Developing entrepreneurs whilst at university / school [kwiqq]

Posted on | October 17, 2008 | 7 Comments

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It is almost hilarious how many entrepreneurs emphasis that entrepreneurship is something you learn on the job. i.e. you need to fail 1 or 2 businesses to make the 3rd one successful. Although there is some truth in the fact that most of the experience is ‘Learn as you go’ there are several things you can do to get ready for the journey.

Last week I met Ben Woldering founder of price comparison site Bellen.com, very popular in Netherlands. He started his company when he was 13 and now at 23 he has 10 years of experience. Clearly you don’t need a degree to kick start your entrepreneurial journey. So where do you start ?

My journey began at high school (picture of my high school in Kuwait on the right) where I was a house captain and organised several events. During my socialising hours I was notorious for organising house parties. Sounds like it doesn’t have any relevance ? Well for me this was when I practised people management skills. I learnt that to get people to do something you need to inspire them and inspiration often means a lot of hard work !

From a very young age I knew I would do a degree, so I could learn programming. Although very quickly I realised that universities actually don’t TEACH programming. They teach concepts and in order to learn programming, one needs to get a job. Although how many companies would give a job to an inexperienced first year student ? Not many as you might have guessed. This is where I thought, well perhaps I should offer my services for free i.e. volunteer. I came across a fantastic entrepreneur who was funding his project but didn’t want to pay unless the job was fully done i.e. software development was completed ! I felt that was a fantastic opportunity. He wanted a C++ Driver and I needed experienced. Plus I would be paid if I managed to finish the project.

So I got two jobs. One to fund my living and the other to gain experienced. The good news is that I got paid after 6 months of working for the programming job, although I worked very hard (2 jobs + education + socialising). Although I received real life experience of the business world and commercial programming knowledge. With the initial experience, I received more work in the programming field. I basically did an internship every summer and by that point the only job I ever did was that of a software programmer.

At that point I lacked real management experience. Who would hire a university student as a manager ? NO ONE. So I decided I would combine my two passions: learning about cultures and starting an organisation. I started a student union society called USAS (University of Sussex Asian Society). The idea was to remove myths that a cultural society needs to be targeted at particular sections of the society. The membership of the society soared and within a month we had 200-300 members with 100 active members. One thing we boasted about was multiculturalism.This is where I learnt about things like managing executive board, AGMs, agendas, task management and several other skills. It is thus not surprising that students who are active in the unions do well professionally.

This meant I didn’t need to really get a graduate job after university. I could actually start a business and use the skills I devloped whilst at uni. The results are in front of you, I feel I have done a reasonable job in developing Kwiqq over the last 1.5-2 years. This obviously is just the start, the coming months are looking promising !

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