September 2016

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 12, 2016--For six years, Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business has offered early-stage California business owners a free, mentored business-accelerator program, the California Program for Entrepreneurship, or CAPE.

Now, the CAPE program is being teamed up with the business school’s online small-business startup program, MOBI, the My Own Business Institute.

Students chosen for CAPE will still receive seven weekends of in-person classes on everything from financing to accounting to marketing. But now those classes will be supplemented by online courses from MOBI, which teach practical business-startup basics like organization, business insurance, e-commerce, and expense management.

“We are excited to combine our two tremendous entrepreneurship training programs together for the first time,” said Drew Starbird, the executive director of MOBI and new director of CAPE. “Our California-based CAPE students will get the benefit of MOBI’s robust online curriculum, as well as the mentoring and training that has helped more than 150 small businesses launch and grow.

“It’s also our hope that over time, the students from around the globe who benefit from the online MOBI program will one day come to our campus for a MOBI Fellows program,” he added.

California businesses wishing to apply for CAPE 2016 have until Sept. 15, 2016. Registration instructions and information is at https://www.scu.edu/business/cie/cape/application/.

For more on the history and offerings of MOBI, please see www.scu.edu/mobi.