Don’t Wait Til You Graduate to Launch a Startup. Seriously.

The founders of Reddit, Facebook, Snapchat and Google all met and started their respective companies in university. Whether they actually completed their degree, that’s for another blog post. However, as a university student myself, I hear many students saying that they don’t have time, or the money, or don’t think they have the experience to. In fact, three-fourths of university students still indicate that they have no access to on-campus entrepreneurship resources, according to the Young Entrepreneurs Council. While university and colleges (especially in Australia) have a lot to work on, I’d like to argue that your time at university is probably the best time to launch a startup.

As a 4th year student, these are the few observations I made and often tell people, based on my humble experience in the startup space, in the last 2–3 years.

Think you’re inexperienced? Make it your advantage.

Yes, you’re inexperienced. At times, it could be your downfall. However, even if it is your downfall, your inexperience will just mean that you are not tied down by existing “best practices”.

Make your inexperience your advantage. To really innovate, you need a brand new perspective on problems and be ready to experiment with new techniques. They could be really, really dumb ideas, but if the toughest problems could be solved by purely following the “design-thinking” or the “lean startup” methodologies, it would have happened already.

University is a multidisciplinary hub!

One of the most valuable aspects about university is being able to meet people from different backgrounds.

University students seem to form cliques within their own disciplines, which I totally get. After all, how else do you pass uni without sharing answers? But if you’re trying to find a founder that will complement your strengths and weaknesses, then you need to look further. If you’re a business student, maybe go to a computer science society meetup and vice versa. Believe me, finding talented people in other disciplines will just get harder as you grow up. At university, you can just walk to the computer science faculty to find your future CTO. How do you do that once you graduate?

Believe in the power of broke.

“But I don’t have any money,” I hear you say. So what? As stated in the famous book by Daymond John: “empty pockets, a tight budget, and a hunger for success can become your greatest competitive advantage”. Desperation breeds innovation.

Plus, with the innovation wave sweeping over Australia, take advantage of student grants or government grants. Take advantage of free working spaces, equipment, student pitch competition prize money, entrepreneurship scholarships and discounts. Look around and you’ll see so much opportunity, especially in a country like Australia.

And let’s be honest… many of us are really lucky to have our parents’ financial support. The student discounts also help. Adult transport fees suck.

And lastly, you don’t have real commitments yet.

If you think you don’t have the time or money now, when will you? If you’re following the common route of marriage, having kids, then possibly buying a house… it’ll probably take you a few years to settle down when you feel like you can start a company. And even then, the risk of launching a startup is higher. After all, what is the risk now when you started with nothing?

So arguably, university is probably the only time you can launch a startup wholeheartedly, with almost nothing to lose.

You’ll probably fail a lot. That’s awesome.

You’re probably around 20 years old. You’re only really starting life. And if you’re a classic high achiever, you’ve probably never really failed. This is probably the biggest lesson I have ever learnt from being in a startup. My fear of failing still exists, but I know that there is light on the other side.

Finding success with your startup is not easy. Most startups fail. But if you are someone that wants to be challenged, accelerate your learning and be prepared for the real world, having an integral role in a startup is your solution.

Next action steps:

Working in startups has taught me to never end a conversation without the next action steps. So if you are convinced and ready to explore, here are your next action steps:

• Take a look at your university and see what entrepreneurial resources are available to you.
• Start attending startup events, meet and talk to different types of people.
• Think about what drives you, what problems you’re really interested in and see what you can do about it.
• And if you’re a fan of the content I produce… follow Textbook Ventures on Medium and our Facebook. ;)
• And if you already have a startup and one of your core team members is a UNSW member, we are always accepting applications for our accelerator program, so click here.