Creative, curious, risk-taker, bold, driven. If these personality traits resonate with you, you could have what it takes for an exciting self-made career. Whether you already have a brilliant idea or want to learn more about what it takes to launch your own business, Curtin can help you get started. We can help you build your entrepreneurial mindset, grow your professional network and give you access to exciting industry and investment opportunities.
What is entrepreneurship?
Traditionally, entrepreneurship involves identifying and pursuing opportunities to launch new ventures, often by introducing innovative ideas to the market. As an entrepreneur, you take on financial risk in the hopes of making a profit, and drive economic growth through new products, services, and business models.
Today, the concept of entrepreneurship has expanded beyond just starting new businesses. It now includes embedding innovation in existing organisations (‘intrapreneurship’), creating social impact via social entrepreneurship, and leveraging technology to disrupt industries globally. As an entrepreneur, you must be agile and adaptable, ready to respond to rapid changes in the business environment.
Why entrepreneurial thinking matters in the workplace
Entrepreneurial thinking, marked by creativity, innovation, and problem-solving, is essential across all industries, not just for startup founders. It drives innovation, helping companies develop new products and services to stay competitive. This mindset is also key to solving complex challenges, fostering resilience, and adapting to rapid changes in the business landscape.
Entrepreneurial thinking focuses on creating value for companies, customers, employees, and society, which is crucial for long-term success.
How do I become an entrepreneur?
If you see yourself joining the growing ranks of successful Australian entrepreneurs, it’s important to grow your network, build your skillset and test your ideas. At Curtin, we offer innovative courses and unique opportunities to help you develop your skills and ideas in a supportive and inspiring environment.
Grow your network
As a budding entrepreneur, connecting with the right people is critical. You can do this by taking advantage of opportunities to build your network.
What is networking?
Networking is the process of developing and building connections with people, and mutually benefitting from these shared relationships.
Professional networking can include:
- attending events, conferences and workshops
- building and maintaining relationships with industry peers
- engaging on professional social media platforms like LinkedIn
- joining industry networking groups and associations
- seeking and offering mentorship
- sharing knowledge, resources and opportunities with others.
Why is networking important for entrepreneurs?
Networking is a key tool for entrepreneurs. It can open doors to new opportunities and give you access to funding, suppliers and other resources. Importantly, it can help you build your professional credibility and acquire new customers, clients or referrals. You can bounce ideas off other people, test new concepts and get practical and emotional support from fellow entrepreneurs and business owners who have faced similar challenges. You can also gain valuable feedback and advice from industry experts.
How can Curtin help me grow my network?
Curtin Entrepreneurs is our free community for aspiring or established entrepreneurs and startup founders. As a member, you can benefit from access to our co-working space at Curtin Perth, exciting networking and bespoke events and sessions with our Entrepreneur in Residence. You can also request one-on-one mentoring sessions with our Venture Builders to get advice on topics like finance, marketing, software development, strategy or innovation.
Sign up for free to Curtin Entrepreneurs!
Curtin’s current entrepreneur-in-residence is Marvin Liao, an investor and partner at Diaspora VC in Silicon Valley. He has worked with more than 450 startups, focusing on digital media, enterprise SaaS, mobile, IoT and fintech.
If you want to meet with tech titans and investors from across Australia and the world, join us for Curtin’s West Tech Fest, Australia’s longest running tech and innovation festival. The event brings together startup founders, business owners and prospective investors from around the globe and has helped fledgling local businesses (including Canva and Power Ledger) connect with global markets.
Immersing yourself in innovation
Now you know how to grow your startup network, but how do you build on your skills, test your ideas and start up your own business?
Curtin is one of the world’s most entrepreneurial universities1 and offers a range of courses and opportunities to develop your skillset.
You can choose to study a Bachelor of Innovation degree where you’ll:
- develop your business expertise
- learn how to launch your own startup
- complete four “transformative experiences”.
These immersive, real-world experiences will challenge you to solve local, regional and global problems using creativity and real-world innovation principles.
If you’re interested in entrepreneurship more broadly, you could find yourself working as an innovation analyst or startup advisor, business analyst, consultant or in venture capitalism.
If you’re looking to advance your career with skills in leadership and innovation, consider Curtin’s internationally recognised Master of Business Administration (MBA) program. You can choose to specialise in Leadership, Business Administration, Digital Finance or Energy Futures.
“My experience at Curtin was brilliant. My MBA expanded my knowledge base significantly; it pushed me to levels I didn’t know I had and looking back, it really played a pivotal role in the direction of my life.”
Entrepreneur Brad Hill, host of Channel 9’s Innovation Nation.
You’ll also have the opportunity to join our Curtin Ignition and Curtin Accelerate entrepreneurship programs, and access executive education masterclasses to help you set up your own enterprise.
