The Young Entrepreneur

How to Start A Business While You're Still a Student

Swish Goswami, Quinn Underwood

• Publisher: Kogan Page
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780749497347
• eBook ISBN: 9780749497330
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Entrepreneurship
• Index: Business

FINALIST: Goody Business Book Awards - Entrepreneur: Young Entrepreneur
If you have a great start-up idea and know how to think like an entrepreneur, but are still at college or university, then this book will show you how to run your business without having to drop out. Research shows that Generation Z are the most entrepreneurial generation yet. If you don't want to wait until you graduate before launching the next big thing, then this book - written by successful young entrepreneurs Swish Goswami and Quinn Underwood - is for you. Packed with practical and realistic advice The Young Entrepreneur really cuts through the noise surrounding business innovation and makes a clear case for starting your own company while you're young. Featuring inspiring examples and invaluable resources to give you the tools you need, this book is your one-stop guide to jump-start your entrepreneurial journey.

Part One

Entrepreneur

01

The entrepreneurial mindset

Don’t worry, this isn’t our attempt to break into the self-help industry – but we’ve definitely found that mindset matters. Actively and conscientiously incorporating these perspectives into your daily routine will make you a better leader and, frankly, a better person. The following list is an attempt to identify the various characteristics and practices common amongst the entrepreneurs we’ve had the pleasure of learning from and working alongside over the years. It’s by no means exhaustive – there are many types of successful entrepreneurs with various strengths and qualities, some of which are stated here.

Audacity

We are by many measures the last generation capable of preventing global catastrophe, and for it, we must have the audacity to take on solving the world’s most pressing issues; there are no second chances left. That audacity, it is a moral imperative for all those able to recognize and act upon the injustices so many still face – to make your voices heard, to make your actions felt, to confront those who have chosen ignorance and complacency and over justice.

That dramatic monologue was one Quinn delivered to delegates from more than 190 countries at the One Young World Summit in 2019 in The Hague, Netherlands during his last year of university. As you may have noticed, he enjoys a touch of drama, but don’t let that diminish the significance of what he was trying to say. This generation is certainly faced with not just one, but many daunting and seemingly impossible tasks. Tasks that demand audacity if they’re to be solved. You’ll need that very same audacity in starting a business, and hopefully, starting a business to solve these global problems. Audacity is the willingness to take bold risks. Starting a company demands this – statistically nine out of every ten startups fail.¹ In order to be successful in starting your own company, you need audacity, a willingness to make a difference. This is not a call for recklessness, action without careful preparation or thought. Nor is this a ‘you can do anything you set your mind to’ moment. This is us telling you that if you’re going to start a company, there’s no point in aiming low. We’re here to help ensure that when you aim high, you have a better idea about how to get there. You don’t need to have every person sign an NDA before you tell them your ideas, because it’s never an issue of ideas. It’s an issue of execution. In order to execute on your ideas, you need to be audacious. Audacious enough to commit to turning your idea into a reality, challenging yourself to take a risk.

Taking initiative

There are countless ideas in the minds of countless people, many of them with the potential to change the world. Most of those ideas never see the light of day. Motivational posters worldwide read ‘The best time to plant a tree was 25 years ago, the second-best time is today.’ Most people just end up collecting a whole lot of seeds. This happens for a variety of reasons: people may not be able to find the spare time to explore their idea, or maybe they don’t have the money, or maybe it would mean giving up a certain amount of financial security, or entering a field they don’t know much about. The reasons are endless, many of them entirely valid. It’s hard to do new things!

One of the most important characteristics of any entrepreneur is the willingness to take their ideas and act on them, even if it’s just in some small way; whether that’s cold-emailing a professor or expert to ask them a question, or taking it upon yourself to start a club, social movement, magazine, small business, or any other medium by which you have an aspiration, and working to make it a reality in some way. That willingness to take initiative makes all the difference. It’s not an innate tendency either, it’s largely socialized! When those around you are busy starting clubs, growing social movements, or building companies, it’s far easier to do the same. That’s partially why this book is focused on youth, and in particular those in school, be it community college, university, high school, graduate school, or anything in between. Contrary to popular belief, being in education presents you with the perfect environment for starting your own business. You’re surrounded by people exploring the limits of human knowledge, pushing to better themselves, and bringing their ideas to life. It’s a great environment for not only inspiring new ideas, but also acting on them, and that makes all the difference.

The three ‘whys’

Any entrepreneur will tell you that in order to become successful, you must be critical of the world we live in. Critical not in a disapproving sense, but an analytical one. As an entrepreneur you’re constantly looking for problems to solve – because when you start asking questions no one else is asking, you start getting answers no one else has. That’s when things get exciting.

