Jason Li – Dec 4, 2024
Madison, WI — It’s Thursday, November 21st, 2024. On the 2nd floor of the Wisconsin School of Business, a high entrepreneurial fervor fills the room of the fifth and final fall semester meet-up for UW-Madison’s founder community.
The meet-up, officially billed as the “UW-Madison Entrepreneur Meetup,” is a bi-weekly recurring meetup that brings together Madison student and community entrepreneurs of all ages and experience levels. Tonight’s meet-up draws a crowd of fifty people, ranging from aspiring student entrepreneurs to seasoned Madison-area founders. While officially scheduled for an hour, many participants remained after and were engaged in deep discussion. The event itself begins with announcements of upcoming startup opportunities near campus, then breaking into many discussion groups focused on particular entrepreneurial interests like technology, venture capital, finding co-founder(s), and more.
These entrepreneur meet-ups operate under the umbrella of ramp100: previously a start-up accelerator for UW-Madison student founders created by professor Jon Eckhardt and Jack Koziol, now transformed into an entrepreneurship community led by Ben Lukszys, a junior at UW-Madison majoring in Entrepreneurship, Data Science, and Philosophy.
In an interview, Ben describes himself as a “founder’s founder;” someone who solves the pain points of other entrepreneurs and founders. He has been instrumental in building the community this semester after the ramp100 accelerator was put on pause for the 2024–25 academic year, due to the university Chancellor recruiting Eckhardt full-time for her Entrepreneurship Initiative.
“So many friends were made and business partners were created during ramp100 last year, and so I wanted to keep that going. I probably made over half of my close friends at college through ramp100 alone,” Ben explains. His impact on the entrepreneurial community has been felt through multiple organizations, particularly in connecting entrepreneurs with resources on campus to reduce barriers-to-entry for newcomers and help existing entrepreneurs find mentorship and other resources.
Among the attendees of tonight’s entrepreneur meet-up is Truman Nolte, a sophomore who recently switched from an Entrepreneurship major to that for Data Science. Truman describes his path; he comes from the “Mecwan bubble” in small-town Wisconsin, and arrived to Madison overwhelmed with the sheer amount of people on campus. He became more observant as a result and found an interest in books, “I don’t really say what I think [because] I lack confidence… but things that I was reading in this book, was things that I’ve been thinking all along — maybe I’m not crazy.”
When asked, Truman wants to be an entrepreneur to own his time and contribute in a meaningful way, and a regular salaried job was not something he ever wanted. He focuses on an attitude of “stumbling around,” which allowed him to venture outside his comfort zone and light this “entrepreneurial fire.”
“Try to embrace the change that comes with figuring things out, and not trying to set myself on any one path… if I could predict my life in the next five years, I wouldn’t necessarily want to live it.”
The meet-up has become a cornerstone of his growth. “This meet-up attracts the right people, the right networking and opportunities,” Truman notes. He appreciates how the community embraces intellectual humility and creates a level playing field where concepts can be freely discussed and explained.
Looking ahead, Truman offers advice: “Take advantage of your maximum opportunities, minimum responsibilities lifestyle. If you do the thing that you are afraid of, address the worst possible outcome, are you going to survive? Chances are yes, and you’ll be okay.”
Ben’s vision for the future aligns with his role as a founder’s founder. “I am trying to solve as many founder problems as possible. Because a world where founders have fewer problems creates a world with more solutions, and that’s a world I want to live in.”
His personal message to those interested in entrepreneurship:
“The best thing to do to get started in entrepreneurship is to meet other people who are also interested in entrepreneurship. More generally, my ultimate advice to people trying to find their way in life can be distilled down to this three-step framework: 1) reflect upon or find people who you love to be around, 2) identify what these people have in common (I call them ‘filters’), and 3) spend as much time finding people with those ‘filters’ as possible. Then, not only will you constantly be surrounded by people you love, but you’ll start to become one of these people yourself. For people like me and Truman, our main ‘filter’ is entrepreneurship. And, that’s why this meetup and events like it are so valuable because it serves as a filter for other entrepreneurial people.”
And as this evening winds down, the remaining participants finish their discussions, embodying the community’s spirit of collaboration and growth. In this room, on this Thursday evening, the future of Madison’s entrepreneurial ecosystem takes shape once more, one conversation at a time.