“I’m incredibly excited that I have received a place in the Accelerate program. I’ve been working hard to refine my original concept and develop new ones as I continue this amazing learning journey of being the founder of my own company.”
Curtin MBA student Hannah Thetford, creator of ‘LIL’L Mate’, a time-saving painting solution that takes the ‘pain’ out of ‘painting’
Do you want to test out your business idea? Curtin Ignition is our intensive training program for aspiring entrepreneurs, academics and corporate innovators:
Getting investment in you and your ideas
It’s all well and good to have a great idea, but how do you finance your project? How do you find investors and secure external funding, like startup company loans? If these are the questions keeping you up at night, we’re here to help!
Start-up support at Curtin
At Curtin, we support new businesses through a range of education and investment opportunities and initiatives. These include our Global Pitching Competition, open to all our current students, and Curtin Kickstart, an internal funding program that can assist with the costs of different activities including proof of concept, prototyping, pilot scale trialing and business planning (eligibility criteria applies).
Curtin Venture Studio
Our $18.6m Curtin Venture Studio is the first venture studio developed by an Australian university, offering researchers and founders access to capital, talent, market expertise, capability building and mentorship, as well as infrastructure and equipment.
Our venture studio is aimed at fast-tracking the growth of ‘protoventures’, successful businesses based on demand-driven research. One of our first protoventures is RapidGraphite, co-founded by Curtin research academic and material scientist Dr Jason Fogg, a participant in our 2024 Accelerate program. Dr Fogg’s pioneering technology can transform carbon into battery-grade graphite, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries, in seconds.
“With RapidGraphite’s proprietary technology, we can bring a world-first solution to graphite manufacturers to help them turn their waste carbon into battery-grade graphite, overcoming technical bottlenecks that exist today.”
Curtin researcher and co-founder of RapidGraphite, Dr Jason Fogg.
Curtinnovation
If you have a brilliant idea, you can nominate yourself or your team for our Curtinnovation Awards (eligibility criteria applies*). Our annual award ceremony celebrates groundbreaking concepts that have the potential to positively impact society.
Previous winners include an electrolyser process to produce green hydrogen from untreated water; an AI chatbot that prompts users to better manage their life and emotions; and a device that saves children with chronic ear infections from surgery.
Our finalists receive not only a significant cash prize and increased visibility, but also the opportunity for further commercialisation support and the chance to present their work to influential business leaders at our annual Curtinnovation Awards luncheon.
* Current Curtin students and staff, Curtin Alumni or industry partners, and graduates of our Curtin Entrepreneurship programs, Curtin Accelerate and Curtin Ignition, are all eligible to apply.
Trailblazer
Curtin is part of the Australian-Government funded Resources Technology and Critical Minerals Trailblazer. This means we’re working closely with industry, researchers and students to develop solutions to support the sector in its global energy transition.
Through Trailblazer we offer an 8-week program called the National Energy Transition Accelerator, designed to launch early-stage Australian startups and founders with high-growth potential.
This year’s cohort includes Hydrobe®, a biologically driven process that captures more carbon dioxide than it emits. Finding sustainable approaches to decarbonisation is key to achieving net zero emissions targets.
Find out more about this exciting project:
Investing in investors
Alongside our initiatives designed for entrepreneurs, we are working to grow and diversify startup investment in WA through investor education and our Curtin Angel Syndicate.
Early-stage investment is key for many startup founders and innovation driven businesses. Our Curtin Angel Syndicate provides an opportunity for founders in our entrepreneurship programs to access capital from Curtin investors, and for prospective investors to gain an education around the process of angel investing.
We’ve also launched a series of events known as “Curtin Invest” to bring together experts from around the world. Our speakers share their insights with potential investors on key topics including:
- investment trends
- ‘dealflow’ opportunities
- corporate investment
- barriers to investment
- investing in startups and innovation-driven companies
- angel investment
- diversity and impact investment.
Learn more about upcoming Curtin Invest events.
Ready to launch your startup career?
If you’re keen to learn more about our Bachelor of Innovation or MBA programs, our friendly Future Students advisors are happy to help. You can call us during business hours on 1300 222 888 or ask us your question online and we’ll get back to you soon.
If you’re interested in learning more about getting your idea off the ground, get in touch with our Commercialisation team. We can help you explore our exciting opportunities available for researchers, investors, industry and students.
1 Curtin was awarded third place at the 2024 Asia-Pacific Triple E Awards Ceremony in the Entrepreneurial University of the Year category. The Entrepreneurial University Award honours an academic institution for its exemplary approach in ingraining entrepreneurship as a fundamental aspect of its identity and operations.
