Lessons Learned From Launching A Student-Run Startup Accelerator Program In The Philippines
This past summer, we decided to take a big step forward at YouthHack and launch the YouthHack Ventures program, a student-run and student-focused startup accelerator. We initially started with 7 teams, with 5 teams graduating from the program (2 university teams, 2 high school teams and 1 mixed team). These 5 teams worked on ideas ranging from a variety of fields like education, healthcare, wireless networking and agriculture.
While it was really challenging setting up the program and sourcing teams given that we were the first to do this type of program in the Philippines, this initial test run of the first batch taught us a variety of lessons about the value in a student-run and student-focused startup accelerator.
1. Having a startup idea or product is one thing, building a startup is a whole different thing
All the teams that went through the program quickly realized that having a startup idea or a product is just one thing, building a startup is a whole different animal.
Suddenly, the teams had to think about their business model, how they were going to get their first customers, how they were going to host their web app or mobile app, how they were going to deal with payments and so much more.
While it is definitely a tough ordeal building a startup as a student, we saw how important this program was in showing students how much commitment it takes to build a startup.
2. Accountability helps a lot with progress
From my own experience as a student entrepreneur, it’s very hard to keep your head down and balance living the life of a student and an entrepreneur. With this, keeping student founders accountable and being there to guide them can really help with their progress.
By setting milestones teams had to hit each week, the teams were able to make small steps of progress each week. Whether it was starting a Facebook campaign or starting a blogpost or finishing their MVP or doing customer interviews or reaching out to potential mentors and partners, each week’s milestone allowed them to make concrete progress while also learning new skills they can continue to use in the future.
While progress wasn’t as fast as if they were working on their startup full-time, progress was still made each week, which is very crucial in the startup world where it’s a long-term game.
3. Bringing smart and passionate students together can make a big difference
One of my favorite stories from this first batch of the YouthHack Ventures program was how one of our teams, MicaPH, found their CTO on the first day of our program. Prior to the program, MicaPH had done a lot of market research, customer interviews and had validated their idea. However, they didn’t have any guy who could build their product.
On the other hand, we had a 12th grader named Alex come in and join our program because he was interested in startups but didn’t have any team. After the first session, Alex ended up joining the MicaPH team, and fast-forward 10 weeks later and MicaPH had a working prototype of two main product features and is in talks with multiple customers already. We hope to foster a lot more of these connections in future programs that we host.
At the same time, the MicaPH team served as a great example of what happens when you have a founding team that all have their own skillset and expertise. One founder was in charge of all the business aspects, another founder was in charge of the user experience and front-end design, and finally, the last founder was in charge of all the back-end development and databases. Because of this, team Mica was able to make the most progress in the 10 week program.
4. Teams progress at different levels
Checking up on the 5 teams throughout the 10-week program, our team realized that it’s inevitable for teams to progress at different levels so we had to adjust milestones accordingly and really individualize our support as well.
At the same time, each team had their own different set of needs and challenges that we could have catered to better. There truly is no cookie cutter way of building a startup since every industry is very different. For example, we had a team that was working on wireless networking, and their timeline to market was simply a lot longer than the other teams working on consumer web/mobile apps.
Moving forward, we hope to be able to prepare specific industry relevant case studies of startups in certain fields in order to help teams have a benchmark for their startup. We also hope to connect with more industry partners and mentors to help us advance our programs
5. You don’t learn this in school
A big realization our core team and also our student founders had was that you really don’t learn how to build a startup in school. Having this student-accelerator program helped them learn the nuances of building a MVP, rapidly testing and iterating an idea, pitching to investors, growing a two-sided marketplace and more.
When got feedback from our student teams, they were really thankful for the program because it was really tailored to helping students get up to speed with all the startup jargon and processes and functions one needs to know in order to really turn an idea into a company.
Moving forward, we hope to make our program even more robust and educational such that student founders really learn how to launch a startup in 3 months.
6. 10 weeks is short, a longer program might be better for students
Because of the fact that students still have other responsibilities, it’s really hard to hit all the right milestones in a 10-week accelerator type of program. By the end of the 10-weeks, teams had reached different milestones but there were still so many things we could’ve helped them with. At the same time, the timeframe for students when it comes to building a startup is longer because of the fact that they’re in college for 4–5 years so the traditional accelerator model may not be the perfect model.
However, the beauty in an accelerator type of program with a set timeframe is that teams really have to sprint and run for their lives. We saw this as demo day approached and suddenly, our student founders had a different sense of urgency as they sprinted to finish their MVPs, solidify their business models, find ways to show traction and practice their pitch.
Moving forward, a hybrid accelerator-incubator-startup school program might be our best bet where we have demo-days/presentation days every 3 or 4 months for progress checks, and students can go through different levels of our program depending on what stage they’re in. This would allow us to really help teams go from 0 to 1, and fully educate them about the process of building a startup.
Overall, launching the YouthHack Ventures program and watching teams grow throughout the initial 10 week program has been a really good learning experience for us. It was really inspiring seeing the teams go through different challenges, learn new things, build their MVPs, pivot their ideas, close new partnerships and reach out to mentors.
It’s now back to the drawing board for us as we work towards improving the Ventures program for the next batches of student founders!
I’d like to thank our YouthHack Ventures core team including Jerick Bonamy, Aldrin Mallari and Pau Joquino for really stepping up and doing their best to help all our teams from the first batch. I’d like to also thank our YouthHack Manila core team for constantly supporting our initiatives this past summer, and for doing an awesome job with coverage of the ventures program as well (Shout-out to Quin Astilla and Teresa Naval). Finally, I’d like to thank all our speakers, mentors, partners and demo-day panelists who helped make this first-ever YouthHack Ventures program possible and for imparting great advice to all our student teams.
If you want to launch YouthHack and bring the YouthHack Ventures program to your university or city, you can email david@youthhack.net for more details.
