12 Reasons to Start a Business in College: From Bill Gates to Mark Zuckerberg

2. You Can Test Your Ideas

You need to have a good idea if you want to start a business. Latching on to an idea that you think will be a big money spinner may be a mistake. Most experts advise that you need to be passionate about your idea. Also, it should relate to what you know. Your hobbies and interests can give you an idea you can translate into profit.

Ideas can be as varied as buying and selling books, repairing computers and printing T-shirts. Or you could clean windows, design websites or start a food delivery service. Sometimes an idea might already be a business, but you have an idea to make it better. Assessing what is already in the market and the strengths and weakness of your competitors is important before you think about starting a business.

You have a great testing ground for your idea on campus, but you will have to create a business plan first. You will have to describe your idea and know who your target audience will be. This may not sound easy, but a mentor can help you. And there are many resources online, as well. This is not the first step towards creating a successful business, but it will help you clarify your concept.

A business plan will show you exactly what you need to make it work in practice. If your product or service targets young people or college students, in particular, turn to groups on campus to test them. Use clubs, sororities, and fraternities to set up focus groups and get feedback. College students are often clear about what they like and dislike so they can help you make improvements.

3. You Can Find a Mentor

As a student, what you are lacking in experience the right mentor can supply. A business professor may be a goldmine of expertise and information. MBA students and other business students are often willing to help you, too. Your youthful enthusiasm can take you far. But to gain the skills and knowledge you need, you have to take all the advice you can get.

As a student, you are exposed to a vast network of professionals with plenty of expertise. If you already know someone with the right experience you admire and respect, arrange to meet them. Introduce yourself and follow up because it will pay off. A mentor can help you reach success sooner by pointing out hidden pitfalls. Also, they can examine your business plan and see how feasible it is.

Mentors aren’t there to do the work for you. However, they can guide you through the steps to start your business. And they can tell you what you need to do to run it successfully. But you don’t need to find only one mentor. You can have several mentors in different areas like fundraising, marketing and programming.

They should be experts who you can ask for advice when you have difficulties with an aspect of your business. This also means you don’t have just one person to give you all the advice you need. Start by finding out whether your college has a mentoring program. Such a program gives you the opportunity to work with notable alumni.

These alumni may be successful businessmen who can help you nurture your seedling venture. Additionally, they may just be able to introduce you to experts in your field or local business development programs. Startup UCLA, for instance, is a program that connects students to the Los Angeles tech world. All you have to do is ask.

4. You Can Utilize Free Resources

As a student, you have access to free resources that are often second to none. Many of these free resources are part of your tuition fees. So, you don’t have to fork out any more money for them. Even resources such as photocopying and printing, free wi-fi and library materials can be invaluable tools when you’re starting a business.

You can use free wi-fi to access some great free online resources. These resources can help to simplify many different aspects of running a business. For example, Trello is a free project management tool. Hootsuite can help you manage your social media and Slack offers easy communication between team members.

The fact that you have an email address that ends in ‘edu’ can also give you access to many freebies. ProjectionHub, for instance, is a resource freely available to college students. Also, free space is an advantage when starting a business. It can be difficult to run a business out of a dorm room or an apartment.

So, many colleges give student entrepreneurs the square footage they need. However, even if your college does not offer this, there are probably plenty of conference rooms to rent for a minimal fee. Access to equipment is another major bonus of being an entrepreneur while at college.

You may even be lucky enough to attend a college with a laboratory dedicated to student entrepreneurs. Such labs often have an impressive range of technological resources, including business software, professional video studios, high-performance computers and even 3D printers.

5. You Can Collaborate with Fellow Students

One of the best things you can do as a student entrepreneur is to cultivate a group of like-minded, talented friends on campus. College students often have spare time, so you can recruit classmates to help when starting your business. You can even pitch your idea of collaboration as a learning experience for all concerned. Bouncing your ideas off other students can be a good place to start. Collaborating with fellow students may offer you some innovative suggestions you would not have come up with on your own.

Your fellow students will have interests in many different areas, so you can utilize their skills. Marketing students can help you create Facebook ads or write copy for brochures. Accounting students might be willing to help you create a budget and manage your finances. You may also be able to find awesome programming talent.

