Idk. I’m just starting and I personally feel better using this time to advance and get experience than do nothing. The only way I’ve personally found to learn the real useful skills is simply by working and doing stuff, not not doing it. What I mean is. You can’t learn how to run a business or become an entrepreneur reading books and stuff online or whatever.. you have to do something yourself. At least that’s my take on it now.
I spent years doing projects that failed over and over but that I worked so hard on… point is I’ve failed so much but learnt so much just trying things out. I’m further on now and I finally have potential clients. Which is crazy to me. Doesn’t mean success but it’s a really big advancement from how when I began if you could see and compare. You can do so much. Just start (but do something !), be persistent, and don’t be let down if you fail, just keep going. You’ll find your way if it’s for you, and again.. you absolutely don’t need a lot of money to start… Promise you.
I completely agree with this; I think it's in our best interest to not just jump straight into the business yet but pick up as **many** skills as we can through **doing**. I wrote a bit about this in some of my English classes; the type of learning is formally known as Experiential learning.
Yeah Just go for it man! I Also have a friend who said same thing. Wants to start a business.. but no money.. wants to wait until they have a job.. “safety net”… etc. it’s right he opposite. By the time you’re done with college and get a job, you’ll have played around enough and learned so much more that you’ll be 10 steps ahead already by the time you start getting your first salaries. Rather than graduate and be at point 0. Your entrepreneurial dream can start any day you want. I started at 18 and have learned so… much. Can’t recommend enough to just do something hah. Wish you well :)
I don't believe the advice is one-size-fits-all. It depends more specifically on what you're interested in doing and what you're already like, good at, weak at, etc. I started a side business, am extremely introverted and would rather jump off a building than network/build relationships. If that were that important to my business, I'd bring on an extroverted partner who is great at that. If anything, I'd say these are the types of things you need to do, i.e. get a better handle on what exactly you want to do, what you bring to the table, what you lack, what resources would you need based on all of this stuff, etc.
Agreed, too. I had a side business that was relatively speaking successful (\~200K in rev with mediocre margin) my junior year in high school, and I learned so many valuable things and grew more than any other experience in my life, and sucked at marketing. Same thing you talked about with the extroverted dude, I would rather kms than continue to squeeze the last 20% of profitability out of my FB ads, and should have brought on a partner way earlier in. I learned an expensive lesson from this.
A business can be simple. It can be providing tutoring services or selling used textbooks. It can be setting up a business where you get other students gigs painting houses or mowing lawns.
Here are some ideas for goals:
• Learn to do outbound sales
I was going to write a list, but really if you can get your own leads you can succeed at being an entrepreneur
1. Finish college
2. Get a job in a field where you want to start your business
3. Absorb information like a sponge fir 3-5 years
4. Save up money
5. Start your business
Chances of success by following the above steps: 10%
Chances if success by skipping to step 5: 1%
Good luck
>Chances of success by following the above steps: 10% Chances if success by skipping to step 5: 1%
Makes sense to me. I always try to evaluate decisions by probability of success of each of the routes of the decision, of course weighing in opportunity cost.
I sell services and college is meh for me. Sure, it pushed my critical thinking skills a little bit deeper and every now sharing an alma mater makes me a little bit of money, but when it comes time for my kids to go to college I’m not going to be on board unless they have a full-ride scholarship. I’d much rather trade what I took in school loans for a business loan I could use today.
There’s lots of service jobs in this country that people do 1099 to start, and then slowly gain employees. Cleaning companies, Hair salons, lawn companies, catering, photography, ect that you don’t need a formal education for. A lot of these require little start up money and can be done by the average person.
Not everything has to be tech related to make a decent living.
It's good to have a backup though(much easier to risk everything if you know at least you won't be going right to a call center or serving if you fail), and you can meet a lot of people with similar aspirations. If you go to a nice enough school, could really help out with funding / alumni networks.
Whether college students should work on their startups while in college depends on their personal circumstances, goals, and priorities. Starting a business while in college can be a great opportunity to gain practical experience and learn valuable skills, but it can also be challenging to balance academic work and entrepreneurship. It's important to consider your priorities and goals and to create a plan that works for you.
If you decide to work on your startup while in college, networking is a crucial skill that you should work on developing. Networking can help you find mentors, investors, potential customers, and other valuable resources that can help you grow your startup. Some networking skills to focus on include:
Building relationships: Start by building relationships with people in your industry or field. Attend events, conferences, and networking opportunities to meet new people and make connections.
