Student Entrepreneur degree at PSL-Pépite (D2E)
PSL host school
Do you have a special passion for entrepreneurship? Regardless of your career plan, PSL-Pépite’s diploma curriculum will give you the keys to fulfilling your ambition.
From critical thinking to creativity and versatility, our classes will help you develop the critical skills most sought after in professional life and by the largest institutions. Offering classroom instruction and personalized support, along with workshops, lectures, hackathons, coworking spaces, and corporate relations, the PSL-Pépite program provides a comprehensive immersion in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, all in the heart of Paris.
Multiple instructional tracks and resources are available, depending on your background and objectives:
If you are a PSL student, you can opt for national student status and register for PSL’s Student Entrepreneur diploma program.
- The PSL-Pépite initiation track provides contact with entrepreneurs and the opportunity to attend entrepreneurship events and join PSL’s entrepreneurship community.
If you are studying at Dauphine, you can also attend the D-Start workshops, provided space is available.
- Do you have a business startup project you wish to pursue while continuing your studies?
The pre-support track is designed for you! PSL-Pépite will help you develop your plan while you continue your studies. You have the option of replacing your internships with your entrepreneurial project, to be developed in advance with your academic supervisor.
If you are studying at Dauphine, you will receive day-to-day support from the D-Start program.
- Do you have the opportunity to devote yourself full-time to your project (6-month gap year or internship)?
PSL-Pépite can help you accelerate your project in 5 months through its PSL-Starter program, conducted at PSL’s coworking space, the PSL-Lab. You’ll receive support in all aspects of project development, including marketing, adapting your business model to your market, acquiring customers, and optimizing your purchasing and logistics.
If you graduated less than 3 years ago, you are eligible for two tracks of the PSL-Pépite program:
- Are you working full-time on your project and could use day-to-day support in your creative process?
PSL-Pépite can help you accelerate your project in 5 months through its PSL-Starter program, conducted at PSL’s coworking space, the PSL-Lab. You’ll receive support in all aspects of project development, including marketing, adapting your business model to your market, and optimizing your purchasing and logistics operations.
- Are you working full-time on your project and already part of an incubator?
PSL-Pépite can train you and support you in your media development and relations. By attending the workshop held by our partner organization, 100,000 Entrepreneurs, you’ll learn how to talk about your entrepreneurial experience and you’ll tell your story to an elementary school class (a project to be defined between you and 100,000 Entrepreneurs). We’ll support you in your crowdfunding projects and press campaigns, and will highlight you at events closely aligned with your business area and targets (VIVA Tech, university and business fairs, etc.).
Follow the latest news from PSL-Pépite: @psl_pepite
Read more about Innovation & enterprise at PSL
Innovation spaces:
PSL-Lab
The electric bubble at MINES ParisTech
The D-Start coworking space at Université Paris-Dauphine
Skills developed
- Initiative: becoming informed, seeking out information and people who can serve as resources, building a network
- Leadership: the ability to win over or mobilize teams or partners and lead their efforts
- Experimentation: proceeding by trial and error to show the need to persevere
- Reality check: the ability to get maximum benefit out of the environment you’ve chosen for your project, tackling its problems and constraints as well as its solutions and resources
- Openness, fantasy, curiosity: setting aside what won’t work and identifying what’s possible, concrete and feasible
- Soft skills and proper communication within the team: e.g., in connection with a major milestone (such as defending the project before a jury of professionals)
- Producing a coherent, professional document as a group
- The ability to project yourself into and adapt to a business environment as a professional
- Demonstrating creativity and inventiveness: being open to things that are outside the norm; showing boldness and initiative and an ability to generate ideas
- Demonstrating curiosity: showing a love of change, of new situations and problems; being attentive to your environment
- Independence: the ability to organize your work and not have to depend on others to make progress; the ability to identify your own growth potential
- The ability to educate yourself: knowing how to identify and locate sources of information and how to manage information
- The ability to enlist the help of others and analyze information
- Creativity: the ability to generate ideas (methods, mindset, exercises) and be open to the innovation process
- Structuring a project: constructing a scenario, evaluating different scenarios, evaluating the project’s concept and coherence
- Analyzing a market and the competitive environment: identifying a strategic opportunity, incorporating social and environmental conditions
- Building a business model that includes a long-term financial strategy (cost price, break-even point, profit and loss statement, balance sheets, statements of source, cash flow, working capital requirement)
- Financing a project: sources and cost; banks, equity, public funds, partnerships
- Identifying and coordinating resources to mobilize: marketing and commercial offerings, technical resources, human resources
- Protecting a project: intellectual property, mastering basic legal concepts (business law, labor law, corporate law)
- Developing a strategic vision for your project that includes strategic and operational deployment
- Communicating with professionals and demonstrating soft skills
- Providing entrepreneurial expertise: leadership and management
Learning outcomes
The D2E is evaluated on the basis of 4 factors:
— Remise d’un rapport de projet entrepreneurial et réalisation d’une soutenance (50%). Ce rapport présente le plan d’affaires du projet ou selon son état d’avancement les éléments validés qui composeront le plan d’affaires. La soutenance a lieu devant un jury composé des membres du comité d’engagement, du référent de l’établissement de l’étudiant et du tuteur ;
— Note de contrôle continu (30%) qui porte sur l’engagement de l’étudiant entrepreneur tout au long de l’année : franchissement d’étapes dans le projet, contacts et personnes rencontrées et la qualité des documents de suivi remis au tuteur, à partir d’un carnet de suivi incluant notamment l’évaluation finale des compétences. Cette évaluation est réalisée par le tuteur à partir d’une charte de suivi ;
— Note d’assiduité et livrable (10%), portant sur la participation de l’étudiant aux ateliers, permanences, évènements du programme, incluant aussi le rendu d’un livrable adapté à la maturité du projet (Business Plan ou Business Model Canva, par exemple).
— Note d’auto-évaluation (10%), validant la réalisation de deux auto-évaluations des compétences sur la plate-forme Pepitizy (MESR), en début et en fin d’année. Cette auto-évaluation pourra donner lieu à la délivrance du certificat de compétences entrepreneuriales proposé par le MESR.
If students replace their internship with their entrepreneurial project, the evaluation may be administered in accordance with their home institution’s evaluation procedures.
Students may customize individual aspects of their program with the approval of the instructors and the advisor from their institution.
PSL-Pépite provides:
- Personalized support for the student from a mentor
- Supplemental instructional modules: workshops, lectures and customized training
- Support for participation in entrepreneurial competitions
Workshops and advisory resources available at PSL-Lab:
- Business strategy
- Marketing
- HR
- Purchasing
- Business development
- Communications
- Finance
- Time and resource management
- Logistics
Prerequisites
- Bachelor’s degree or the equivalent
- Entrepreneurial drive or the desire to start a business
Admissions process
Application package.
1. Complete the national application package: Become a Student-Entrepreneur;
2. Appear before the PSL-Pépite Selection Committee. There will be three recruitment sessions (June / September / January).
Students who wish to replace their internship with their entrepreneurial project and need to appear before the committee outside the aforementioned times must:
1. Complete the national application package: Become a Student-Entrepreneur;
2. Send a motivation letter and a Powerpoint presentation on their project (with about five slides of content);
3. Provide a letter of support from their academic supervisor at their home institution;
4. If their complete package is accepted, appear before a special meeting of the PSL-Pépite Selection Committee.
Duration
One year, renewable on a case-by-case basis - 60 ECTS.
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