To Be the Genius, You Have to Risk Being The Fool
A Guide to Navigating University for
Student Entrepreneurs — Part 2
A revolution in entrepreneurship is underway. A student, armed with a MacBook, an internet connection and a great idea can create a company that reaches people around the globe, with just $5000 dollars or less.
For entrepreneurially-minded students at high school or university, your ambitions of bringing this idea to life will more often than not be met with indifference, even dismissiveness, from the usual career advice sources.
In my opinion, the career advice you’ll receive; study what you like, graduate, apply for graduate job at a consulting, finance or other established company and head into a career path that probably won’t exist in five years time — is outdated and wrong.
Entrepreneurship is a valid path for you as a student. So how can you navigate university to help your entrepreneurial career?
“Do everything before you are ready. Because you’ll never be completely ready for anything, and if you are, you’re too late.”
This guide is designed to give you a few tips on how to navigate your time at university, take advantage of this revolution and kick-start your entrepreneurial career.
“Do everything before you are ready. Because you’ll never be completely ready for anything, and if you are, you’re too late.”
Jodie Fox, Co-Founder at Shoes of Prey–Created the first online platform to allow women to design custom shoe ware
Thanks to everyone that read, shared and contacted me about part 1 of this guide. Subscribe over email.
To Be the Genius, You Have to Risk Being The Fool
The biggest impact is made where an entrepreneur realises the opportunity before anyone else does. To be that genius, you have to take risk, lots of it, and in various forms. This often means the entrepreneur does something before they’re ready. While this may seem easy advice to follow, the amount of risk you take, and at what time in your life, is crucial to understanding the mindset of successful entrepreneurs. As Jodie Fox of Shoes of Prey observed, waiting to be ready will often mean you’re too late.
The matrix below represents the perception of an entrepreneur and the level of risk they’re willing to take to be right or wrong in their idea.
Bill Barnett, a leading organisational theorist observes, “If you are wrong, would you rather be consensus or non-consensus? No doubt: If I am wrong, I just don’t want to be alone. Because if we are all wrong, who can blame me? Whereas if I’m wrong and alone, now I am a fool. Everyone said I was wrong, but I stayed with my idea anyway, and sure enough I am wrong. What a fool! Like Don Quixote, I did it my way.”
The ‘genius’ is the team that can execute on a idea that doesn’t seem obvious to anyone. But you risk becoming “the fool” if you’re wrong.
The ‘safest’ option is doing something that everyone thinks is the right thing to do — while this isn’t necessarily a bad thing in itself, you’ll probably never truly succeed in making as big an impact as taking a path considered to be riskier. The aggregate of everyone doing the ‘safest’ (or obvious) option, chips away at potential successes gained by one person or organisation.
Taking the safe strategy does’t seem like a bad thing on the surface, lots of people do it everyday, but as an entrepreneur (and an investor) you can not expect to see anything great come out of this strategy. Which to me is ultimately failure.
I want to see more student entrepreneurs become the genius, but to do that you have to learn to take the risk, realise you’ll never be fully ready and get comfortable with idea of being the fool.
Learn From the Best
While many universities now enforce placements in industry, an internship with a leading startup or fast-growing company in an area you’re interested in is far more valuable exposure for you as an entrepreneur.
Learning from the best is something you should always strive for during your career. And getting a worthwhile internship is better than getting a placement in a company you don’t care about.
I was lucky enough to get internships with a few startups in Sydney during university. My first one was with Atlassian — Today, one of the world’s leading software technology companies. Comparing Atlassian at the time with other companies in Sydney was like comparing night and day.
Atlassian was a fun work environment, globally connected (most of their customers were from around the world), and they employed great people.
I then tried my hand at Deloitte Online, a tech consultancy group within Deloitte Australia. It had a great team, some of the best, but the type of clients they deal with, the pace and team were vastly different to a growing technology company like Atlassian.
Working for a leading professional services brand, like Deloitte, was a great learning experience but ultimately wasn’t for me.
My recommendation is to research companies that interest you. Once you find a company that interests you look for alternative ways to get inside.
For Atlassian I organised a tour for the IT Society and just happen to sit down next to the CEO for lunch (who then offered to look at me for a position). For Deloitte I helped their recruiters on campus with an event who then referred me on the hiring team for an interview.
And if that all seems to hard, just email or use LinkedIn to message the person or team that interests you and ask if you can buy them a coffee to find out more about their business.
The total available opportunities rarely exist on jobs website and forming a relationship, even if only rudimentary, is better than just applying for a job you don’t care about. A quality company and leader will make time for an ambitious young person that goes out of their way to get in touch and shows interest in what they’re doing.
Timing is strategic
Try and schedule internships in companies that interest you during your holiday periods, as you can go full time and work hard over a short period without having it impact your studies.
It’s much harder for a startup to cater for you if they have only a few working hours during the week, so working over your semester break is far more ideal when starting out.