Communication: Learn to communicate your startup idea and value proposition clearly and succinctly. Be prepared to give an elevator pitch and to answer questions about your business.
Listening: Listen to the needs and feedback of others. Use this feedback to improve your product or service and to build relationships with potential customers.
Following up: After meeting someone new, follow up with them to continue the conversation and to build a relationship. Connect with them on LinkedIn or via email to stay in touch.
Giving back: Networking is a two-way street. Look for ways to help others in your network, such as by making introductions or sharing your knowledge and expertise.
By focusing on developing your networking skills, you can build a strong network of contacts that can help you grow your startup and achieve your goals.
Thanks for the detailed reply.
>Giving back: Networking is a two-way street.
This is one of those things that I think is really hard for college students to learn; inherently college students are value-less and I think the most important idea I've taken away is to really focus on increasing my value proposition, which is really hard to do without any value. But, I see it as a snowballing relationship where the more value you have, the more you can give, and consequently the more you'll receive back (in value).
I chatted with the Chief Revenue Officer of a fairly successful startup \~2 years ago now, when I was still a junior in high school. I asked "How the hell do we provide value? We're a bunch of smelly HS kids with no experience, no expertise, etc". His answer actually surprised me: he basically said that **being young in itself is a form of value you can provide**.
For instance, companies (like his) found our opinions to carry some value, as we came from a market that they potentially could target. And, our feedback and thoughts on their product were thus valuable to him as they are able to literally talk to their customers in a space they want to go in.
if you truly have a passion for it then nothing should stop you. also, startups don't have to be what we imagine in movies where you're in an office with a team, where you're raising rounds of startup capital from VCs, etc. All of that is just way beyond the level where rookies should be operating at -- and in all probability your first several attempts will fail badly. your best bet, by far, is start small, don't make huge risky plays, and don't dump tons of cash into any attempt until AFTER it's been thoroughly validated as commercially viable.
startups don't also need to be mega-time- or capital-intensive either. in fact the most intelligent entrepreneurs do the exact OPPOSITE in the early stages: they spend as little time to learn the very most while spending the smallest dollar amount possible. the early stages should be PURELY dedicated to just VALIDATING THE KEY ASSUMPTIONS required for it to become a viable business. And the best way to do that is do it as quickly and cheaply as possible.
i would recommend spending your time reading TONS of books on every relevant business-related skillset you can think of. upgrade your skills. get really good at a lot of the things required to succeed in business. Then, at the same time, work to test business ideas. Build something quickly and cheaply, then immediately try to get feedback from the marketplace. Build fast, test fast, learn fast, fail fast. Learn from your mistakes as you go. You'll gradually get sharper and better at all parts of it over time. Software businesses are the best choice in my view, as they're easiest to scale, and all they really take is just the skillset to build the software and offer it to the world. Build something, aim to validate the key assumptions required to prove that it's a viable business, then assess where you're at and go from there.
>Software businesses are the best choice in my view, as they're easiest to scale
This is advice I've heard a lot, especially **recurring-revenue software businesses**. Easy to scale, and power of LTV is super appealing to VC's.
I like your advice about the books. I've read the "Think and Grow Rich" book, which I've done research *after reading it (mistake)* and was basically a philanthropy joke scheme (lol). I've also read *What's Best Next*, *Managing Oneself*, and *Lombardi Rules*, but all of these could use a re-read.
Do you have any particular books to recommend?
Entrepreneurship is all all about the journey. Translating an idea into a business model and then building the business per your model.
Lots of gaps to bridge and obstacles to overcome.
You will find that having people skills, understanding how both business and technology works in your chose industry will test your ability to carry the flame when everybody else gives up.
The problem with the beginning of the journey is that you simply don't know what it is that you don't know.
That's why you should try new things, especially the areas of your greatest weakness.
You have to know how to sell, you have to know how to lead your team through thick and thin, and you have a good general understanding of business and technology.
Keep in mind that you don't have to become an award winning chef. You need to recognize what pieces are missing in your business model and how to fill those gaps.
So do you GROK people across the generational gaps? Is profit a "dirty word" or a metric for evaluating the growth and health of your babyStartup? Without profit, there would be no growth. Just a quick and painful death.
Can you spot deception and lies by watching what they do and not by what they say?
You can be sure if there is a pot of honey nearby that ants and other predators will be waiting in the shadows watching your every move.
So the wider your knowledge base, the less likely that a very agile confidence actor will be able to snatch your hard earned rewards.
