Dear 3 Day Startup participants, community members, and supporters,

3 Day Startup has decided to cease operations as of May 2023. To reach this decision, the board of directors has carefully weighed the operational efforts and resources required to continue. There are many opportunities to continue supporting entrepreneurs, but we plan to separately pursue these opportunities.

Over the 15 years since 3DS was founded, we have worked on missions aimed to enable entrepreneurs through many different activities and in many different settings:

• Early in our history, we aimed to enable university entrepreneurs, equipping them with the best practices of starting companies and giving them the confidence to start their own ventures. We engaged with over 150 universities world-wide in this effort, and have enabled more than 20,000 university students to start their own companies, become community leaders, and to deliver great products and services.
• As some of our participants and supporters moved up to larger organizations and activities, they request that we help bolster particular emerging industries in local communities. 3DS enabled local organizations and foundations to build up local industry by identifying and emphasizing their existing success stories, and equipping community champions to build community-wide collaborations. Local businesses have been able to modernize operations, to use and build emerging technologies, to develop sustainable and green efforts, and to better market and communicate their capabilities.
• We have also supported regional, state, and federal governments in many countries to increase their economic engagements within communities and across borders. We helped develop cultural and financial engagements, educational and immersion exchanges, and international mentorship and investment. These efforts have enabled  entrepreneurs to contextualize and strengthen their companies and communities with local competencies, to learn where they can rely on connections to other locales, and to expand both regionally and globally.
• More recently, 3DS deepened its focus to ensure everyone has access to great entrepreneurship education. We have found unmet needs in underrepresented populations and locations, and we have built programming to serve these needs. Like many organizations, we observe that talent and skill exist everywhere, uniformly distributed. However, opportunity is mostly siloed and tends to be inaccessible to many would-be entrepreneurs. We developed and leveraged a global network to support youth entrepreneurs and innovators by providing access to training, mentoring, community, potential customers, and capital.

We still believe strongly in and envision a world in which everyone has access to learn entrepreneurship in an immersive and experiential setting. The experience of starting companies is key to enabling the next great entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs also need access to community and resources, which need to be continually developed and supported through collaborations, organizations, and governments.

The success of our collective efforts would not have been possible without the dedicated support from so many people and organizations.

To y’all: Thank you. We express our deepest appreciation to all our supporters, donors, partners, volunteers, and community members who have stood by our side throughout this journey.

Sincerely… keep on rockin’,

Joel Hestness (co-founder) and the Board of Directors

jthestness@gmail.com

3 Day Startup