Ask HN: What advice would you give college students about starting a business?
So I have been given the opportunity to speak at the university I graduated from (Portland State University) about my experience starting Mugasha while I was an undergrad.
I thought I would get some of your thoughts on starting a business.
Here are few questions I plan on talking about.
- Why start your own business? Why start early?
- How to be a domain expert?
- How do you know if you have the right Idea?
- Why it will be the hardest thing you will ever do?
- How do you bootstrap?
- How do you find investors?
54 comments
[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] thread(or in other words, "Just start building something")
I start because I have an undeniable urge. I start early (now) because I want to be able to harness this urge while it's still here, and while the opportunity still exists.
> How do you know if you have the right Idea?
Test your idea by getting it out asap. That's the only way. Anything else would just be guessing.
> Why it will be the hardest thing you will ever do?
Maybe not giving up?
Instead, build something that can raise profits immediately, and start building from there. That will help to keep you focused on what your revenue stream can support- Borrowed money allows you to have unrealistic ideas, and overspend too quickly.
Additionally, do talk to a potential long-term partners about the entrepreneur lifestyle (and not having a high-paying job for a few years), do read as many blogs and books on entrepreneurship as you can (you won't have time once you actually start a company), do go out of your way to meet as many people as possible, and stay in touch with the smart ones.
Also, TAKE PROGRAMMING CLASSES.
Another one is the importance dedication and hard work. I have friends who've dropped out to start businesses. They work harder and longer hours than my friends who stayed in school (myself included).
A lot of times people have an idea in their head of 'this is what a "business" is'. Showcasing the alternative styles of business might bring more students to realize that starting a business can fit their goals even better than they imagined.
Also tell them that the hardest part no one talks about is how starting a company means you are the boss and how you need to plan stuff everyday and get it done. Also, its not the amount of work they get done but the results they get and how driven they are to get those results that matter in the end.
Finish that college and forget about that startup, assuming you're in a halfway decent college and a somewhat useful discipline.
I know you've been asked to speak about your experience, but keep in mind you've been asked because of your success, and the road behind you is littered by the corpses of those that didn't make it.
Starting a business, while in college, or out of it, is in large part luck if it is successful. By talking to people about what you've achieved you may give them the impression that this is easier than it looks, so stress the amount of luck that went in to it, to make sure they can weigh the odds accordingly.
Starting early or late isn't really much of a decision, the longer you wait the more knowledge you have, so the bigger the chance that you will succeed the first time, but by then the people that started earlier will have failed once already and will have learned from that as well. It works out about even.
Being a 'domain expert' is limiting your business to something very small right away, better to be general and to know how to procure the services of domain experts!
You know you have a 'right idea' when it starts moving under its own power, instead of you having to push it.
Finding investors is for a very lucky few, better concentrate on realistic scenarios for bootstrapping.
Possible additions to your list:
- the value of networking
- keep your fixed costs DOWN! (even today I still do this)
- make a nest egg as soon as you can afford it
- live healthy, running a startup is like top sport
You are not as experienced as you think you are.
I wish someone I respected had told me this when I was a college student. In college, I thought I was super-awesome. I thought I was already a leader. I thought I was qualified to manage a 100-person company. I thought I didn't have much else to learn; I just wanted to start a company so I could grow it and sell it and make a ton of money like everyone else.
Now I know that I am merely above-average and lucky. I know that for every problem I face, there is someone more experienced than I who has already solved that problem, thrice-over, and wants to help me. If I had known this 10 years ago, I think I would have sought out a lot more advice, been much more receptive to criticism, and been a better entrepreneur.
Note: obviously this is 100% personal and anecdotal. I may have been the only a-hole in college who needed to hear that message, so YMMV.
-Use the resources available to you as a result of your undergrad status. Free multi-thousand dollar industry reports, free legal advice from law experts/professors, free tech advice from tech departments, etc -On-campus tech transfer offices offer further advantages
2. Aim high
- do it full-time or on the side?
- what kind of advice should I not listen to?
- My skills are programming and designing, what kind of stuff should I learn?
- do I really need to move to a technology-rich country? (For the effects of your talk, maybe you should change country for city.)
- how do you get customers and do sales if you are an introvert geek?
- what to look for in a cofounder?
Lousy sales and marketing applied to great stuff -> DEC, SGI and plenty of others, now defunct.
The technology is but a very small part of all of this.
Have a look at this guy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCUct4NlxE0
There's a lifetime of experience in there, not quite 'cold calling' but he's got amazing talent.
