More students could be starting businesses in Fort Worth next fall.Alumnus Bill Shaddock is working with the Neeley School of Business to establish the Bill Shaddock Investment Fund to support student-run businesses. The fund would provide resources to students who either need the money to further grow their businesses or to students who have ideas and need a little money to get their ideas started, said David Minor, director of the Neeley Entrepreneurship Center.
“There are many, many businesses that start for $5,000 or $10,000, and they become very big businesses at some point,” Minor said. “That would be ideal.”
The details of the funding are still being determined, but Minor said he believes students will repay the money at low interest rates, if at all. He expects the first investments will be made in the fall. Any student can apply for the fund; it is not only available to business majors.
Shaddock, who graduated from TCU in 1973 with a degree in finance, is the CEO, president or owner of a few businesses in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, such as Shaddock Development and Capital Title of Texas. He wanted to create a fund for entrepreneurial students based on his personal experience at TCU.
“There weren’t a lot of programs for people who wanted to own their own business,” Shaddock said. “Education prepared us to work for a corporation; training us for ‘Fortune 500 land.’ I wanted to impact young people who had visions of their future besides large corporations.”
Not only will students gain experience from running their own businesses, but Minor would also like to have a committee of financing and accounting students work on the loaning process side of investments. He also said he would like Shaddock to be a mentor to some of the businesses they invest in.
“I don’t think students can learn business by watching,” Shaddock said. “Studying business is like learning to swim in the grass by the swimming pool. I want to create a pool where students can actually get in and learn to swim.”
Michelle Maag, a junior entrepreneurial management major, thinks the investment fund sounds like a great opportunity.
“If there are opportunities to finance your business directly from the school, it can be used to attract new students,” Maag said.
Minor said they would spend the next couple of months putting it all together and launch the program in the fall.
“It’s a really exciting initiative that I think is unique to TCU and just another initiative that puts us on the map in the world of entrepreneurship and in academia,” Minor said. “We’d like to think we’ve got one of the top programs in the country already, and this just makes us that much stronger.