A simple way to make a habit of this practice is to ask ‘why’ three times in a row after any question you pose to yourself. Every time you say or think ‘why’, do so two more times, challenging each answer you arrive at. Even for questions as trivial as ‘why isn’t it clear whether this door requires me to push or pull to open it?’ (this is a real issue known as Norman Doors – seriously, look it up).

The point of this practice is to cultivate a more critical perspective of why we do the things we do. There’s always a reason, and it’s almost always more interesting than you think. The world is an incredibly complex place, and when we forget that, it becomes a little less bright. Relish the complexity, for in that complexity is endless opportunity for improvement.

Perhaps you knew all of this already, or perhaps you didn’t. Either way, it’s a simple exercise that only requires curiosity about the world around you and a few online searches. The benefits of this practice will make themselves increasingly clear in future chapters.

Responsibility

As the founder or leader of any company, you’re charged with an incredible amount of responsibility. Everyone knows that, and we’re not here to repeat the obvious (ignore that we just did). The responsibility we’re talking about is the responsibility to improve the world around you. We don’t mean social justice save-the-pandas stuff (although that wouldn’t be all that bad either). We mean the profound responsibility we have as youth, as the next generation of world leaders, industry leaders, voters, and change-makers, to contend with the existential challenges we face as a global society. Jobs face massive disruption through AI, global warming threatens to cause 250,000 additional deaths a year by 2030,² and between 200 and 500 million people could become displaced by 2050.³ These are not trivial issues, and they stand to affect our generation more than any other. All of us as youth have the opportunity to make a real difference in solving these issues. We would contend that at the very least, given that opportunity, we have a responsibility to try solving them.

Nevertheless, this is a book about how to start a business, so here’s the business case for building a social enterprise.

The first thing you’re going to do as an entrepreneur is identify a problem. The bigger the problem, the bigger your market, and the bigger your market, the bigger your potential value as a company. When you go to potential funders, whether it’s venture capital or your next-door neighbours, you’re going to have to explain to them why people or companies are going to buy your goods or services and why they should give you money. As will be illustrated later, the more salient the problem, the easier selling your solution becomes. Being able to say that your solution is going to save their jobs, their lives, or their homes makes for a pretty solid pitch. It’s smart business.

Second, with talent as an increasingly limited resource, incorporating social impact into the core of your business provides an advantage when attracting the best talent. Studies show that 82 per cent of youth say it’s important that a company actively considers its social impact.⁴

Third, your story and brand will become a foundational aspect of your company as you grow, with implications for everything from investment, to talent attraction and retention, to scalability. Focusing on social impact as well as profit positions your business narrative in a way that is broadly accessible to your customers, and positions you well for media coverage in the future. A successful business, particularly one focused on individual consumers, is as much about how you make your consumers feel as the quality of the service or good you provide them (this is part of why Apple is able to get away with charging people far more than its competitors). Doing so in an authentic way is a brilliant method for differentiating yourself from competitors and maximizing your reach.

Social problems: the foundation for entrepreneurial ideas

Both of us have spent a lot of time thinking about what we could be doing better as a society, so we provide you with a list of what we and others see as the world’s most pressing problems. While this may be oddly placed for a book on entrepreneurship, we think bringing these questions to the forefront of the conversation is important if you’re to be the future industry leaders and disruptors who, whether explicitly or implicitly, will be solving or perpetuating many of these problems with the businesses you build. Facebook or Twitter never planned on sitting in front of the US Senate answering questions around privacy or freedom of speech, yet the decisions they made early on and the business models they rely upon have played major roles in driving the societal dialogue around these matters. Thinking about these global issues as you embark on your business can make all the difference in the impact you have as you grow.

Work

The future of work is an unknown one, wherein three major problems have been identified by experts: rising rates of worker precariousness as the gig economy grows; the growing divide between remote and physically co-located workers; and the need for workers to be retrained as automation becomes more disruptive. The future of work is also an issue in the forefront of corporate minds because of Covid-19 and the dramatic changes people have seen with their workplace and work expectations.

Privacy and freedom

Two major conversations under the umbrella of freedom demand further c...

Table of contents

• List of tables
• About the authors
• Foreword by Michele Romanow
• Introduction
• PART ONE Entrepreneur
• 01 The entrepreneurial mindset
• 02 Misconceptions when starting a company
• PART TWO Endeavour
• 03 Getting started
• 04 Common causes of failure
• 05 Minimum viable product
• 06 Testing and marketing your MVP
• 07 Development
• 08 Launching and marketing your idea
• 09 Fostering collaboration
• 10 Understanding traction: developing business metrics
• 11 Fundraising strategies
• 12 Fundraising necessities
• 13 Scaling and exit strategy
• PART THREE Ecosystem
• 14 The Entrepreneurial Community
• 15 Marketing yourself effectively
• Index