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McCombs Entrepreneurship Complex

The McCombs School of Business operates a multi-center entrepreneurship landscape rather than a single anchor institution. Five distinct centers and institutes serve different student populations, programmatic phases, and entrepreneurship orientations: the Brumley Institute for Graduate Entrepreneurship (graduate-level acceleration via Texas Venture Labs), the Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies (the campus-wide undergraduate Entrepreneurship Minor), the Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center (undergraduate engagement, mentorship, and pitch competitions), the Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (women-focused cross-college entrepreneurship programming), and the Global Sustainability and Leadership Institute (sustainability and impact-oriented entrepreneurship). The complex spans McCombs at undergraduate, graduate, and cross-college levels, and is integrated with the broader UT Austin entrepreneurship ecosystem through Texas Entrepreneurship, the umbrella structure under which several of these centers coordinate. Apptronik co-founder Jeff Cardenas is a McCombs BBA '08, MSTC '13, a concrete case of the McCombs founder pipeline working at scale across the regional ecosystem.

Brumley Institute for Graduate Entrepreneurship

The Brumley Institute for Graduate Entrepreneurship is the graduate-level entrepreneurship anchor at McCombs. The institute traces back to UT's Moot Corp Competition, which Success magazine called "the mother of all business-plan competitions" in 1998 and which ran for decades as the flagship UT business plan competition. Moot Corp was renamed the Venture Labs Investment Competition in March 2010, the same month Texas Venture Labs (TVL) launched as a graduate-student-and-faculty-entrepreneur acceleration program. TVL was renamed Jon Brumley Texas Venture Labs (JBTVL) in May 2012 following a $6 million gift from entrepreneur Jon Brumley, BBA '61, the Fort Worth-based oil-and-gas entrepreneur. In September 2025, following Jon Brumley's death on July 2, 2025 at age 86, the institute was renamed the Brumley Institute for Graduate Entrepreneurship to reflect an expanded focus on all forms of entrepreneurship rather than only venture-backed startups.

Mellie Price serves as Executive Director of Texas Entrepreneurship and Director of the Brumley Institute. The Brumley Institute operates from Robert B. Rowling Hall on UT's main campus, in the Venture Partners Suite. The institute is a cross-campus program; while housed at McCombs, it serves graduate students from McCombs MBA, MSTC, the Cockrell School of Engineering, the Jackson School of Geosciences, the LBJ School of Public Policy, the School of Law, the College of Pharmacy, the College of Natural Sciences, and other UT graduate programs. Each semester, the institute works with at least 30 startups across the various programs.

Three distinct programmatic structures operate under the Brumley Institute:

Program	Structure and Function
Texas Venture Labs (TVL) Accelerator	Matches Texas startups with cross-functional teams of UT graduate students for 10-week startup consulting projects. Operates each Spring and Fall semester with rolling applications. No equity taken; no fees charged. Approximately 30 startups per semester. Companies must have full-time management focus, prototype or product, completed market validation, and active fundraising
Texas Venture Labs Investment Competition (TVLIC)	Semester pitch competition mimicking the real-world venture capital fundraising process. Open to all UT graduate students. Cash prizes and investor feedback. TVLIC alumni who launched successful businesses include uShip, Ordoro, BeatBox Beverages, Phurnace Software, and Qcue. Spring 2026 competition scheduled for May 1, 2026
Brumley Startup Fellows	Summer cohort program (June to August) with three tracks: Brumley Startup Fellow (working on or with a startup), Brumley Commercialization Fellow (STEM-based company taking IP to market), and Brumley Founder in Residence Fellow (FIR, working on launching their own startup with mentor and resource support)

The Brumley Institute is not a venture fund; it does not provide funding directly or take equity in companies. Capital flows to Brumley Institute startups through endowment funding, donor partnerships, venture funds, angel investors, and prior State of Texas Emerging Technology Fund support. The Brumley Institute coordinates closely with the Austin Technology Incubator (ATI) at UT, with the Cockrell School, and with the broader Austin venture ecosystem through formal and informal handoffs.

Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies

The Harkey Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies is the undergraduate entrepreneurship anchor at McCombs and the institutional home of the campus-wide Entrepreneurship Minor. The Entrepreneurship Minor launched in Fall 2018 with fewer than 90 students. By 2024, the minor had grown to more than 800 students drawn from every major on campus, making it the fastest-growing minor at UT Austin per Dean Lillian Mills.

The Harkey Institute itself was established in 2021 through a $10 million naming gift from John D. Harkey Jr. (BBA Business Honors '83, JD UT Austin, MBA Stanford) and his wife Peni Barfield. The naming gift was structured as the Harkey Match, a 1:1 matching commitment for other donors contributing $500,000 or more in endowed funding, with specific naming recognition opportunities at the $2.5 million-plus level. The campaign goal is $20 million total, of which $13.5 million had been raised through 2024. John D. Harkey Jr. was inducted into the McCombs Hall of Fame in November 2022 and currently serves as CEO of Consolidated Restaurant Companies, on the Board of Directors of Lions Gate Entertainment Corp., and on the UT System Chancellor's Council Executive Committee. Harkey founded JDH Investment Management LLC and brings 25-plus years of experience across biotech, energy, technology, aerospace, telecom, software, entertainment, restaurants, healthcare, and real estate. The dedication ceremony for the Harkey Institute took place at Rowling Hall, just before the inaugural Startup City Limits showcase of student entrepreneurial innovations.

