The most common email I receive is usually from someone in college or fresh out of college interested in doing something “entrepreneurial.” I wrote the following post as an exercise in idea generation regarding entry points to entrepreneurship. It is by no means an end-all be-all list, and certainly doesn’t make you an entrepreneur. It’s simply a place to get started, which is often the hardest part.
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The standard four-year college plan and budding entrepreneurial skill set have always had a complicated relationship. While some entrepreneurs skip or drop out of college to start a venture, other academic institutions have taken the opportunity to teach entrepreneurial coursework. Starting a venture without a college education in entrepreneurship is feasible, as most factors in the startup process are serendipitous.
However, a college education isn’t to be dismissed: it can provide a four-year experimentation platform with less risk than the real-world to test ideas in an intelligent feedback mechanism. College can act as a a clear path to the beginning of an entrepreneurial skill set upon graduation. While starting a business may not be realistic for a college student, he or she can still take on various projects, using the four years of college as a practice round. Here are some ideas to get started with:
Create a major:
Students are ignorant to the amount of control they have over coursework. While certain foundational courses are required by the university, in my experience there has been a buffer of flexibility regarding the courses a student takes and how the credits are earned. With the right combination of courses, students can essentially create their own major. Although my major was labeled “finance,” a large batch of credits I received came from starting my business and working the right faculty and departments to document and vouch for my progress. Plus, figuring out loopholes in the university and exploiting them to your advantage is an experience relevant to being an entrepreneur in itself.
Throw an event:
Affiliating yourself with the relevant social circle can be beneficial in learning and practicing entrepreneurship. Organizing an event or conference with a group of entrepreneurs from a specific industry can be helpful in identifying the local community for that industry at your university. As an event organizer, not only will you have a chance to interact with the majority of attendees, but you’ll be viewed as a connector between them.
Work for a startup:
A hurdle small companies face is executing with limited resources, including people, time and money. Most early stage businesses would be thrilled for a competent assistant to help with business development, marketing, or, if you have the skill set, engineering. The issue with hiring interns, even remote interns, is gauging that an investment of time by the company will be less than the amount of time and / or wealth created by the presence of the intern. This is important to reference for your inquiry.
Find the engineers:
Engineers are the guts to the web presence of any company. Websites and business applications often go wrong for two reasons: 1) the initial idea was lousy to begin with, and the most common, 2) the idea wasn’t properly communicated to the engineers. The easiest way to communicate with engineers is to learn their language. Find them, hang out, collaborate and possibly sit in on a class or two to learn programming methodologies. You will meet again.
Take random classes:
Entrepreneurs are versatile individuals eager to learn new ideas and concepts to prepare for future endeavors. Starting any project, either on your own or internal to another company, requires knowledge outside of industry. This includes, for example, legal, writing, public speaking and marketing. College is an ideal setting for learning skill sets outside of your major. It only requires you to attend a class that isn’t yours. If the class is large enough, or if the professor doesn’t mind, it’s wise to take advantage of.
Teach a course:
Information acquisition, with the intent to know more than your competitors, is a skill set of an entrepreneur. Teaching a course, specifically a subject matter related to your industry of choice, can be a practice round for educating your future organization and stakeholders. It not only requires you to become a semi-expert on a specific topic, but it forces you to disperse information to a collection of peers who will be graded on their understanding. This is most easily done as a teaching assistant, but could also be organized independently if you can find a group of peers who are diligent to show up to your class every week.
Infiltrate the MBA program:
Most schools with MBA programs, and even some select undergraduate programs, offer an early stage venture capital course. In my experience, these courses simulate a portion of the fundraising due diligence process between entrepreneurs and investors. The startups trade their time for the opportunity be researched by the students with the assistance of a professor with a background in venture capital. In my specific case, I was able to compete with other startups in the course for a potential seed round of funding at the end.
Leverage your professors:
The professors worth taking, if you have the luxury of choosing, are the ones who are veterans of industry. Meaning, professors who have at one point in their career taken the painful path of entrepreneurship and can provide mentorship while you are at the university or enrolled in their course. I’d recommend seeking them and using them as a resource in and outside of the classroom. They’ll be willing to provide support, because at one point, someone did the same for them.
Write for your newspaper:
Part of the entrepreneurial process can involve becoming a thought leader locally. Most college newspapers have a small business section that covers local businesses. College newspapers are enthusiastic to publish stories about their students, and most students like reading about their peers. Contributing to your college paper’s business column is a great incentive to learn about local entrepreneurs while contributing to the university community.
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Entrepreneurship isn’t a choice. It’s a set of skills every student of life needs to be equipped with. And, these skills will only improve with maturity, practice and discipline. The activities I described above can act as entrepreneurial entry points for a career, but don’t necessarily transform you into an entrepreneur. Remember: there is no blueprint. All things considered, there’s no better way to learn entrepreneurship than to start a company. If you don’t need the practice, why not start as a student?
Entrepreneurs are the backbone of industry. They are the risk takers willing to bet their “jobs” on what they believe in. Entrepreneurs leverage limited resources to solve big problems. With the current state of unemployment, there aren’t jobs waiting for students upon graduation. Students may have to create their own jobs, simply because they have no other choice.
Entrepreneurs don’t just talk about starting things; they take action. The beauty of acquiring an entrepreneurial skill set is that it’s beneficial regardless of your field and interest. The above suggestions are meant to be interpretative while displaying the practicality of starting anything. You don’t have to be running a startup to be an entrepreneur; you just need to leading something.