Never Lose Hope: Pursuing Your Interests May Lead to That Idea You’ve Been Searching For
Welcome to another edition of PIE, where we interview the brightest entrepreneurs and VCs from Princeton and beyond. This issue features the founder of Nucleos, Noah Freedman. Nucleos was founded in 2017 to enable students anywhere, including Zimbabwe and India, to realize the true potential of digital learning. Currently, Nucleos is expanding to provide education and training opportunities to incarcerated individuals to help increase their job placement potential post-release. This service will reduce ex-prisoners’ re-offense rates and create a more productive society since at least 95% of the 2.2 million currently imprisoned will re-enter society in their lifetime. Learn more about how this altruistic company came into existence and how ideas like this sometimes sprout from opportunities when you least expect it.
Two big problems for aspiring entrepreneurs are 1) finding the courage to pursue a risky entrepreneurial idea, and 2) actually finding that idea. Most people coming out of college immediately turn towards a traditional career path away from entrepreneurship because it ensures a stable job and income. For Noah, he, too chose this traditional path, until he realized that he wanted to do something greater with his life and make a positive impact in the world.
I asked him, “Who got you interested in entrepreneurship/who was your role model in the entrepreneurial world and when did this happen?” He replied, “I met one of my best friends in San Francisco at an impromptu jazz jam in Golden Gate Park. It turns out he was running a social impact entrepreneurship company focused on mental health crisis response, and he encouraged me to quit my job and take the plunge into entrepreneurship. I became interested in entrepreneurship as a vehicle to bring about social change, after growing frustrated at the lack of incentives to scale in some of the non-profits in which I had worked. It was an easy choice with me because I had grown increasingly frustrated with being measured on my inputs (sitting at this desk X hours a day, etc.), instead of outputs. I love that in entrepreneurship you are really 100% accountable for the outcomes.”
Surprisingly, especially when we don’t anticipate it, an everyday interaction with a friend, family member, or even a stranger can make us rethink our traditional lives and push us to take the risk of entrepreneurship. All aspiring entrepreneurs have that desire somewhere hidden within them to try and start something, but our rational thinking and pressure from friends or family can hold us back. Always keep your heart open to entrepreneurship and talk to others about it. You never know when a conversation with someone will finally lead you to take the jump into the unknown and more times than not, it’s for the better.
After talking to his friend in San Francisco, Noah began thinking about starting Nucleos and helping those who needed better educational resources, particularly in digital and technological resources. However, his entrepreneurial idea didn’t just come out of nowhere. I asked Noah what got him interested in creating a start-up to help with education. He replied, “I was interning in college my freshman or sophomore year with a research project out of Stanford University’s school of education. We were working on ways to bring digital education resources to marginalized schools in low-income countries, and I got a chance to travel with them to India for a summer to work with schools in Mumbai slums and rural parts of Bihar. The poverty of these schools and communities was really eye-opening to me, and I knew I wanted to find a way to provide greater access to information and opportunities where they were so scarce.”
Although he had a general sense of what he was interested in, the thought or idea of wanting to help people with fewer resources to receive a better education only occurred when he got to fully experience the reality of poverty in India. Sometimes when we don’t know what company we want to start, it helps to just pursue as many opportunities that interest you. Only then, through real-life experience, will you start to mold the way you think and find out what real-world problems you want to solve.
Even once you have an idea, the challenge isn’t over though. You never know if it will be successful and if that is what you will end up loving. Noah initially wanted Nucleos to be a company that brought internet access to many individuals globally at a cheaper cost. He wanted to do this by having web resources delivered on local servers. However, after working in the market and gaining a better understanding, his vision changed. Noah said, “Given what I have learned about this market, I believe that local businesses and non-profit organizations are best suited to support the unique needs of each community, which were too diverse for us to bootstrap a scalable business given our stage at the time. In the corrections space, there is an opportunity to deliver filtered Internet access bringing educational resources to learners that would not otherwise have access. With this current endeavor, I think there is a much greater opportunity for us to have a much bigger impact.”
With this realization, Noah has changed Nucleos’ main goal to focus more on education for incarcerated learners rather than focusing on e-learning solutions for schools with Internet connectivity barriers. Now, Nucleos is changing its entire business model for this new customer segment, looking to make a big difference in this world. The future is looking bright, not only for themselves, but for the lives of the prisoners that they’re helping. When starting a company, it’s important to give your vision the freedom to change as you learn new information or gain new experience.
Every entrepreneurial journey is different, but Noah’s story shows us that ideas can stem from a sudden realization in a place where you’d least expect it. For Noah, it was at an impromptu jazz in San Francisco. Even after finding an idea, you never know how it will change. That’s the beauty of entrepreneurship. It’s always changing and that’s what makes it exciting, and it all starts with being proactive and pursuing what you love (and sometimes what you don’t). So, don’t be discouraged if you don’t have a perfect idea yet. Just start pursuing your interests and passions. Apply to those internships and research positions. Say hi to your role model on Twitter. Surround yourself with people that have the same passion as you, and always be open to new opportunities that come your way. Your great idea is sure to come, even when you least expect it.
That’s it for this issue. I’d like to personally thank Noah Freedman for taking the time to interview with me and giving us insight into his company Nucleos and how it got started. I hope you enjoyed! Feel free to reach out to Noah on his LinkedIn profile at https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-freedman/ and/or me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-melnyk-434a20170/ for any questions or comments.
