch Labs startup hub. When the opportunity to build a student entrepreneurship centre with DCU:Innovate appeared, it seemed like a natural fit.

What is the student entrepreneurship environment like in DCU now, and how will Catalyst help it grow?

A lot of DCU alumni have become founders and built companies. I’ve met a number of ambitious students who have taken the jump and founded their own ventures. There is so much innovation potential already woven into the curriculum on courses in business, engineering, and as part of DCU Futures. Through Catalyst, I’m really excited to give students access to new support outside the classroom, so that at the end of their degree they can make a choice: is entrepreneurship the career path that I choose now, or is a bit of time in industry going to help me?

There are three big things that I am excited to be kicking off in the new year: micro grants, hackathons and a summer bridge programme.

• Micro grants: I call them micro, but for a student a €200 grant can remove a barrier to action. I want to incentivise that early-stage entrepreneurial action: giving a small grant to get the first prototype built, to get fuel in your car so you can go talk to customers. It’s enough to start.
• Hackathons will set students a challenge that has the potential for real world impact. This year, we ran a hackathon around the UN sustainable development goals, and we had students generating ideas to take on those goals in a very meaningful way. We’ll be running more of these, as it’s a creative pathway to impact-driven ventures.
• Summer Bridge programme: The really exciting thing I’m building towards is a Summer Bridge programme. This will be for final year students and recent graduates with an idea that they want to take seriously. It will give them a bridge to that entrepreneurial journey.

Can you share examples of the type of ventures DCU students are building?

I’ve spoken to students running traditional businesses like window cleaning or delivering local bread. On the other side of the spectrum, we have a student developing innovative medical technology for horse wounds. Catalyst is for any students who have a passion outside the classroom, as well as for students studying something technical, like health or engineering.

One of the fastest growing student companies right now is Locanter, a localised event discovery platform for Dublin. These are students that saw a challenge they face themselves: it’s hard to find out what’s on. They dove directly into the technology and built with AI to make finding an event better and more modern. As soon as they knew we had a dedicated space on campus for building startups, they were in that space almost every single day.

Joseph Lanzillotta (second from right) at a hackathon event

What are student founders excited about with this hub?

There is an energy around getting involved that is palpable. The Summer Bridge programme can convert that early-stage energy around going to events and sharing ideas into startups being formed. Having a space for student startup activity has already given students that sense of, I’m allowed to pursue this. At the moment, when students come in for idea coaching with me, they’re interested in what comes next. That can be an introduction to experts and mentors, but mentors will be more willing to dive in and give their time and energy if they know a student is going to dedicate a summer to building their venture. It gives a level of credibility, shows the student is serious about launching a project, and sets them on the right trajectory.

DCU students get creative at a hacakthon event

How does Catalyst fit into Ireland’s wider startup ecosystem?

The Irish startup ecosystem is evolving, because technology is evolving faster than it ever has. The types of ventures that will work are changing faster than ever. Embedding a centre like Catalyst within the university prepares young innovators to accelerate their adaptive thinking, so they’re ready for the wider startup ecosystem. It also connects students as early as possible to funding pathways through Enterprise Ireland, Research Ireland, Local Enterprise Offices and other bodies.

How can alumni and supporters get involved?

The number one thing that I need is people who have expertise to share with our students. If you are a subject matter expert in almost anything, I want to bring you into our Catalyst Leaders Network. Especially for alumni founders, we really want to bring you together with other student and alumni entrepreneurs to help build that connection and shared value.

Beyond sharing your expertise, if you have the capacity to fund at any level the programmes that we’re building, that is putting fuel into the car. That is what will determine how far we can go and how many student founders will have that bridge to take their ideas seriously. It’s backing innovation in a real sense.

To learn more about how you can mentor a student founder or support the hub’s upcoming programmes, get in touch at edtrust@dcu.ie.