- the crowd that he draws in on a potato peeler
- his continuous performance, not a gap in it, he never loses the attention of the crowd
- his salesmanship, indeed, selling a bunch where he should only be selling one, and a few more little instances like that
- the fact that the guy made an absolute fortune selling a $5 product to passers by
- the fact that in spite of being a street salesman his presentation is impeccable
- the fact that you can look at it and it looks so ordinary :) Now try it for yourself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Ades
What's worth doing is worth doing well, consider your college education over and done with when you start down this path. A startup is time consuming, the first year is the hardest, it takes usually about three years to become established, though of course that changes from case to case.
> what kind of advice should I not listen to?
You should weigh every advice you get (including this!), as to applicability, sanity and whether it chimes in with your gut feelings or not.
> My skills are programming and designing, what kind of stuff should I learn?
If your skills are programming and designing you want to become very good at dealing with people. That's probably more important than either of the other two.
> do I really need to move to a technology-rich country?
No, you don't need to move to a technology rich country, but it helps if you intend to fish in a larger pool of talent, and it may make it easier to divest. Plenty of people have done this from 'non technology rich' countries, there are challenges and advantages there.
> how do you get customers and do sales if you are an introvert geek?
Better change that or you will not be doing well. That's the number one challenge you face I think.
> what to look for in a cofounder?
Trustworthiness, dependability and adaptability.
You can't change introversion, because it's not an externally-visible face you "put on," but rather part of your utility function: extroverts (re)gain energy from social interactions, and spend energy working in solitude, and vice-versa for introverts. You can't change what tires you out, although you can fake not being tired.
You can overcome some of it, but not all of it, your mileage will definitely vary on that one, but almost everybody can shift their attitude, even if only a bit, and usually more than that.
Read 'darkxahnthos' blog on this: http://socialskydivingwithjustin.posterous.com/
Giving up before you've started is a great way not to succeed at anything.
But in generally programmer-y terms: I don't think it matters what you've got on running the inside, as long as you can manage to conform to the right protocols :)
I figure that at heart I'm an introvert, I'm just very good at masking it :)
And over time it got better, I no longer have a problem approaching total strangers and starting a conversation, it became something of a sport. And that kind of ability is priceless in a sales situation, as long as it is genuine.
You can be yourself just fine, it's just that if you appear unapproachable or if you can't approach others that your chances of success as an independent take an instant nosedive. So you man up and overcome your limitations, you try to do your best and in time you'll look back at that 'introverted geek' that you used to be and you wonder what happened to him or her.
It doesn't mean you're going to 'turn yourself in to an extrovert', it simply means that in order to succeed you will have to behave more or less as predicted, protocol as you call it. And that such protocol has a lot in common with extrovert behaviour is unfortunate, but that doesn't mean that you are changing your base character.
I also think that there is way too much emphasis on being 'introvert or extrovert', I hardly ever come across people that fit the stereotypes well enough that the label alone is sufficient to predict their response in every situation.
This is a very serious problem indeed. Please read http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1209303
1. You know you want to be an entrepreneur when you don't feel right doing anything else. This life is too short to spend it doing something you hate.
2. Be Flexible. Be passionate. But don't let your passion get in the way of your flexibility. We're all attached to our ideas. But sometimes you have to be open to the possibility that no one wants what you want them to want.
3. (this is the single most important piece of advise I could give anyone, no matter what they decide they want to do with their life) Learn how to tell a story. If you can become a great storyteller, you can succeed in whatever it is you decide to do with your life.
- You are the one in charge, you have to make stuff happen
- You have to figure out where money is going to come from and how to make it last (if you don't have a legitimate budget sheet you're doing it wrong)
- You have to think about recruitment and retention of members (hard when payment is not an option)
- You have to manage and motivate people
- You have to set goals, develop a vision, and convey that to your members
- You have to find organizations who can help you, and learn how to form mutually beneficial partnerships
- You face hard times and good times, but have to keep going regardless
- You learn your strengths and weaknesses as a leader (good for knowing what to look for in a co-founder)
- If you are really passionate about what you're doing, you'll learn what it's like to really devote yourself to an organization
- Somewhat trivially, you'll need to learn how to handle lots of emails, personal contacts, and competing time commitments.
The nice thing is that the cost of failure is pretty much 0 in a student organization. If it doesn't work, no one will really care that much. But if it does, you've made a mark on your university and probably learned a lot in the process.
Saying that doing a student organisation is a nice thing because it's cost of failure is 0, is not a very good logic.
In fact, it is the risk factor that mostly forces us to go above and beyond when everyone else is giving up. Persistence is the key, and a good way of achieving that could having limited high risk, so that you don't quit during tough times.