If you take their involvement seriously and offer to give them reference letters for their participation, it’s a win-win situation. You are unlikely to possess all the skills, time or the emotional strength required for running a successful company. One of the most important principles you can learn from starting a business is that it usually takes teamwork to succeed. Gather those around you whose skills complement yours and whose company you enjoy to increase your chances for success.

You may even find be lucky enough to find a co-founder who shares your enthusiasm. Many successful businesses have been started at college. Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian worked together on Reddit, while Chris Johnson and Tim Keck cofounded The Onion. Johnson and Keck sold the newspaper after a year to colleagues for $19,000. And lastly, Evan Spiegel and Bobby Murphy were responsible for cofounding Snapchat.

6. You Have Access to Potential Customers

One mistake is to spend too much time on building a product without thinking about your potential customers. One of the first things you need to think about is who will buy your product or service. If you have no customers, you don’t have a business. After all, you don’t want to spend time developing a product or service that nobody wants.

To test the reactions of potential customers, you must have something to show them. If you want to sell a product, create an inexpensive prototype. Perhaps you have an idea for a new kind of athletic sock. You can reach out to a graphic designer to create it digitally. For instance, they can create a PDF that shows why it is different from other products on the market.

And if you offer a service, you will probably need a simple brochure to describe exactly what you are offering. A tear sheet with a photo, tagline, and a few key points may be a good place to start. Get this in front of as many potential customers as possible to find out what they think about it. This can help you refine your product or service to meet real needs.

Ask as many questions as possible during this testing phase. They include what your potential customers like or dislike. Also, find out whether your product solves a problem for your potential customers and if your selling points are valid. The great thing about being a student is that you have a whole campus of potential customers.

Spreading the news by word of mouth can be an effective promotional tool. Most students hang out in groups, so word of mouth can spread quickly. You can promote your product or service to your group of friends, they will tell their friends and so forth. They may even tell their families. And lastly, you can create a ripple effect that spreads further than just your university campus.

7. You Can Find Some Funding Options

Internet resources make starting a business more affordable than ever before. But even the smallest business still has some overheads. You probably don’t have the resources to cover these costs, so you will have to look for funding. You may want to approach family or friends for loans. However, there are some great ways of finding funding at college, too.

Before you start looking for funding, you need to have a good idea of your costs down to the smallest details. So, approach funders with a firm concept of the problem you’re solving or service you’re offering. Tell them how it can make money and how you will put this into practice. But be sure to have a good idea of what financial input they require. Think about how much you’ll need to start and run your business, as well as what you need to make.

Finance and scholarship offices at colleges may be able to find federal grants, loans, fellowships or scholarships to give you the funds you need. Some universities offer a variety of funding opportunities, including seed funding and grant programs for young entrepreneurs. So, make sure you know exactly what funding options your college has available. Just make sure you know about technology transfer before accepting funding from your university.

Universities want you to use their resources and funding, so they can gain ownership of the intellectual property you develop. When accepting funding, make sure you understand all the conditions under which they give it. After all, you don’t want to run the risk of finding out you don’t own what you have worked so hard to develop.

8. You Can Use Social Media for Marketing

As a college student, you’re no doubt well versed in using social media. College students are likely to use social media for anything they find interesting so you can build a great social media platform from the very beginning. You have the potential to get your product or service in front of thousands of people online in a cost-effective way that can have great impact.

But you probably won’t want to pay for expensive marketing campaigns and this is where using your fellow students and their presence on social media can help. You shouldn’t feel pressure to be on every social platform. Each social network has a different audience and you need to make sure that you select one to focus on that caters to the audience you are trying to develop as customers.

Engaging social content with a video or photos posted a couple of times a day is the best way to build up a following. This is where fellow students can help a great deal as you don’t want to have to spend all your time on social media when you’re starting a business. Other students who are studying marketing will be learning exactly how to utilize social media effectively to promote a business and will have skills you can draw on.

Establishing your own blog is a good way of building up an audience. You can do a google search for already established blogs relating to your product and reach out to these other bloggers, telling them about your product and why it would interest their readers. Don’t forget to add all the ways you are going to use social media for your business proposal.

