A high school student from Dothan, TROY students, community entrepreneurs and business professionals may not ordinarily find themselves on the same team building a business from scratch.

For one weekend in Troy, they did.

The Alabama Small Business Development Center at Troy University brought Weekend Ventures to Troy Sept. 18-20, challenging participants to move from identifying a problem to researching customers, developing a business model and pitching a potential venture in less than three days. 

Facilitated in partnership with The Founders Playground, the program emphasized learning entrepreneurship through experience. Participants began Friday by identifying problems, sharing ideas and forming two teams around opportunities they wanted to explore.

“Entrepreneurship can feel very individual, but businesses are rarely built that way,” said Juliana Bolivar, director of the Alabama SBDC at Troy University. “We wanted to create an environment where students could learn from community members, community members could learn from our students, and everyone had something valuable to bring to the table.”

The participants brought a range of experiences to the teams.

Jake Whitley, a TROY finance student, joined fellow TROY students Til Zimmermann and Chi-Yu Lee, an international student studying information technology. Carrie Wilson brought experience as a financial consultant and nonprofit founder, while Jawaune McMillan contributed a corporate management perspective. Community entrepreneurs Audreonna Lindsey and Glenda Kelly brought their experiences developing ideas and working in their communities.

Then there was Gabriella Walz, a high school student from Dothan.

Walz came to Weekend Ventures through Wilson, her mentor, and spent the weekend working alongside college students and professionals with considerably more business experience.

“It was a lot of work, but I am so glad my mentor, Carrie Wilson, introduced me to the SBDC and we came,” Walz said. “I learned a lot, and I am glad we worked in teams because I don’t have experience in so many of these areas.”

Walz also brought skills her teammates needed. Wilson said she was excited to have Walz on her team because of her technical abilities.

By the end of the weekend, Walz had earned the Weekend Warrior Award.

That exchange of knowledge continued as participants moved through customer discovery, market research, business modeling, prototyping and pitch development.

One team explored a challenge faced by employers across industries: helping highly skilled workers transition into management. The group developed a leadership assessment and development concept that would use technology to identify leadership potential, diagnose development needs and provide training.

Rather than assume they understood the problem, team members conducted customer-discovery interviews with management professionals in local poultry-processing operations, manufacturing companies and other businesses. The conversations helped them test assumptions and refine the potential solution. 

The second team focused on the disconnect between younger and older generations.

Its concept, U-Wise, envisioned bringing generations together through workshops and skill-sharing experiences involving activities such as fishing, baking and sewing.

The team completed about 20 customer interviews and used the feedback to refine its concept before Sunday’s final pitch.

For Katherine Zobre, founder of The Founders Playground, the teams demonstrated why Weekend Ventures emphasizes action over traditional classroom instruction.

“The magic of Weekend Ventures is not that everyone walks in knowing how to build a business. It is actually the opposite,” Zobre said. “People bring different pieces of the puzzle, and over the course of the weekend they learn how to use those differences as strengths.”

Participants also received guidance from mentors, including Holle Smith, president of the Ozark-Dale County Economic Development Corporation; Micah Garrett, a TROY finance graduate and financial professional; and Malcolm McSwean, J.D., a lecturer in law in TROY’s Sorrell College of Business and a longtime Troy attorney with experience in business law. 

The mentors challenged the teams’ thinking without building the concepts for them. Participants had to determine which questions mattered, test their assumptions and decide how feedback should shape their ideas.

The experience also gave TROY students an opportunity to apply their academic backgrounds to real-world problems. Whitley’s finance background and Lee’s information technology knowledge became resources the teams could draw on as new questions emerged.

“We talk about entrepreneurial ecosystems, particularly in rural communities, but an ecosystem is really people,” Bolivar said. “It is a finance student sitting beside an entrepreneur. It is an international student bringing a different perspective to a local problem. It is a high school student discovering that the skills she already has are valuable to a team.”

The Alabama SBDC at Troy University works with aspiring and existing entrepreneurs throughout Southeast Alabama through no-cost, confidential business advising and educational programming. Its connection to TROY also provides opportunities to connect students and faculty expertise with entrepreneurs and communities across the region. 

By Sunday, the participants had transformed two initial concepts into ventures shaped by customer interviews, research and mentorship.

Ultimately, U-Wise was selected as the winning venture.

“In the end, someone had to win, and that was genuinely difficult because both teams worked incredibly hard,” Bolivar said. “What impressed me most wasn’t just the final pitches. It was watching what happened between Friday and Sunday. They went out and talked to people. They heard things that challenged their assumptions. They came back and changed things. They used each other’s strengths. That is the work entrepreneurs actually have to do.”

For Bolivar, that process is why programs such as Weekend Ventures matter.

“We don’t have to look outside our communities for talent,” she said. “The talent is already here. Our students have it. Our entrepreneurs have it. Our young people have it, and our experienced professionals have knowledge worth passing forward.”

Whether the concepts developed during Weekend Ventures ultimately become businesses remains to be seen. But participants left with experience taking an idea through customer discovery, responding to feedback, working with people outside their usual circles and presenting a concept shaped by evidence rather than assumptions.

For Walz, the weekend ended with both a winning team and the Weekend Warrior Award. For the college students, it provided an opportunity to apply their academic skills to real problems. For the community participants, it created new connections and perspectives.

And for the TROY SBDC, Weekend Ventures demonstrated what can happen when the University and its surrounding communities build together.