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Entrepreneurship can tend to be a lonely field and one of its perks and downfalls is the ability to work from home. However, as many are finding in the startup community, working from home can be more distracting than it is convenient. With that in mind, here are a few tips on how to stay on task while you are working from home. 

Being an entrepreneur is kind of scary. The truth is, people have been taught for years that success is working at a good job, saving money and retiring at 65. Over time, you'll get moved up in the company, start managing people and maybe even get to become "boss". To be fair, to the majority of people that is still considered to be success, and rightfully so. However, it makes the idea of entrepreneurship that much more scary. Here are two contradicting fears that are found frequently in entrepreneurs: the fear of failure and the fear of success. 

To work for yourself sounds to some like a great thing, no boss bugging me, no annoying co-workers, no commute, just me, myself and I. To others, it sounds like a lonely existence, and usually both parties are wrong. Entrepreneurship is nowhere near as lonely as it might seem, in fact, it's often filled with team building and working closely with others. If you look at some of the worlds greatest entrepreneurs, most will say the greatest skill needed by an entrepreneur is for that person to be a great team builder - Steve Jobs has said, "I think it's [team building] the most important job… When you're in a startup, the first ten people will determine whether the company succeeds or not".  Read More

The ESTEEM Program is still accepting applications for the 2013-2014 academic year.  Classes Start on July 1st.   Read More

People often ask, "Why should I get a degree to be an entrepreneur if I'll be my own boss?". It's a fair question that takes a couple steps to answer since many of us have different views of what college is and even larger differences in views of what being an entrepreneur is.  Read More

It happens often that startups, after the excitement of getting started begins to fade, startups begin quickly thinking of how much their company is worth. It's natural since most startups begin with very little money that finding investors is important, however too often startups see the money as the end and not just as the means to get to the end. If you're interested in startups because the money is the end, investors will likely smell it… and frankly, you'll probably tell them in your pitch.  Read More

ABC's hit show, Shark Tank is holding a casting call about 2 hours from South Bend in Chicago on May 9th at the Shedd Aquarium, and it should be a great opportunity for all of our entrepreneurs at Notre Dame and specifically ESTEEM to try out to be the next contestant. Whether or not you are chosen, this opportunity is a great networking chance and a great place to test out your pitching skills. Here we have some tips we have gathered from watching our favorite entrepreneurship show! Read More

This past weekend's Startup Weekend Notre Dame was incredible - nearly a hundred people brought their skills and entrepreneurial spirit to Innovation Park and pitched over 25 new startup ideas, the "Weekend Warriors" whittled it down to 11 and after three long days the judges chose the top three startups. So, now that it's over, what were the take aways?

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Chris Godsoe is a father of four and, much to the liking of his wife, loves to clean. While he was cleaning he had found a group of ants under a chair and started vacuuming them up, but he didn't know if there were more - he couldn't see. So he grabbed a Maglight and taped it to the end of his vacuum tube and found the rest of the ants… but he knew there was a better way of doing this and that's Vaclight.   Read More

Lilly Kang was a cashier at Starbucks when she saw the sheer amount of waste. Customers and employees throwing away hundreds of cups every day. "People are so caught up in their own life that they don't realize what they are doing to the environment". So she thought there had to be a way to incentivize people to bring in a cup instead of wasting a paper cup every day. In addition, Kang is from Beijing China so english is not her first language so she also had a hard time understanding people's names and an even harder time spelling their names. This led her to wanting to develop a better customer experience to tie to this improved cup. This is where the Starbucks Gold Cup started.  Read More