Entreprenuerial Ecosystems for Education - Sean Bhardwaj, Founder, CEO, Aspire3

Sean Bhardwaj is the Founder and CEO of Aspire3, based at the Ventura Ventures Technology Center. He sat with Mark and Patrick to talk about his view of what entrepreneurs need to be successful and the program he's created to deliver the missing pieces. Sean looks at the intersection of education and entrepreneurship and how the missing piece in a lot of co-working spaces is mentorships. He also understands the importance of programmatic elements, such as marketing, sales, management and leadership training. He and his team have developed their curricula and have had students as young as ten go through the program. They have taught over 2,000 students and incubated 36 startups with over 50 entrepreneurs. He has a good model for how to prepare students how to understand a problem; it's solution and the market fit. They have a 16 weeks program with two classes a week, of 2 hours each. It's an accelerator program that only takes 30 people at term. They did the first of this new series in January and are currently in the second session of this year. When looking at potential members, they look at their passion, their desire to learn and their ability to take the initiative. He says that in the educational environment, there's no real-life business pressure, so he looks for self-starters with strong follow through. We know that Sean's working hard at making a difference in Ventura County and wish him and the program a lot of success.