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Entrepreneurship in college: gaining the skills required

Often when reading about successful entrepreneurs you hear about how many times they failed before they achieved success. Throughout the years I’ve always been interested in start-ups and have formed a few ideas for companies myself, however, I’ve always been too apprehensive about putting a plan into action because of the steep learning curve involved. I come from a background in maths and problem solving (Actuarial student) with little knowledge in business, business law etc.

My question is how a undergraduate (specifically an undergraduate not studying business) with limited available funds can set themselves up for success? I realise that some of these skills will be delegated if the business grows, but starting off, what skills would I need? What resources exist out there to learn these skills required to set up and run a functioning business in the early years? (To any successful entrepreneurs out there) What were the things you wish you knew before you started?

In the interest of clarity, my business ideas revolve around software solutions, technology and one general salable product. I have the ability/contacts to make these things possible, I just need the business side skills.

I guess this post is the first step of kicking my ass in gear and getting my entrepreneurial hat on. I plan to become a keen member of this community and I’m sure I’ll have many questions in the future.

Thanks for any input in advance!

Answer 10942

Entrepreneurship is not something teachable. It is something you master with experience.

You have to believe in yourself and never give up.

That’s how I did it. Just start executing your idea. You will learn a lot on your way to success.

I recommend you follow from my experience:

PS: you’ll learn lot of business skills when you start. Just focus on your goals and work hard to achieve what you want.

Good luck.

Answer 11025

The best solution here is to find a co-founder with complimentary skills - you build the product, your partner can do the business part. Life is too short to learn all the necessary skills to build a successful startup on your own.

You can also join a startup accelerator for early-stage entrepreneurs. Usually they provide a structured curriculum of sessions with mentors - experienced entrepreneurs. This will also help you grow your network, grow a team and succeed.

I can recommend The Founder Institute: www.fi.co

Answer 11047

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I Learned this from successful and unsuccessful companies & their CEOs and it took me years to to understand this.

I believe there are very specific way for you to work on this dream.. Let me walk you through few of my understandings in biz space:

1) Here is how most of the people go about business idea: They wanted to build next billion Dollar biz-> then they got an idea (There are many ways for this) -> Then they do some research,talk with friends, get some advice from so called experts, write a business plan -> then they start building/coding that idea-> they complete first version of the product and then they launch it...-> Whoaaaa, Where are all those millions of customers???? -> And this is how the success rate of tech businesses is less than 0.1%.

The problem here is you are approaching a business as idea->solution->customers Here is how you should approach it: problem->talked with 50+ customers -> Problem validated -> build small or part of Solution (Called MVP) -> validate solution by talking/interacting with real customers -> and then iterate.

There is a wonderful saying by Travis (Uber CEO) which precisely talk about how the day of entrepreneur looks like OR how s/he should approach a day/biz:

I wake up in the morning with a list of problems and I go solve them. And because of this work culture, even though we are 6,000 employees today, it feels the same as when we were six. -Travis Kalanick (Uber's problem solver-inchief)

So notice that the focus is not to earn $ 1 + Billion but focus is solving the problem and then every thing else follows..

Its like a football player focus on how to win a game and then he will inevitably get millions of dollars of ad contracts...

2) Don't rush straight into start building the game or any piece of software/hardware. Today's main issue is not what product/service should we build or provide but the more important questions is whether we should build the product on the idea we have or NOT? There are hell lot more app, games coders are building without ever talking to real customer..

3) There are some specific detailed steps that will take me a lots of time to type.. But in short start with "problem" and not idea...

Let me know if I can be of any help.

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