Welcome to the quarterly MOBI newsletter! Each quarter we reach out to our alumni and readers to share important highlights from Santa Clara University's MOBI program. We hope you will enjoy these updates and continue your relationship with MOBI on your path toward entrepreneurship!

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Thank you from MOBI!

Our hearts go out to all as we continue to face the monumental challenges brought on by the coronavirus pandemic and by the struggle for racial justice in our country and around the world.  

The University, the Leavey School of Business, and all of us at MOBI are committed to acting in support of justice and standing in solidarity with our community.  On June 9, Dean Caryn Beck-Dudley shared these powerful sentiments with the School: 

The vision for our community is to cultivate people of compassion.  It is time to come together and affirm not only that Black Lives Matter, but that we will do the transformative work of turning words into action.  We support the statements of our President, Father Kevin O’Brien, as well as those of faculty, staff, students, and alumni who have committed to action, and we add our voices in solidarity with them.  But we all know that solidarity is not enough.  We commit to listening, learning, and taking steps to erase racial injustice in the Leavey School of Business and beyond.

As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.  We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”  Black lives matter, and we will never be whole until we make racial justice a reality.

MOBI commits to making racial justice a reality.  We stand with those who suffer and with those who are working to create a more just, equitable, and humane world. 

Please accept our best wishes for health, safety, and peace. 

Drew Starbird, Ph.D.

Our MOBI alumni are part of a global community representing over 87 countries! The map below shows the locations of MOBI's 2020 course graduates to date.

MOBI compiled a list of COVID-19 resources in a new Resources for Entrepreneurs & Small Businesses web page to help business owners identify and pursue assistance during the coronavirus health emergency.  

Published in April, this resource page provides helpful links to organizations and sites that provide information for small businesses and entrepreneurs, organized by federal, state/local, international, financial, and other designations.

In April MOBI introduced Quick Start Entrepreneur. This new course is designed to help accelerate entrepreneurial learning and readiness during the COVID-19 pandemic, so that students can pursue business ownership or career aspirations more quickly. Quick Start Entrepreneur includes the ten most essential sessions of our popular Starting a Business and Business Expansion courses, and includes five bonus sessions featuring new content. 

Bonus features developed by MOBI Executive Director and SCU Professor of Information Systems and Analytics Drew Starbird, Ph.D., together with his colleague and MOBI instructor David Aune, include three new topics: Selling, Controlling Costs, and Making Ethical Decisions. In addition, MOBI partnered with the Santa Clara University Ciocca Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship to develop two more sessions: Business Storytelling and Adapting in the Midst of Change. 

MOBI students who complete the Quick Start Entrepreneur course and pass the final exam will earn a Certificate of Completion and a digital badge from Santa Clara University, just as with the standard MOBI courses. Like all MOBI courses and content, Quick Start Entrepreneur and the additional bonus sessions are free and available online to anyone, anywhere, anytime. 

MOBI partners are an important part of the MOBI program!  By forming partnerships with diverse communities of students around the world, MOBI can inspire entrepreneurship in ways that best meet the specific opportunities of each group, and always for free. 

MOBI currently offers two types of partnerships: collaborative and affiliate. Our collaborative partners are those organizations for whom we develop a co-branded interface, partner-specific login, and customized course. In addition, these partners can observe or manage their participants’ progress in the MOBI course, often through cohorts or groups that pursue the course together. Collaborative partners include community colleges, technical training centers, nonprofit organizations, high schools, NGOs and other groups.

Affiliate partners are those organizations that refer their communities to the MOBI courses on their websites or other communication. Affiliate partners often require or suggest an educational component or entrepreneurial training as part of their programs, and find it helpful to refer their participants to MOBI’s free, online, and self-paced curriculum. Affiliate partners include state self-employment assistance programs, regional economic development programs, funding programs, and more.

All MOBI partners share our mission of helping people build and create opportunities for themselves and their communities through entrepreneurship. Education is a cornerstone to this mission. We have added several new partners in both categories over the past few months and we extend a warm MOBI welcome to these inspiring organizations:

Collaborative:

Bluefield WV Economic Development Authority

Chicanos Por La Causa (CLPC)

Collaboration Station

Fifth Wave 

Junior Achievement of Northern California

Trade Like a Girl Foundation (KISS)

SCU Ciocca Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship/Quick Start Entrepreneur

SCU Ignatian Center for Jesuit Education/Yacanex Community/Lanzando

Affiliate:

Hello Alice

NOVA

Opportunity Fund

Southeast Asia Center (SEAC)

Start Us Up

Do you know an organization or school that might be interested in partnering with MOBI? 

Celebrating achievements in the past few months:

MOBI highlights one theme every week on our social media platforms. We post blogs, videos, lists, and articles on a variety of topics relevant for aspiring entrepreneurs. Based upon reader activity, here are some top stories from the past quarter.

We wish you all the best in business success! Stay well!

The MOBI Team