Mission

The iiED prepares highly motivated students and community members for success as entrepreneurs. We educate, incubate, and launch new enterprises. We seek out and serve underserved communities and actively promote inclusion and diversity.

The Big Idea

Students for Startups employs students to help community members who are starting new businesses and nonprofit organizations. It is an internship program at the CSU Monterey Bay's Institute for Innovation and Economic Development. The students assist in organizing educational events, helping entrepreneurs develop logos, websites, and marketing materials, set up financial tracking, hiring, and other activities important to business success. The students gain practical experience that supplements their university education; the community entrepreneurs get valuable assistance in starting their own businesses and nonprofit organizations; and the community gets new businesses and nonprofits that enhance the quality of life in the region, support the environment, and renew our regional economy.
The students in the program are undergraduate students from across the university. CSUMB students are 63% female, 51% LatinX, and nearly 50% of our students are first-generation college

This internship has given me so many tools and skills that I can carry throughout my career and has allowed me to make so many lasting connections with great people.

- Sophia Torres