Business plans are so 2008.
This article follows the structure described here. tl;dr of the tl;dr you do not need to read all the sections to understand what I’m talking about.
Also there’s a tl;dr at the end.
1,2.. — read length in mins | s/f — skippable/fundamental
1. [1, f] The state and problem of Entrepreneurship Societies in London
2. [1, s] The destruction of the word “entrepreneur”
3. [2, s] What jobs students want to do and why (spoiler: they have no idea)
4. [3, f] A concrete example of why entrepreneurship in the abstract sucks
5. [2, f] A call to action — tell me what I should do.
Disclaimer: All opinions are mine and do not reflect those of the society as a whole. Also, I am young and dumb, and I make mistakes. This has stopped me from writing far too many times.
1. [1, f] So You Want To Be A Gangster
This year I’ve been involved in a student society called Imperial Entrepreneurs, here at Imperial College London. There were some highs and some lows, but one thing is clear to me: entrepreneurship societies need a major firmware upgrade.
In a surprising turn of events, I’ve been elected “president” of this society, and I will [uhmm] “take the lead” of the society for the next academic year. Cool, now what?
The thing is, it’s so easy to do fake startup stuff. It’s too easy to encourage people to sit down and come up with sitcom startup ideas.
Networking, Idea-a-thons, hashtag-ridden tweets… (#entrepreneurship #bigdata #growth)
Yeah sure, you can do all of this, but what are you doing exactly? I mean, are the people who participate in these events any more likely to become entrepreneurs? What is it we’re really trying to achieve? Do people want to learn? Do they wanna make? Do they just wanna do “business stuff”?
2. [1, s] What does it even mean to be an entrepreneur?
Has it become something like gender — is self-identification all it takes? Maybe it’s business cards, right? Because, surely if you have rectangular pieces of dead sliced tree with your name on, you’ve got to be an entrepreneur, right? [sigh]
I would be curious to see what entrepreneurship societies at universities were like before the startup era. I am pretty sure there are several ways to be an entrepreneur that do not involve tech, growth, user acquisition and this sort of crap that everybody talks about but nobody seems to actually understand.
Why doesn’t anybody come up to me saying “I really wanna build a textile import/export business between Malawi and New Zealand,” or “I want to start a brand of bubblegum flavour pot noodles”. You know, before we had iPhones people had jobs and they did things too.
Students all wanna make “apps” and “facebook for llamas” and “uber for bilingual cats” and it’s genuinely hard to give advice on these endeavours because they are all so boring.
3. [2, s] We are all wannabe astronauts.
By and large, one of the things that makes me the saddest is asking people at Imperial College what they want to do after graduation. Keep in mind that this is a Science, Engineering and Medicine University, and it’s consistently in the top 10 universities in the world.
You (student) could literally do ANYTHING you want. Somehow, the answers are all the same: banking, finance, insurance brokering…
Which is not negative in itself, many people love these jobs and were born for them. The problem here is that most students will also confess that they don’t think they would like that kind of job, or even that they are not sure what it is.
I mean, sure, banks do pay some hefty checks. And I get it, money buys freedom. But do you really want to spend most of your adult life doing something you’re not sure you would enjoy? And what about mental health, with investment banking having one of the highest burnout rates? (So does entrepreneurship, more below.)
Time is the only commodity you have which is constantly depleting and can never be replenished. All the functions in your life should be optimised with regards to it.
4. [3, f] There are 2 types of failures: acknowledged and unacknowledged.
It takes balls to acknowledge failure but it also happens to be the single most effective way to move on.
This year, Imperial Entrepreneurs hosted Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend is like a franchise, there is a defined format and then many people all over the world gather and organise their own.
It was, in my opinion, a good example of unacknowledged failure: everybody left the event smiling, thinking they had spent the most productive and mind-blowing weekend of their entire life.
Here’s the short version of what happened: a 60-something group of students spent around 50 (!!!) hours doing nothing — namely talking, and talking, and more talking.
(Funny how the official SW’s website has the tagline “No talking, all action” but their provided timeline has actual built-in structure for the exact opposite.)
