![]() ![]() “Andy’s story is typical to the extent that there is no typical story for the types of students we mentor and the types of ideas they bring,” says Grant, who notes that DeMeo graduated from the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture - proof positive that UNH’s undergraduate entrepreneurs hail from all corners of campus. Now, thanks to an ECenter connection to Planet Fitness CEO Chris Rondeau ’94, DeMeo has some ideas for franchising the enterprise. ![]() They used the prize money they earned to launch their business earlier this year and sold out their hive shares almost immediately. With support from ECenter executive director Ian Grant, DeMeo and Waters developed a business model for Half-Acre Beekeeping that took first place in UNH’s 2017 Social Venture Innovation Challenge (SVIC). DeMeo and his partner, Jessica Waters, would maintain the hives customers would have their own raw, local honey without the responsibility of owning and caring for bees and both the farms, which rely on honeybees to pollinate their crops, and the local bee populations would thrive. In DeMeo’s case, the idea was a CSA-style beekeeping operation that would allow Seacoast New Hamsphire-area customers to purchase shares in honeybee hives located on nearby farms in what amounted to an ecological win-win-win. It’s also helped dozens of students turn promising ideas they brought to or developed at UNH into viable business enterprises, many with revenue and investor interest. Just two years into its existence, the ECenter has already been recognized internationally as an outstanding emerging entrepreneurship center and launched both its successful (and also donor-funded) i2 Passport Program to encourage undergraduate students to engage in a variety of innovation and entrepreneurship activities around the Durham campus and an Idea and Innovation Society for first-year students. Paul ’67 as an independent, co-curricular, cross-college resource providing programs, mentorship and financial support to students who have business ideas they want to pursue outside of an academic context. ![]() The heart of ideas, innovation and entrepreneurship at UNH, the ECenter was established in 2016 with a generous gift from Peter T. When Andrew DeMeo ’18 came up with an idea for a business he suspected might really have legs - or wings, as the case may be - he knew just where to take it: the Peter T. ![]()
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