The current executive director of Saint Louis University’s Chaifetz Center for Entrepreneurship will join the University of Wisconsin-Madison to lead the university’s first entrepreneurship center.
Lewis Sheats will become the Associate Vice Chancellor for Entrepreneurship and the Executive Director of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub on Feb. 2, a Jan. 20 release announced.
Sheats told The Daily Cardinal he plans to occupy a “support role” for UW-Madison’s entrepreneurial environment, and will spend time learning about and building UW-Madison’s already-existing entrepreneurial infrastructure before developing new accelerator or incubator initiatives.
Sheats’ entrepreneurial background
Sheats started his first company in North Carolina as a college student, shuttling medications to nursing homes with his wife in a minivan. His self-funded business grew to deliver medicines to nursing homes in four states, with a contract fleet of 65 vehicles. He described his first business venture as one of need: “I was broke, and I had to figure out how to not be broke, so I started a company.”
Since then, Sheats has led several business ventures including a retail wine shop, a corporate-gifting cookie bakery, a GPS tracking system for dogs and a software program for angel investors.
He taught classes on entrepreneurship at North Carolina State University, his alma mater, serving as Assistant Vice Provost for Entrepreneurship for 20 years.
Sheats said being an entrepreneur is the ability to “recognize an opportunity, build around that opportunity with a team or solution and articulate that vision to the right stakeholders.” He encouraged student-entrepreneurs to seek him out upon his arrival to campus.
“I absolutely love talking to students about entrepreneurship,” Sheats said. “Whether you have an idea or not… I'll meet you between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m. I'll meet you on-campus or off-campus. I'll get on a phone call or a Zoom. All you have to do is ask.”
Plans for Madison
Sheats’ long-term goals for the Hub include increasing the number of entrepreneurs and startups at UW-Madison, engaging students in entrepreneurship and providing university startups with more resources.
The Entrepreneurship Hub will be housed in 1403 University Avenue along with Innovate Network, a directory of resources for campus entrepreneurs set to become part of the Hub, and the UW Tech Exploration Lab. Efforts from the Hub might include launching mentorship programs, accelerators and incubators or bolstering pre-existing programs, classes and clubs, Sheats said.
“I have a lot of ideas, but I've got to get a better sense of what already exists, because there's already a lot of strong entrepreneurial programs in Madison,” Sheats said. “My role is really going to play that support role: if we need an accelerator, I'm going to help build that. If we need an incubator, I'm going to help build that. If we have one already, then I'm going to help elevate that.”
The Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub started as a report recommendation from an entrepreneurship working group co-chaired by UW-Madison business professor Jon Eckhardt in 2024. The Hub plans to connect campus entrepreneurship initiatives with centralized resources in a hub-and-spoke model, with different spokes “tailored to different ways of empowering founders and building new ventures,” according to the university.
One of these area-specific entrepreneurship programs is Badger Tech Foundry, launched in November with a year-long training program that funds “early entrepreneurs-in-residence.” The entrepreneurs have extensive technical expertise and are expected to launch companies after completion of the program, according to William Murphy, leader of the program and biomedical engineering professor. The Foundry has recruited three researcher-entrepreneurs with research areas matching the Foundry’s three technology “verticals” of Biotechnology, Materials and Energy.
“Dr. Kyle Wolf is developing a groundbreaking therapy for acute radiation syndrome, Dr. Luis Escano is developing new products for advanced 3D metal printing [and] Dr. Jiajie Sui is developing new ferroelectric materials for use in batteries,” Murphy told the Cardinal in an email.
Discovery to Product (D2P), a partnership between UW-Madison and the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation offering free consulting services to student and faculty entrepreneurs, is another current initiative on campus that has launched 42 startups. It will be “folding” into the Hub over the next semester.
“We're going through a systematic review of all of our programs and activities around campus, including D2P,” Eckhardt said. “Whether or not individual programs continue or not from that effort will be evolving over the next semester.”
Sheats will report directly to Eckhardt, who chaired the committee search for the entrepreneurship chancellor and serves as special advisor of entrepreneurship to Sheats. Though Eckhardt will report progress on entrepreneurship initiatives to the chancellor, the Wisconsin Hub for Entrepreneurship will report to the Provost, Eckhardt said.
“What I'm really hoping to see out of this are more high-quality companies started by our students, faculty and alumni and for Wisconsin to be known more broadly as a place for founders to come and build fantastic careers,” Eckhardt said.
Eckhardt told the Cardinal the Entrepreneurship Hub works closely with WARF, WisconsinMade, the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association and University Research Park.
He said the Hub plans to raise “additional funds” through these partners and by “working with leaders in government to position the university to pursue this new vision for entrepreneurship.”
Sheats said connecting faculty with startups and getting student entrepreneurs in the Hub involved are top priorities.
“I want to bring [faculty founders] together to learn from them, understand what's worked in the past and how I can be an advocate for them,” Sheats said. “On the same note, how do I get student entrepreneurs together, be an advocate for them, and help them find that pathway to success?”