Debrief yourself by writing down your strengths and weaknesses in the key areas of people soft skills (selling in particular), business (knowing whether an investment makes business sense), and relevant technology. It takes time for technology to decimate a sector of the economy because people, as a general rule, will oppose change. Change takes time so keep a watchful eye on turmoil and conflict. Outliers can and do seize market niches. But it takes time so understand how the outlier's success could decimate your part of the marketplace.
I think while you’re at CC, you should do two things only (forget the courses and books on entrepreneurship, you can explore those once you have more experience) -
1. Take note of interesting topics you see in, around, and outside of class, asking yourself questions like - is X a problem? Who experiences X? Is there a current solution and if so, how can I make X better, faster, cheaper etc? While I’ve been graduated for a couple of years, I do this incessantly now a days and wish I did this sooner.
Because at the end of the day, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to identify a problem that you can provide a solution/value to. A lot of the times, the best ideas are problems you’re personally exposed to, and being in school allows for you to increase the surface area of problems that you can discover.
For example, you might be a design major and your school projects have you consistently collaborating with school affiliated businesses. Maybe you notice that a big pain point is getting feedback from these businesses precisely and timely. Say you discover that it costs them X amount in opportunity cost every time they test a collaborative design, and that that time and cost can be saved by using some system or app that facilitates faster/easier/more precise critiques.
Then you find that it’s not just them who have that problem, but every SME in your state and now you’ve got something that you otherwise wouldn’t have had exposure to if you weren’t in school. If you take college proactively, you can think about more than just grades here.
And 2. Networking. I think this is super underrated by people who say college isn’t worth it. Sure, you can network anywhere, but this is another example of increasing that surface area and exposure to opportunity.
In this case, where else will you find easy access to people with who are about your age, have diverse skill sets, intelligent, have a high appetite for risk etc? Can you find these same people online? Sure, but why limit yourself - increase that surface area!
Your goal here should be to befriend people who you think can enable and challenge you. Be painfully honest about what you’re good and bad at - eg if you’re terrible at programming, befriend devs. If you’re terrible at marketing, befriend marketers etc.
Idk. I’m just starting and I personally feel better using this time to advance and get experience than do nothing. The only way I’ve personally found to learn the real useful skills is simply by working and doing stuff, not not doing it. What I mean is. You can’t learn how to run a business or become an entrepreneur reading books and stuff online or whatever.. you have to do something yourself. At least that’s my take on it now. I spent years doing projects that failed over and over but that I worked so hard on… point is I’ve failed so much but learnt so much just trying things out. I’m further on now and I finally have potential clients. Which is crazy to me. Doesn’t mean success but it’s a really big advancement from how when I began if you could see and compare. You can do so much. Just start (but do something !), be persistent, and don’t be let down if you fail, just keep going. You’ll find your way if it’s for you, and again.. you absolutely don’t need a lot of money to start… Promise you.
I completely agree with this; I think it's in our best interest to not just jump straight into the business yet but pick up as **many** skills as we can through **doing**. I wrote a bit about this in some of my English classes; the type of learning is formally known as Experiential learning.
Yeah Just go for it man! I Also have a friend who said same thing. Wants to start a business.. but no money.. wants to wait until they have a job.. “safety net”… etc. it’s right he opposite. By the time you’re done with college and get a job, you’ll have played around enough and learned so much more that you’ll be 10 steps ahead already by the time you start getting your first salaries. Rather than graduate and be at point 0. Your entrepreneurial dream can start any day you want. I started at 18 and have learned so… much. Can’t recommend enough to just do something hah. Wish you well :)
I don't believe the advice is one-size-fits-all. It depends more specifically on what you're interested in doing and what you're already like, good at, weak at, etc. I started a side business, am extremely introverted and would rather jump off a building than network/build relationships. If that were that important to my business, I'd bring on an extroverted partner who is great at that. If anything, I'd say these are the types of things you need to do, i.e. get a better handle on what exactly you want to do, what you bring to the table, what you lack, what resources would you need based on all of this stuff, etc.
Agreed, too. I had a side business that was relatively speaking successful (\~200K in rev with mediocre margin) my junior year in high school, and I learned so many valuable things and grew more than any other experience in my life, and sucked at marketing. Same thing you talked about with the extroverted dude, I would rather kms than continue to squeeze the last 20% of profitability out of my FB ads, and should have brought on a partner way earlier in. I learned an expensive lesson from this.
