In this new feature, “All About Clubs and Societies,” Bilkent News is highlighting a different student club or society each issue.
The Young Entrepreneurship Society was established in 2009 to introduce college students to the ever-growing entrepreneurship ecosystem and help them create or expand their own networks.
We constantly endeavor to improve our society, expand its influence and help college students become entrepreneurs. To this end, we hold multiple events each year aimed at bringing successful entrepreneurs and investors together with college students to share their knowledge and experience.
Our biggest annual event is the Ankara Startup Summit, for which we organize panels and a competition for startups. In the competition, the startups pitch their projects to judges and potential investors, who then rank the projects. The contestants have the chance to win various prizes, such as an office, incubation center services, or digital support packages. The investors might also become personally interested in certain startups, so the summit is one of the best events in Ankara for getting exposure.
Other Young Entrepreneurship Society events and projects are as follows:
Fast and Curious, a workshop where participants learn the basic concepts behind creating a startup project;
Hackathor, a 24–48-hour hackathon in which participants compete to solve a software problem with a different theme each year;
Hangouts, semiformal forums that bring our university’s students together with successful entrepreneurs and businesspeople;
The Women’s Entrepreneurship Project, which celebrates the increasing number of women in the ecosystem by holding forums at which successful women entrepreneurs are invited to speak;
Marketing Minds, where marketing professionals hold forums and workshops that teach college students about the varied marketing strategies of corporations and startups;
Business Talks, an event where members of our society travel abroad to visit successful businesses.
Our members also go to İstanbul for meetings with companies to introduce our club as well our events.
To learn more about Young Entrepreneurship Society events, please follow its social media accounts and web pages – Instagram @bilkentyes and @ankarastartupzirvesi; www.bilkentyes.com and www.ankarastartup.com – and feel free to ask any questions you might have.