Launching Your Venture in College: It’s (Almost) Always the Right Time
By Visiting Assistant Professor, Greg Pool
Aside from the obvious fact that some of the fastest-growing and most identifiable companies started out as collegiate ventures (Facebook, Microsoft, Dell, Reddit and many others), there are good reasons why launching your venture in college may be the best time in your life to start an entrepreneurial journey.
- You’re surrounded by resources. The people (professors, students, staff) and physical facilities (research and creation tools) you have access to in college are much harder to secure once you’ve graduated. You have free access to research tools through the library, creation tools through IS (most of the world pays for Adobe products), and the combined experience of the people around you.
- You haven’t yet picked up too many “bad habits” that you’ll need to break. One of the hardest things to overcome when starting a new venture is your natural proclivity to treat it like an old venture. Startups behave differently than Fortune 500 companies do (due to both a lack of resources as well as having a largely blank canvas on which to define themselves).
- Being a college student is a “golden ticket” to gain access to people and opportunities that are harder to reach once you’re no longer a student. We’ve seen examples of students picking up the phone and calling the rich/powerful/famous and gaining an audience with the individual, simply by saying, “I’m a student at Wake Forest University, and I’d greatly appreciate the opportunity to talk with you about <insert topic here>.”
- Freedom to fail. No matter what happens with your entrepreneurial venture during college, you’ll still be graduating with a degree from Wake Forest (unless you start the next Microsoft and drop-out, in which case I’m sure you’ll get a few honorary degrees in the future… but seriously, don’t drop out). Having not yet started your professional career, there is little reputational harm to trying something new/exciting in college to see if it works. There is no better “profession” for solving the world’s problems, and for accumulating irrational levels of wealth, than that of being an entrepreneur; but if you find that the entrepreneurial lifestyle does not suit you, you’ll still have plenty of opportunities to use the skills and experiences gained as an entrepreneur in whatever you do next.
- And finally, on a more personal level, the faculty and staff of the Center for Entrepreneurship are committed to your success. We want to see you succeed. We’re investing in you as a university and as a team, and believe that you can do it. You can begin your entrepreneurial experience in college!