Treating entrepreneurship as a career is how I believe students should view this; working with a startup, doing your own or working for a reputable growing company should help progress your entrepreneurial career.
An internship with a leading startup or growth-company in an area you’re interested in is far more valuable exposure for you as an entrepreneur.
Do a Startup When You Finish University
There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur and if you can see an opportunity a good time to try is when you’re young. As David Rohrsheim, General Manager at Uber Australia, recommends — choosing “a problem that you truly care about it” is crucial. “You will need that passion to get your venture through the tough times.”
This may be the opposite to what your parents will say. Logically, getting a job, working for a few years in an established company, and then setting off on your own path seems quite reasonable.
But consider this; If startups are not smaller versions of large companies what will being in a small team in a large company actually teach you about doing a startup? Will it help you take more risks or make you more risk adverse? Or teach you multiple skills across marketing, engineering, talking to customers, selling and raising money from investors?
Furthermore; if the average lifespan of a successful company is 15 years (longer than the average marriage!) and it takes at least 1 to 2 years to start to seeing results from your startup should you delay starting?
So, lets assume it will be your second venture that starts to succeed then you could be looking at anywhere from 2 to 4 years of dedication to see any interesting results.
Is this kind of dedication, with little pay, possible with a huge mortgage you have to pay off? Or children or other responsibilities you acquire as you get older? Of course it is, but it makes everything harder and your ability to take greater risk diminishes.
Sure, I accept there are lots of useful things you can learn from big business experience but in the end the 0 to 1 phase is very different from everything else.
Great entrepreneurs are always repeat entrepreneurs — they persist on multiple iterations of an idea to try and get something to work. And you really don’t want to be wasting your time on a job that isn't helping you on this journey.
“Choose a problem that you truly care about it — you will need that passion to get your venture through the tough times.”
David Rohrsheim, General Manager at Uber — Disrupting the transport industry through their ride-sharing mobile app.
“Choose a problem that you truly care about it — you will need that passion to get your venture through the tough times.”
First Time Founders: Mindset Change
Students that do a startup at university can mostly be classified as First Time Founders, in that they are ‘founding’ their first business venture. I believe they are the most important type of entrepreneur as how they are supported from day one will influence how they give back to society later in life. But for them to become a successful entrepreneur often their mindset will have to undergo a significant change.
Over time you start to see that the mindset of successful entrepreneurs are different to other types of people. And arguably, rigid learning outcomes — like those at School and University don’t instil a very entrepreneurial mindset.
The first thing I tell students that enter INCUBATE is doing a startup is not like doing an assignment with clear outcomes that you know are obtainable. This isn’t a project on the side. Building something innovative requires you to whole heartedly commit, deal with unknowns and often you have make decisions with little data.
To succeed (or at least increase your chances), you need to be self-motivated and acknowledge failures as a positive attribute, one that signals you’re learning. Successful entrepreneurs you read about are essentially executing on a vision that involves multiple iterations and many ‘failures’ along the way.
When Thomas Edison was asked how about he felt when he failed to create the lightbulb he responded: “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Remembering that as you execute on your idea, it’s not about how much you know, it’s how fast you learn. In the early stages of your life it is less about the starting point of the Y Axis and more about the incline or Rate-of-learning — the velocity at which you are aggregating new insights and deploying them in ways that build value.
As a student entrepreneur today you are among the most empowered individuals in all of human history. You have more access to information, resources and capital than any other time. I truly believe that the vast majority of students have the ability to make a huge impact by bringing their ideas to life by embarking on a entrepreneurial career.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
Part 2 Summary
- Learn to take the risk, realise you’ll never be fully ready and get comfortable with idea of being the fool if you’re wrong.
- An internship with a leading startup or fast-growing innovative company in an area you’re interested in is far more valuable exposure for you as an entrepreneur.
- Treat entrepreneurship as a career with different stages; working for a growing company, working in a great startup and starting your own. Every step should help progress your entrepreneurial career.
- There’s never been a better time to be an entrepreneur and good time to try is when you’re young, remembering your ability to take greater risk diminishes with age.
- If startups are not smaller versions of large companies what will being in a small team in a large company actually teach you about doing a startup?
- Great entrepreneurs are always repeat entrepreneurs
- Students will have to undergo a mindset change as they become a First Time Founder: Treat failures as positive learning indicator and wholeheartedly commit.
- Remembering that as you execute on your idea, it’s not about how much you know, it’s how fast you learn.
- As a student entrepreneur today you are among the most empowered individuals in all of human history.
- Framing your time at university as an opportunity to educate yourself with something useful, identifying your passions, building your open networks, gaining business experience with the best and ‘having a go’ at working for and doing your own startup will help lay the foundations for future-you.
Thanks
Thanks to Melanie Perkins, Jodie Fox and David Rohrsheim for contributing their quotes, Rohan Anderson the header base image and a final big thank you to Jo Morrison for the help in editing both guides.
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A Guide to Navigating University for Student Entrepreneurs Part 2 by James Alexander is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