Sooner or later, there comes a point, when you have to make a lot of tough decisions, which mostly comes down to giving up versus fighting and finding your way out somehow.
Oh, and I totally agree that you probably should try and keep your actual money investment close to 0, and maximise your time investment. But, I also think you can build a business with minimum money involved, and by that I mean less than 500 bucks.
I am assuming a tech startup, where the main investment required is your time and code, and you can at least get a "proof of concept" working...which can be used to raise money and/or make sure it is the right idea.
Last, but not the least, if you know you are going to do a startup, or are at least curious if you can do it, you owe it to yourself to see it through. To go ahead and build it, or at least fail trying to build it.
The biggest upside to this startegy is that you only "learn" doing a student organisation. Whereas you actually succeed building a startup.
I don't intend to be rude, but this kind of sounds like you want to do a college degree right after high school, and you are confused, and you decide to go do a assosciate degree or something, to get the "feel" of a real college degree.
I repeat. THEY ARE NOT THE SAME THING.
I understand what you're getting at -- they are not the same thing. But I do think that some of the leadership aspects are similar, insofar as starting any organization (student, startup, community, or otherwise) requires certain common skills. If you can't/don't want to drop your studies to go do your Startup, then this might be a means to exercise a similar skill (sub)set in the meantime.
I'm still in college though so I can't tell you how beneficial these skills will be when I either startup or enter the workforce.
A former college entrepreneur myself, it was easy in the early stages to ignore "feelings" that our founding team didn't mesh well, but as the company grew in size and responsibility, those initial feelings became show stoppers.
- Don't spend too much time planning; think through some basics, then build a prototype, and launch it. From then on it's all about listening to your users and iterating. I think this is tough for college students, who are used to overanalyzing things, and not used to just doing things.
- Don't waste away your college years over a start-up. It's great to start a company in school. But college is a one-shot opportunity. Don't forget that.
1) Have a full-time job and do the startup on the side until you're simply not able to anymore.
2) Read, read, read about modern successes and failures. Studying management of the 80s doesn't make you a good manager - it makes you a historian. Find people you look up to, and learn what you don't want to do.
3) Don't make a copy of something until you've tried to fix what you don't like of the original.
Success takes practice. The sooner you start, the more likely you will be to end up successful in the end. I started my first .com while I was still in college. Start it because it's a learning experience. It's a way to test yourself against a larger pool of competitors. It'll make you stronger and better able to empathize with future bosses if you don't succeed right away. It'll help you be a better person, more persuasive and help you understand the world better.
- How to be a domain expert?
Do it for 10,000 hours according to Gladwell.
- How do you know if you have the right Idea?
The market pays you money for it.
- Why it will be the hardest thing you will ever do?
It's not the hardest thing you'll ever do. Not by a long shot. Well, it may be. It's not the hardest thing I've ever done. But maybe I'm not working hard enough. Really it's about finding balance in your life and being happy. Setting your own path. Finding your own success and reaping more of what you sow.
- How do you bootstrap?
Get a good job for a couple years. It'll give you valuable experience and maybe help you find your right idea. Save EVERY penny you can. Get a cheap car or better yet take public transit. Live close to work and walk. Get a cheap apartment. Cook at home. Take your lunch to work. Save up 2 years of living experiences. Then quit and move back home. Code in your basement.
Do consulting on the side. Pick up projects from the internet. Work with friends. Tell everyone you know that you are trying to do something great and they'll give you work or help you find it or refer you. People will admire you for trying your hardest and trying to achieve something on your own. They'll live vicariously through your success and feel good for helping you create it.
- How do you find investors?
Network. Build a good product and they'll find you. You'll start getting calls from VCs. When that happens contact the ones you want. Try thefunded.com for an introduction. Look for angel lists. There's one floating around here.
Don't start looking for VC until you are 18 months into your 2 year runway. That'll give you 6 months. If it doesn't work, you still have something that may be generating some side money for you if you are not making enough money to live -- that's where you want to strive to get. Don't expect to make millions, you'll be discouraged. If you do, great! But don't set your pass/fail lines at the same level of the startups you read about on TC or here.
General advice:
It will take way longer than you imagine. A large part of success is proving your commitment to a great idea to the world by dedicating your life to it. Don't spend money on PR firms, corporations, big contracts, or to demo your product. Get incorporated when you get a customer. Don't spend a lot, go to legalzoom or fill out the paperwork on your own.
Don't be burdened by all the legal stuff. You can get your ducks in a row if a big deal comes along or investors want a piece. Worrying about the hurdles will only slow you down.
Use cloud computing providers. Don't buy servers and infrastructure. Host for as cheap as you can, then move if you or your users feel sluggish responses from your app.