Student Entrepreneurship Yay or Nay

Ashley Dsouza
4 min readMar 23, 2021

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What is Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship refers to the concept of developing and managing a business venture in order to gain profit by taking several risks in the corporate world. Simply put, entrepreneurship is the willingness to start a new business. https://entrepreneurhandbook.co.uk/entrepreneurship/

What is a startup

A startup is a company that’s in the initial stages of business. Until the business gets off the ground, a startup is often financed by its founders and may attempt to attract outside investment.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/startup.asp

Why should you pursue Entrepreneurship

  1. Achievement, Challenge, & Learning : The challenge of solving a problem using technology has motivated thousands of entrepreneurs here and abroad, and created some of the largest and most successful companies in history.
  2. Independence & Autonomy : Entrepreneurs set their own goals, pick their own partners, and face the consequences of their decisions.
  3. Income Security and Financial Success : One might be excluded from traditional employment because of limited education, poor language skills, illegal discrimination, or previous incarceration. For them, one of the best options for achieving financial security is starting a business and creating their own opportunity.
  4. BONUS : Recognition and Status : Depending on the community and culture, entrepreneurs can be either celebrated or vilified.

https://www.scu.edu/illuminate/thought-leaders/drew-starbird/7-reasons-people-become-entrepreneurs.html

Hey, it’s totally okay not to pursue Entrepreneurship

It’s actually really and truly okay to not be an entrepreneur. And it’s totally possible to be successful, financially secure, inspired, and enjoy your work, all while working for someone else. The real key is in knowing yourself, knowing what you’re good at, and knowing what you love.

https://shift.newco.co/2016/10/17/its-okay-if-youre-not-an-entrepreneur/#:~:text=It's actually really and truly,It may take some experimentation.

The Kensho Rule — 30 Days finding one’s true essence.

  • Inspired by the 30 Day habit building exercise.
  • 30 Days to decide whether to pursue an idea or not.
  • 30 Days to examine your commitment to the idea/project.

3 phases of Kenshō

  1. Definition Phase : Define your idea in all possible aspects
  2. Refinement Phase : Refine your ideas into a “ready-to-build” prototype or ready to execute strategy.
  3. Execution Phase : Build a MVP, test with users, run the strategy and analyze results.

But, Ash doesn’t it take months to get an idea working?

The Kensho rule will help you identify whether you can dedicate and commit to your idea for a minimum of 30 Days.

  • By doing/ working on an idea for 30 days either you will build a habit and continue working on it even after 30 days,
  • At the end of the 30 days you’ll realize that you are losing or have lost interest in your own idea.
  • If it doesn’t work out for you during this 30 Days period, try a new idea next month.

Instead of sitting on an amazing idea (as per you), try it out for 30 Days. This way even if you fail, you’d have worked on 12 Ideas in 12 Months, which isn’t a loss, but a gain in experience and confidence.

How to find the right idea?

Don’t search for ideas, search for problems instead. Ideate ways to solve it. Your solution is the right idea. Here’s how to go about finding the problem statements that would help you build a startup.

  • Identify your niche(your interest)
  • Research the market that fall in your interest
  • Acquire and polish skills needed in your niche to be successful
  • Apply the kensho rule and start working on one problem at a time
  • If your solution to the problem clicks, continue working on it and consult a startup consultant.

Design thinking solutions to real world problems :

  1. The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve.
  2. During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during the Empathize stage.
  3. During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating ideas after understanding the users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and analyzing observations in the Define stage, and ending up with a human-centered problem statement.
  4. The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the product or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem solutions generated in the previous stage.
  5. Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase.

Finally, how to start a startup

  • Identify your niche
  • Ideate solutions to real world problem
  • Try the kensho rule and identify the startup idea that works for you
  • Create a business plan and identify how to make money
  • Speak with a startup incubator to validate your journey and get mentored
  • Don’t be afraid to fail, you’re still young
  • Maintain college startup balance

Peace out ✌

— Ashley Alexsius Dsouza. Founder — Hexcoderz

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