Dr. Melissa Murphy serves as Director of Undergraduate Entrepreneurship and Director of the Harkey Institute. Colin Ellis serves as Assistant Director. The institute's curriculum spans courses from McCombs and several UT colleges and schools, with the Entrepreneurship Minor as the curricular foundation. Programs include sponsored practicum courses, private guest speaker events, undergraduate community events, co-working spaces for students across the university, and the Summer Entrepreneurship Academy.

Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center

The Herb Kelleher Entrepreneurship Center (HKEC), founded in 2001 and named for the late Southwest Airlines co-founder Herb Kelleher, is the longest-operating undergraduate entrepreneurship center at McCombs. HKEC operates as the undergraduate community-and-engagement layer rather than the curricular layer; while the Harkey Institute owns the Entrepreneurship Minor, HKEC owns the broader undergraduate entrepreneurship community programming, mentorship, pitch competitions, and student-led activities.

Dr. Steven Gray (Assistant Professor of Management) is Director of HKEC, succeeding Dr. Luis Martins who served eight years in the role. HKEC's programming includes the Forty Acres Founders Program (a semester-long practicum for student founders to establish product-market fit), the Forty Acres Founders Pitch Competition, the Freed Family Pitch Competition (UT Austin's largest and most prestigious undergraduate pitch competition with $65K in cash and prizes, supported by a $1 million gift from William "Billy" Freed BBA '81 and family), the Entrepreneurship Live! speaker series, and the HKEC Entrepreneur-in-Residence mentor program. HKEC operates from the McCombs Speedway building (CBA 6.424).

Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute

The Kendra Scott Women's Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute (KS WELI) was founded in September 2019 with a launch event at UT's Bass Concert Hall and began programming in Spring 2020. KS WELI is a cross-disciplinary program spanning the McCombs School of Business, the College of Fine Arts, the College of Natural Sciences, and The LaunchPad in Undergraduate Studies. Kendra Scott herself serves as Professor of Practice at UT's College of Fine Arts.

In March 2022, Kendra Scott committed a $13.25 million endowment (combining personal and corporate philanthropic investment) to permanently expand and support the institute. The endowment also seeded the Women in Entrepreneurship (WiE) Specialization, launched in Fall 2022 in partnership with McCombs, which gives students the opportunity to earn the Entrepreneurship Minor through a women-focused track. The institute's stated goal is to help more than 24,000 women pursue business aspirations over the decade following the endowment.

KS WELI's programming includes the Kendra Scott Consumer Products Entrepreneurship Practicum at McCombs, an experiential accessories design and merchandising course at the College of Natural Sciences, the Kendra Scott Studio Partnership at the College of Fine Arts (a three-hour seminar at Kendra Scott headquarters centered on the Kendra Scott design process), the FoundHER program (recognizing women student founders), the SHEspeaks events, and the KS WELI Changemakers Summit. The institute operates from the Kendra Scott Center on the UT Austin campus.

Global Sustainability and Leadership Institute

The Global Sustainability and Leadership Institute (GSLI) is the sustainability-and-impact-oriented entrepreneurship center at McCombs. GSLI focuses on entrepreneurship for social and environmental impact, and operates as the institutional home for impact-oriented founders, sustainable-business operators, and ESG-and-stakeholder-capitalism programming at McCombs. GSLI sits alongside the other McCombs entrepreneurship centers under the broader Texas Entrepreneurship coordination structure.

Texas Entrepreneurship: The Coordinating Structure

Texas Entrepreneurship is the umbrella coordination structure under which several of the McCombs entrepreneurship centers operate. Mellie Price serves as Executive Director of Texas Entrepreneurship as well as Director of the Brumley Institute. The Brumleys provided the founding gift for Texas Entrepreneurship. The umbrella structure connects the Brumley Institute, GSLI, the Harkey Institute, HKEC, and KS WELI through shared programming infrastructure, cross-center events, joint mentorship pools, and integrated communications, while preserving each center's distinct mission, donor base, and student-population focus.

The coordination structure has matured over the past several years as the McCombs entrepreneurship complex has grown from a single Moot Corp Competition (continuously operational since the early 1980s) to a five-center landscape spanning undergraduate, graduate, women-focused, sustainability-focused, and community-engagement entrepreneurship programming. The complex is now among the largest university entrepreneurship infrastructures in the United States, with combined student participation across the centers exceeding 1,500 students annually.

McCombs Entrepreneurship in the Austin Ecosystem

The McCombs entrepreneurship complex feeds into the broader Austin startup ecosystem through multiple pipelines that compound across the founder-to-commercialization arc. McCombs MBA and MSTC graduates move into Capital Factory portfolio companies, ATI member companies, regional VC firms, and Austin's broader operator pool. Undergraduate Entrepreneurship Minor alumni move into both founding roles and operator roles in the Austin ecosystem. Apptronik co-founder Jeff Cardenas (BBA '08, MSTC '13) is the most prominent recent example of the McCombs-to-regional-deep-tech pipeline, with Apollo humanoid robots now in commercial pilots with Mercedes-Benz, Apple, and Jabil. The McCombs-to-Capital-Factory and McCombs-to-ATI handoffs are routine rather than exceptional, and the McCombs entrepreneurship complex now supplies a meaningful fraction of the founder-and-operator population for the contemporary Austin startup ecosystem.

Mulva Hall, McCombs' new 17-story facility under construction, will house additional entrepreneurship infrastructure when complete. The Brumleys were early investors in Mulva Hall, and the new facility is positioned to anchor the next decade of McCombs entrepreneurship growth alongside Rowling Hall, the McCombs main building on Speedway, the Kendra Scott Center, and the existing distributed cross-college presence at the College of Fine Arts, College of Natural Sciences, Cockrell School, Jackson School, LBJ School, and elsewhere.