If you are a student entrepreneur, it is certain that you might have lots going in your life apart from entrepreneurship. You might have so many doubts and queries regarding this field. We will not spin a yarn and will try to keep it short, simple and worthy. Here are 30 things every aspiring student entrepreneur must know to succeed.
1. “Failures are a part of life. If you don’t fail, you don’t learn. If you don’t learn, you’ll never change.”
2. Reading and learning should never stop. You must research on the idea exhaustively before trying to execute or implement it right away. Read books, enroll for online courses on entrepreneurship that will give you a deep insight into the domain.
3. Be flexible. Ideality hardly exists. You have to adjust with the current situation and modify the plans.
4. Criticisms should be welcomed by a student entrepreneur wholeheartedly. Well, they are trying to make a flawless plan for you without anything in return. Isn’t that too advantageous?
5. There is no better thing than validating your idea. This does not mean that you test the idea among your friends and family, in fact validate it with the actual customers and targeted section of the society
6. Think about launching a Minimal Viable Product (MVP) after you have validated your idea. Launching a MVP will give you the much needed feedback from the target customers and you can work on your ideas with a better understanding and insight.
7. Instead of working on your weaknesses, focus on using your strength in the best possible way.
8. You must start thinking about the cash flow from an early stage. You must be aware of all the sources and sinks of money in your business and not to forget, regarding all the taxes you are liable to pay after starting the company.
9. Connect, connect and connect! Being a student entrepreneur, you do not have a very strong professional network as of yet. But you have to start building connections because no matter what, you will need the help of people to grow it.
10. Don’t get intimidated by the fact that you are a student. If you have started up, your identity should be one and that is of an entrepreneur who firmly believes in his idea.
Also Read: Top 50 Incubators and Accelerators in India you must know
11. You have to give time to your idea to grow. Success does not come overnight.
12. Make a team. Search for compatible co-founder/ co-founders. Be confident on them and do not take a move until everyone is convinced with a proposed plan. If your team members do not agree to some plan, do you really think it will perform great wonders among all your customers?
13. Quite often, a student entrepreneur thinks that it is not the right time to launch. As long as your product offers value, it is ready to be launched. Keep one thing in mind, there is no such thing like a perfect plan or a perfect idea. Perfection will make its way only after you launch it.
14. A person with 24 hours in a day cannot do everything. To be frank, work-life balance is difficult to achieve. As a student entrepreneur, you have to compromise with something or the other in your life to be successful and that completely depends on your priority.
15. Communicate with everyone. With your investors, customers, team members and everyone else!
16. The market is not a good place for everyone and it does not let all the businessmen survive so easily. Make sure to differentiate your idea greatly, else odds are against you with a very high probability.
17. After stabilization of your business, you have to find out all possible areas of expansion of your product/service. The more you expand, the tougher you become for your competitors, who are keen at giving a strong blow to your company.
Also Read: 7 most important business tools for your startup
18. Nobody knows your product in a better way than you. If you aren’t a technical person, learn how to be very specific in your product specification so that you are aware of what the programmers are doing. This is called micro-managing software development.
19. People do not want amazing bloated ideas. They want simple ideas that can fill the existent voids in their life. Your job is to find what the problem is, and build the solution in the simplest way. Complications are troublesome.
20. When you google “entrepreneurs”, you will come across something like, “Think Big!” Remember, “Thinking is valueless without Action. Work to make them a reality!”
Also Read: Should a startup founder be a thinker or a doer?
21. You are highly optimistic and confident, which is good enough. But advisors will warn you about the risk beforehand. Make sure you have an expert counselor in the field of interest. Precaution is better than cure.
22. You have to work 10 times more than you think! This might sound scary but there are no shortcuts here.
23. Patience is a virtue. Gone are the days when you would argue for long and long, until the ball was in your court. Nothing such is going to take place. You will have to be patient at listening to the complains and grudges of your customers, and work to solve them. Sounds difficult? Yes, it is.
24. There are no written exams in this case, but you will face new challenges or new uncertain problems almost every day. Be prepared to face them! You’ve solved a lot of case studies? Well, some might turn into a real-life situation for you.
25. Remember, you cannot control everything. If something wrong happens by chance, do not start blaming and accusing yourself. Instead, find out what went wrong and do not repeat. Experience is the best teacher, be it a good experience or a bad one.
26. If you, being a student entrepreneur are not a money-minded person, then be one. There is completely no substitute to it. You have to earn after spending more than half of your time on your business!
27. Stop looking for motivations and appraisal. Not everyone will appreciate you for your good work because they are envious of you. People are envious of someone who is better than them, isn’t this enough?
28. “I walk slowly, but never walk backwards” – Abraham Lincoln. Being a student entrepreneur, the energy level is very high and you are more enthusiastic in this stage, but energy grater then the required (saturation) is always harmful.
29. Till the time you have self-confidence, virtual success is guaranteed, followed by the real one. The moment you lose it, things will become worse.
30. You have got only one life to prove yourself! Your idea should not be just a part of your life. It should be your life!
Do you want to share your views on being a student entrepreneur? Let us know in the comment section!
Rashika Daga
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