I helped as a committee member (mainly by putting pizza boxes in the trash). At the end of the second day of the event I sat down with each group to ask them what they were up to. Here’s a conversation I had with one of the groups:
me: so what are you working on?
group: well we’re not really sure yet… It’s a dating app but we can’t agree on the specifics…
me: ok so have you got any code?
group: no
me: have you got a mockup?
group: what’s a mockup?
me: so what are some features you would include?
group: well, we were thinking no profile pictures [cue Kill Bill siren track]
me: — sorry what do you mean no pictures?
group: well we can’t really agree on it
me: ok so do you guys use dating apps?
group, one by one: no, no, I used Tinder once, no, I’m in a relationship, no, never [all 9 of them had little or no knowledge or experience of dating apps]
me: well, good luck guys.
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At the end of the weekend, most groups only had a PowerPoint (!) presentation. Like, you could have learnt the basics of python with all that time, or you could have read a fat book.
I will go so far as saying that counting grains of rice for ~50 hours would have been a better investment of time. Negative learning is a thing.
The event in itself was very cute, we had food, drinks, a nice space and was very well organised by our committee (good job guys!) but the core of the event as proposed by SW is absolute bollocks.
Maybe it would have worked better if more developers attended, but then it would have just been a Hackathon. The tagline is “start a startup in 54 hours” — even if that was possible, which it isn’t, who on earth would want to be bound for years to a “startup” created in 54 hours???
No wonder the team who won was the only team with computer scientists, who had a working prototype — code has an almost magical way of filtering out the crap. You just can’t bullshit a computer.
5. [2, f] Jesse, we need to cook. I'm not sure what but we must cook ~something~
Students are clueless and terrified by definition. They should feel like there is a community for people who aren’t happy with the mainstream job opportunities but would rather explore other possibilities. And it doesn’t necessarily mean they should try to become the next Mark Zuckerberg.
Starting a startup will likely affect you in ways you never imagined, both positively and negatively (founder depression is not a myth). If you’re not a good fit to be a founder, the odds are stacked against you from Day 1.
Fortunately, and I can’t stress this enough, starting a startup is not the only way to work in a startup. And it’s very likely that working for an already established startup is also the best way to achieve what you’re after anyway — impact or money, for instance.
The more I come to think of it, the more I convince myself that maybe societies like ours have no reason to exist in this day and age.
But it’s not true because there is SO MUCH DEMAND.
Our lectures from guest speakers were attended by hundreds of students this year. When Nick Robertson, CEO of ASOS, came to speak we had a freak out cause 800 people clicked attending on facebook and we couldn’t fit that many people in a lecture theatre. People are unequivocally interested, but I’m not too sure what they’re interested in, exactly.
Maybe the role of our society is to do some group hand holding whilst we try and figure out where we want to go with our work life. Right now, shifting the aim on teaching and learning (and, especially, unlearning) seems to be the only sensible decision.
Instead of telling non-programmers (or, as I like to call them, muggles) they should learn how to code if they want to start a startup (which will most-likely put them off), we should instead show them that there are alternative ways to contribute: you can be a more attentive user and build a mental model of what works and what doesn’t, you can learn the basics of User Experience Design, or simply you can work on your communication skills and write better emails. Any startup will always need some bits of basic graphic design, for instance, and it likely won’t be able to afford a full-time designer.
Becoming a more pragmatically well rounded individual is probably your best bet in terms of pushing your way into the startup scene.
tl;dr Entrepreneurship societies are broken and waste their time organising ineffective events. I want to change this (if possible at all). I don’t really know how because startups are unbelievably counter intuitive and I haven’t been around long enough to have first hand experience. Hence, I seek your advice and wisdom.
So, internet, what should we do?
I’m Lorenzo, 21, and I study Computing at Imperial College London. You can find me on twitter where I will entertain you with lame jokes.
If you think you have an answer for me, reach out to me. If you’re in London, I’ll even buy you coffee.
Thanks to Joao and Dominic for helping me edit this piece, you rock.