The Ag Springboard business pitch contest and $7,500 top prize helps students learn how to create their own dream job — and jobs for other people!

Did you know: Two college buddies and their neighbor started the first Starbucks store in downtown Seattle in 1971.

(Hey -- great things happen in college!)

Zev Siegl, Jerry Baldwin and Gordon Bowker wanted to sell high quality coffee beans

So when Starbucks CEO and Chairman Howard Schultz walked into a Starbucks in Seattle in 1981 the company was already a decade-old, but had not grown beyond Seattle.

He saw its potential and went onto create the Starbucks as we know it: 23,571 retail stores in 70 countries, and 191,000 employees.

The company calls its employees "partners" and provides health insurance to eligible full-time and part-time workers and offers equity in the company.

If those college buddies dropped their idea? No Starbucks. Not even in Seattle.

If Howard Schulz ignores his "light bulb moment" when he walks into a Starbucks in 1981? No Starbucks as we know it.

Who knows what we'd all be drinking to zip through our day? Or what jobs those 191,000 Starbucks employees would have now.

So move forward on your ideas. Take a step. Ag Springboard can walk you through the process of pitching your ideas, creating an enterprise, creating your dream job -- and quite possibly a lot of jobs for other people.