When Virginia Tech kicked Sigma Phi Epsilon out of their house and off their property last year, they weren’t sure what they were going to do with the mansion that housed the miscreant fraternity. Sure they could look at other fraternities or use it as housing for faculty and staff. However what the university decided to do was, well, innovative.
The Washington Post reports that Virginia Tech is looking for 35 male and female freshman with an entrepreneurial spirit. They are looking to start an innovative living and learning community that will force collisions between the creative and the entrepreneurial as they venture into college.
Nathan Latka, an entrepreneur who founded his startup Heyo out of the Virginia Tech dorms is involved in the new program. His dorm room startup is now a multi-million dollar social media company with clients like Lily Pulitzer and 16 employees. Latka told the Post that he sees the irony in million dollar startups coming from the same table where “party themes used to be hatched.”
The house “has got all the amenities built in,” Latka said. “It allows random ideation to happen at any moment. It increases the chances that two freshmen who would have never known each other from two disciplines to really collide and engage and ideate.”
This is a great start for the prestigious university that was struck by the worst school shooting tragedy in college history just six years ago.
Obviously technology is a big part of Virginia Tech already and connecting the techies with the creative and business savvy entrepreneurs can only be a recipe for success. Hayden Lee the president of Virginia Tech’s Entrepreneurs Club is worried that this may not be enough. Lee is hopeful that the house will include a designated hacking space, high tech gadgets, and flexible programming.
Latka believes that the house will attract 300 applications, draw $3 million dollars in investment, and create 30 jobs.