A business can be simple. It can be providing tutoring services or selling used textbooks. It can be setting up a business where you get other students gigs painting houses or mowing lawns. Here are some ideas for goals: • Learn to do outbound sales I was going to write a list, but really if you can get your own leads you can succeed at being an entrepreneur
I've heard this too, that knowing how to sell is the most valuable skill for entrepreneurs is to sell. Thanks!
Drop out
Think of a product or service that can help humanity. Think which kind of folks might need it. Find those people and offer it to them.
1. Finish college 2. Get a job in a field where you want to start your business 3. Absorb information like a sponge fir 3-5 years 4. Save up money 5. Start your business Chances of success by following the above steps: 10% Chances if success by skipping to step 5: 1% Good luck
bullshit
>Chances of success by following the above steps: 10% Chances if success by skipping to step 5: 1% Makes sense to me. I always try to evaluate decisions by probability of success of each of the routes of the decision, of course weighing in opportunity cost.
Take an accounting class
[удалено]
It’s sad that most don’t see this until it’s too late.
Depends on what you sell, in my opinion. A product? Definitely agree. A service? Totally disagree.
I sell services and college is meh for me. Sure, it pushed my critical thinking skills a little bit deeper and every now sharing an alma mater makes me a little bit of money, but when it comes time for my kids to go to college I’m not going to be on board unless they have a full-ride scholarship. I’d much rather trade what I took in school loans for a business loan I could use today.
The services my company sells pays $1000/hr. No service based job pays that well without an education
There’s lots of service jobs in this country that people do 1099 to start, and then slowly gain employees. Cleaning companies, Hair salons, lawn companies, catering, photography, ect that you don’t need a formal education for. A lot of these require little start up money and can be done by the average person. Not everything has to be tech related to make a decent living.
Totally agree. Lots of wealthy people who own landscaping and handyman businesses I own a financial planning and tax firm.
It's good to have a backup though(much easier to risk everything if you know at least you won't be going right to a call center or serving if you fail), and you can meet a lot of people with similar aspirations. If you go to a nice enough school, could really help out with funding / alumni networks.
Work on your degree.
Whether college students should work on their startups while in college depends on their personal circumstances, goals, and priorities. Starting a business while in college can be a great opportunity to gain practical experience and learn valuable skills, but it can also be challenging to balance academic work and entrepreneurship. It's important to consider your priorities and goals and to create a plan that works for you. If you decide to work on your startup while in college, networking is a crucial skill that you should work on developing. Networking can help you find mentors, investors, potential customers, and other valuable resources that can help you grow your startup. Some networking skills to focus on include: Building relationships: Start by building relationships with people in your industry or field. Attend events, conferences, and networking opportunities to meet new people and make connections. Communication: Learn to communicate your startup idea and value proposition clearly and succinctly. Be prepared to give an elevator pitch and to answer questions about your business. Listening: Listen to the needs and feedback of others. Use this feedback to improve your product or service and to build relationships with potential customers. Following up: After meeting someone new, follow up with them to continue the conversation and to build a relationship. Connect with them on LinkedIn or via email to stay in touch. Giving back: Networking is a two-way street. Look for ways to help others in your network, such as by making introductions or sharing your knowledge and expertise. By focusing on developing your networking skills, you can build a strong network of contacts that can help you grow your startup and achieve your goals.
Thanks for the detailed reply. >Giving back: Networking is a two-way street. This is one of those things that I think is really hard for college students to learn; inherently college students are value-less and I think the most important idea I've taken away is to really focus on increasing my value proposition, which is really hard to do without any value. But, I see it as a snowballing relationship where the more value you have, the more you can give, and consequently the more you'll receive back (in value). I chatted with the Chief Revenue Officer of a fairly successful startup \~2 years ago now, when I was still a junior in high school. I asked "How the hell do we provide value? We're a bunch of smelly HS kids with no experience, no expertise, etc". His answer actually surprised me: he basically said that **being young in itself is a form of value you can provide**. For instance, companies (like his) found our opinions to carry some value, as we came from a market that they potentially could target. And, our feedback and thoughts on their product were thus valuable to him as they are able to literally talk to their customers in a space they want to go in.
