"Screw It. Let's Do It"

Do you have an idea that you think could do well? Are you scared of going through with the idea because of the risk? You are not alone.

A lot of students, like you, have some groundbreaking ideas but many of them do not come to fruition. I hope that after reading this post you will follow Richard Branson’s words “Screw it. Let’s dot it". In this post, I am going to give you three important factors that you shouldn’t worry about when you are thinking about setting up your business while at university.

1. Risk. This is probably the biggest factor students don’t go down the entrepreneurial route while studying as they think that they won’t have enough time to run a business and get a good grade at university together with finance issues. Consistency is key. I believe that spending a certain amount of time on your business every day, even if it is as little as 10-15 minutes, the hours will soon add up. Then once you have built a foundation you can spend maybe an hour a day on the business and it will then evolve from there. In order to mitigate the risk of the business becoming a failure, ensure that you surround yourself with a great network. Despite this, businesses do fail sometimes, but failure is just part of the journey. I mean it wouldn’t be as interesting if everything went to plan the whole time now would it?! The start of the journey is flexible and is simply a test to see if your idea is viable. If you feel like you do not want to take the risk on your own, have you thought of finding a business partner? This helps with spreading the risk both in time and money (if you decide to invest your own money into your idea). The other main risk is wasting your money on the business, see the funding section below.

2. Not unique. You need to remember that you don’t have to be entirely unique with your idea. It is not always about being first, it is about doing it in the best way. Have a ponder on the following quote:

“Google was late to search. Facebook was late to social networking. Apple was late to the MP3 Player. Where would we be if they listened to everyone who said they were too late? It’s never too late. Just do it better.”

3.) Funding. Lots of students give up on their ideas due to the requirement of a lot of money. Being a student, there are a lot of grants available to you, which means that you do not need to give any stake in your business away. Over the next few weeks I am going to do a bit of research into all the grants available to student entrepreneurs and let you know. I also plan to get in contact with universities to let you all know if your university has any competitions that give grants away. In the future I hope that Uni Founders will be able to run a competition and provide grants to young entrepreneurs so watch this space!

These are the main problems students have told me about, but, if you have other worries and are not ready to launch your own business, please do get in touch and I will be more than happy to have a chat.

#Risk #BeingUnique #Funding #Worries