The Special Opportunity of College Years
As someone looking to embark on a life of entrepreneurial creation, the argument could be made that the safest time is when one is a student. This stage of life holds the resources that many adults lose-time to experiment, a wealth of motivated and intelligent fellow students, faculty and researchers nearby, very few personal expenses, and the security of the university institution itself. As a student entrepreneur, it is exponentially safer to fail than to fail at thirty-five, when a family and a mortgage are present. The university campus essentially serves as a safe sandbox for invention and discovery, and those who are aware and brave enough to do so gain an immense head start.
Choosing the Right Idea to Chase
Not all business ideas are good ones, and among the skills that student entrepreneurs need to learn early on is the one that can identify which ones are likely to be good and which ones to discard. It’s not “what business can I build?”, but “what problem do I understand extremely well?” This is where student entrepreneurs have the strongest starting point; student entrepreneurs live immersed in problems: they know what’s not working at the campus, what’s missing in youth services, what’s not getting met within their subject area or within their social network. An idea generated from a life problem will probably find a market life just because there are lives for it to fill. “The problem not the product”
Balancing School and Business
One of the most enduring conflicts throughout the life of student-entrepreneur is the tug-of-war between academics and business. You can’t ignore either; in fact, denial that they can coexist is what spells ruin for either academics, or business (or both). The secret is not to pit them against each other but rather discover their points of synergy. Business classes, economics, psychology, design and even literature can be fodder for the entrepreneurial brain. Professors may be advisors and mentors. Research papers can be the genesis of an idea for a product. The student who looks at his studies as fuel for his business rather than the fuel for an adversary will be surprised at how the two endeavors will seem to support each other in ways that are difficult to predict but undeniable.
Building a Team From Your Immediate World
You’re never going to do anything great on your own and a university campus is probably the best recruiting pool you could ever imagine. You have engineers, designers, marketers, analysts, strategists all around you and many of them will want the real world experience and purpose that a startup provides. You use your network to bring on board a team of co-founders or early collaborators. You have a diverse set of skills at your disposal without salary and you build working relationships based on trust and common purpose. Pick your team members not for their brilliance but for their trustworthiness, their honesty, and their ability to do difficult things without being told.
Utilizing University Resources to the Fullest
Almost all students greatly underestimate the amount of help available to them from their institution. Entrepreneurship centers, incubator spaces, seed competitions, mentoring networks, alumni connections, legal clinics, and grants for research are often left untouched because students either don’t know about these resources or incorrectly believe they don’t qualify. Information can be gathered from the library, the faculty, guest lectures and the physical space of the campus as a testing ground for prototypes or early customer discovery, even outside of official programs. The university will give the student entrepreneur more than a classroom – it will give a state-of-the-art launchpad that off-campus counterparts simply can’t.
Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset
Business plans and technical knowledge are important, but student entrepreneurs really benefit from the mindset of a successful entrepreneur. That means creating a tolerance for the uncertain. The path to the destination is, almost by definition, seldom crystal clear. It is about taking failure not as a shortcoming but an insight, information as to what doesn’t work. which involves building listening skills to find out what potential customers want and don’t want. And it means building the emotional and intellectual strength to change circumstances. move forward when no one gets it, pivot when your hypothesis is wrong, and hold the line when short-term results seem elusive. And it’s all possible if you practice and you learn to assess your own thought patterns and behaviors.
Smart Money Management from Day One
Financial discipline is one of the most overlooked skills of fledgeling entrepreneurs, especially those students living off a severely limited budget. One of the greatest, and therefore most expensive, traps for young start-ups is the desire to put down branding, join a shared workspace, or purchase some top of the range computer equipment before your business model has been proven. If you do nothing else, learn to operate frugally – spend only where you need to test or improve your central idea, and be frugal in all other areas. Take the time to understand basic financial reporting. Know what a cash flow statement tells you, and the difference between revenue and profit. Keep your accounts in order from the first month. The money discipline and financial awareness you develop as a young entrepreneur will be invaluable throughout your subsequent years in business.
Welcoming failure as a step forward
Each entrepreneur with success had already a list of failures. Products no one buy. Agreements break apart. Concepts, that sounded great, until the market reacted. For the student entrepreneur it is not a thing they must be afraid of, it is something that they must go after. It is always more precious to fall early and to learn how to get up as soon as possible than to build for a long time, an then be confronted with the market reaction. Every mistake, with no compromise, make you understand much better the market, the customer and your own capabilities. A student entrepreneur, which is able to make mistake, get up again and retry without to loose their driving force, it build something more precious than one product – it is character building, the key for successful entrepreneur life.
The Long-Term Vision Behind the Short-Term Grind
The entrepreneurial student doesn’t simply aim to build a thriving business before they have to toss their graduation cap in the air. They aim to build a view of the world in which problems become opportunities, limitations become opportunities to be ingenious, and every mistake (or triumph) can be looked at as having an essential lesson within it. A few student-run ventures are going to become massive corporations; a few will fizzle out, but in the process will teach their founders insights they will desperately need when they jump into their next attempt. A few students won’t end up founding a booming business, but will use their learning and talents in fields far from the startup world, becoming dynamic leaders with the innovative mindset every business needs. Regardless, the student who dedicates themselves to the entrepreneurial journey will walk away from college having gained something that cannot be learned in a classroom.
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