3 Insights from the CEO of Jebbit About Being a Student Entrepreneur

Each semester, Rough Draft Ventures partners with student organizations across Boston-area schools to organize office hours. We host a seasoned industry expert and invite student entrepreneurs to come in and pick their brains.

On November 16th , we partnered with the Shea Center for Entrepreneurship to run our November Office Hours at Boston College, featuring Tom Coburn!

Tom Coburn is the CEO of Jebbit, a company he founded while an undergraduate at Boston College. The company has come a long way, from winning the Boston College Venture Competition and being incubated in Summer at Highland to participating in TechStars and raising over $1.5 million in seed this past summer. The company has pivoted multiple times since its original conception, so this office hours was an awesome opportunity for us to hear the unfiltered Jebbit founding story. Tom’s story had a lot of insights, so for those who missed it, here are the top three.

1. Commit — If you want to start a business or do anything, commit to it. Seems simple enough, yet people don’t do it. In Tom’s case, he and his friends knew they wanted to make something, so they scheduled blocks of time into their schedule that they kept to and no matter what, they would all meet during that time to work on their venture, whether that involved forming new ideas or working on their current idea.
2. Take advantage of your college network — If you have an idea for a new venture, awesome, but don’t drop out just yet. Slow down, figure out where the business is at, and take advantage of your resources. Rather than going out and contracting the work out, “recruit a bunch of kids on campus to join you.” Find friends, or in Tom’s case, “find freshmen who have no idea what they want to do” and add them to your team.
3. Figure out if it’ll work — When you come up with a business, yes, there may be a lot of dependent variables, but find a way to test the market and see if it’ll stick. One turning point for Jebbit was their marketing stunt where they gave $20 to the first 150 students to sign up and use their service. It was the perfect opportunity to confirm their assumption that people would answer questions posted by businesses in return for money.

Keep an eye out on our Facebook page for more office hours with awesome mentors like Tom!