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Starting a business in college - Part 2
By Dan | April 22, 2007
Last week I wrote part 1 of leveraging college resources for your startup. The theme of that post was learning to take initiative at your school. Professors and administrators don’t comb the student rosters to seek out entrepreneurs - you have to be proactive and aggressive in finding the entrepreneurial environment at your college.
The theme of the second part of this series (now renamed to ‘Starting a business in college’) is creating your company. How do you go about creating a company in college?
1. You need to build a team
An obvious need in any venture is a strong team, and you’ll hear that over and over again. But how do you do that in college, when you have no money to pay anyone and no experience to justify anything? First, you need to know what you are looking for in a team. Web engineers? Product Designers? Marketers? Decide that, and then start seeking out people. Talk to other students in the entrepreneurship school. If there is an engineering school nearby, go there. Ask professors for references. Once you connect with the appropriate people, pitch them the idea. Show them a powerpoint of your plan and whatever tangible proof that you have already done some serious legwork on this business concept, such as market research or beta product. Tell them what’s in it for them, be honest if you can’t pay up front, and get things rolling. Be open to their ideas, especially if you are not paying them, since they will need to feel like they are playing a greater role in the company than just ‘doing a job’.
2. Find advisors
Once you have a team assembled, start talking about your company, even before launching or having a test product. Talk to professors and fellow entrepreneurs. Talk. Talk. Talk. Don’t give away any secrets, but generate some buzz. An advisor is any person with business experience who can mentor you, and ideally they have experience in your company’s area. The fact that you have assembled a team means something - because you have convinced other people that your idea is worth their time. Now, finding advisors should be much easier and entrepreneurship professors will either offer their help or introduce you to people that can help. Be open to their introductions, don’t expect anything, and listen to them. Know that they aren’t part of your team or going to do any legwork for you, but they will give you high level advice, guide you through areas that you have no experience with, and introduce you to key business contacts.
3. Get cash
Well, first you should ask yourself - do you need cash? If your team is built around equity share, then you obviously need less cash to pay team members. What is your product? If you’re building a website, you better have an engineer on board the team, or development costs will skyrocket. Assuming that you still need cash for something (and this should be known at the planning stage, before you even get to the team building), there are places to find cash. Some colleges have seed funds that you can apply for. You can also apply to b-plan competitions. Business plan competitions are everywhere, and the prize money can range anywhere up to $100k. There is the SBA loan, which is a small federal grant. Again, your advisors can be very helpful when it comes to issues like this. But don’t expect to hear from any VCs or waste your time trying to track some down while in college. They’ll come to you if you build something worthwhile.
Hopefully these pointers are valuable to any college entrepreneur. Remember that you will need to learn to work for yourself and take initiative. And starting a business is more than just paying someone to build you a website. You need to learn that there are lots of little logistics to take care of, and building something sustainable depends on your ability to assemble a strong team, find smart advisors, and know where to get cash when you need it. Planning is essential, as it helps you to know what you are doing, and shows other people that you know what you are doing.
Topics: Startups, Management |