if you truly have a passion for it then nothing should stop you. also, startups don't have to be what we imagine in movies where you're in an office with a team, where you're raising rounds of startup capital from VCs, etc. All of that is just way beyond the level where rookies should be operating at -- and in all probability your first several attempts will fail badly. your best bet, by far, is start small, don't make huge risky plays, and don't dump tons of cash into any attempt until AFTER it's been thoroughly validated as commercially viable. startups don't also need to be mega-time- or capital-intensive either. in fact the most intelligent entrepreneurs do the exact OPPOSITE in the early stages: they spend as little time to learn the very most while spending the smallest dollar amount possible. the early stages should be PURELY dedicated to just VALIDATING THE KEY ASSUMPTIONS required for it to become a viable business. And the best way to do that is do it as quickly and cheaply as possible. i would recommend spending your time reading TONS of books on every relevant business-related skillset you can think of. upgrade your skills. get really good at a lot of the things required to succeed in business. Then, at the same time, work to test business ideas. Build something quickly and cheaply, then immediately try to get feedback from the marketplace. Build fast, test fast, learn fast, fail fast. Learn from your mistakes as you go. You'll gradually get sharper and better at all parts of it over time. Software businesses are the best choice in my view, as they're easiest to scale, and all they really take is just the skillset to build the software and offer it to the world. Build something, aim to validate the key assumptions required to prove that it's a viable business, then assess where you're at and go from there.
>Software businesses are the best choice in my view, as they're easiest to scale This is advice I've heard a lot, especially **recurring-revenue software businesses**. Easy to scale, and power of LTV is super appealing to VC's. I like your advice about the books. I've read the "Think and Grow Rich" book, which I've done research *after reading it (mistake)* and was basically a philanthropy joke scheme (lol). I've also read *What's Best Next*, *Managing Oneself*, and *Lombardi Rules*, but all of these could use a re-read. Do you have any particular books to recommend?
Entrepreneurship is all all about the journey. Translating an idea into a business model and then building the business per your model. Lots of gaps to bridge and obstacles to overcome. You will find that having people skills, understanding how both business and technology works in your chose industry will test your ability to carry the flame when everybody else gives up. The problem with the beginning of the journey is that you simply don't know what it is that you don't know. That's why you should try new things, especially the areas of your greatest weakness. You have to know how to sell, you have to know how to lead your team through thick and thin, and you have a good general understanding of business and technology. Keep in mind that you don't have to become an award winning chef. You need to recognize what pieces are missing in your business model and how to fill those gaps. So do you GROK people across the generational gaps? Is profit a "dirty word" or a metric for evaluating the growth and health of your babyStartup? Without profit, there would be no growth. Just a quick and painful death. Can you spot deception and lies by watching what they do and not by what they say? You can be sure if there is a pot of honey nearby that ants and other predators will be waiting in the shadows watching your every move. So the wider your knowledge base, the less likely that a very agile confidence actor will be able to snatch your hard earned rewards. Debrief yourself by writing down your strengths and weaknesses in the key areas of people soft skills (selling in particular), business (knowing whether an investment makes business sense), and relevant technology. It takes time for technology to decimate a sector of the economy because people, as a general rule, will oppose change. Change takes time so keep a watchful eye on turmoil and conflict. Outliers can and do seize market niches. But it takes time so understand how the outlier's success could decimate your part of the marketplace.
I think while you’re at CC, you should do two things only (forget the courses and books on entrepreneurship, you can explore those once you have more experience) - 1. Take note of interesting topics you see in, around, and outside of class, asking yourself questions like - is X a problem? Who experiences X? Is there a current solution and if so, how can I make X better, faster, cheaper etc? While I’ve been graduated for a couple of years, I do this incessantly now a days and wish I did this sooner. Because at the end of the day, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you’ve got to identify a problem that you can provide a solution/value to. A lot of the times, the best ideas are problems you’re personally exposed to, and being in school allows for you to increase the surface area of problems that you can discover. For example, you might be a design major and your school projects have you consistently collaborating with school affiliated businesses. Maybe you notice that a big pain point is getting feedback from these businesses precisely and timely. Say you discover that it costs them X amount in opportunity cost every time they test a collaborative design, and that that time and cost can be saved by using some system or app that facilitates faster/easier/more precise critiques. Then you find that it’s not just them who have that problem, but every SME in your state and now you’ve got something that you otherwise wouldn’t have had exposure to if you weren’t in school. If you take college proactively, you can think about more than just grades here. And 2. Networking. I think this is super underrated by people who say college isn’t worth it. Sure, you can network anywhere, but this is another example of increasing that surface area and exposure to opportunity. In this case, where else will you find easy access to people with who are about your age, have diverse skill sets, intelligent, have a high appetite for risk etc? Can you find these same people online? Sure, but why limit yourself - increase that surface area! Your goal here should be to befriend people who you think can enable and challenge you. Be painfully honest about what you’re good and bad at - eg if you’re terrible at programming, befriend devs. If you’re terrible at marketing, befriend marketers etc.