9. You Can Take Part in Free Entrepreneurial Activities

Universities all over the nation are offering help to young student entrepreneurs. Most colleges with business degrees understand the benefits of practicing entrepreneurship rather than just learning about it. They usually offer programs to help entrepreneurs who want to start a real business as opposed to following a theory-only based curriculum. Some of them have incubators for student entrepreneurs that provide office space, mentoring and even funding.

Many of them have centers for entrepreneurship that include additional resources, competitions, mentorships and more. For example, Brown University is home to the student-led Brown Entrepreneurship Program. Arizona State has the Entrepreneurship and Innovation Group. The University of California, Berkeley, has an accelerator program. The Whitman School of Management at Syracuse has a whole department devoted to emerging businesses.

At Babson College, starting your own business is part of the first-year curriculum. Northeastern students run an accelerator that provides coaching, mentoring and structured gap funding. Also, many universities have start-up competitions. One of the most popular activities at the University of California Irvine is the annual Business Plan competition. They offer over $100,000 in cash prizes for the best startup ideas.

Competitions come in many different forms, such as submissions requiring the development of a business plan, presenting a pitch or creating a business model. Taking part in all the entrepreneurial activities colleges present is valuable for testing out your ideas and establishing a network of fellow entrepreneurs. You can also develop your skills, get advice from mentors, receive valuable feedback and access capital if your idea catches someone’s attention.

10. You Can Benefit From Free Business Consulting

What if the industry experts were prepared to give you free advice? You would probably jump at the opportunity. Many universities can hook you up with free business consulting through their alumni programs. For example, Connecticut University offers free business consulting. Free business consultations can answer questions about starting a business and taking your first steps.

Once you are out of college, you won’t have the opportunity to benefit from free consulting. Professionals who offer business consulting services charge you an arm and a leg for their advice. Many universities provide student entrepreneurs with no-cost, confidential advice, like market analysis and competitor research. You can also get help with business planning and a business viability assessment. They also offer one-to-one meetings with expert advisors.

At some universities, filling in a venture assessment form and setting up a meeting for you with an expert happens online. Once you have had your meeting, you receive detailed notes. This has proved successful at the University of Miami where students and alumni created The Launch Pad.

11. You Will Learn to Deal With Failure

Not every enterprise you tackle will succeed, but that is another lesson. Learning how to react to failure may be one of the most valuable lessons to learn when starting your own business. The path to success is never a straight one and is often strewn with failures. When starting a business, things usually don’t go quite as you’ve planned. You may find difficult to juggle studies and business.

Also, you may feel discouraged when customers complain about your product. So, you may often feel the urge to call it quits. However, every business has its ups and downs, even established ones. The trick is to use every failure as an opportunity to grow. If you can learn how to do this, you have a remarkable key to help you for the rest of your life.

But you will have times when something you put great effort into totally bombs. And you will get up again, assess why you failed, learn from it and move on to the next. If you ever become too comfortable and not experiencing any bumps, it may mean you are not stretching yourself enough. If you mess up, you have plenty of opportunities to bounce back. The last thought you want after leaving college is regret that you didn’t go after your dream.

When things don’t go as you’ve planned, you’ll learn to chalk it up to experience. This will benefit you when you leave college, giving you deeper insight into the world around you. Everyone has failures so learning how to deal with them and grow from them is an essential life lesson.

12. You Will Have a Great Resume After Graduation

Whether you plan to continue as an entrepreneur after you graduate or pursue a job in the corporate world, your resume will benefit from showing some entrepreneurial experience. Even if the business you started at college was unsuccessful, employers will usually appreciate that you gave it a try. It is difficult to learn business skills solely within a classroom situation. So, any indication you have applied your studies in some way is a plus.

In the current economic climate, good grades are not enough to get you that dream job once you graduate. Employers are often more interested in practical experience than in a fancy degree. And they are far more impressed by the ways you applied your studies than in the studies themselves. Graduates who have no experience are often of little use to a company because it takes time for them to find their feet and be an asset.

Internships with big-name companies are highly desirable, so the competition is fierce. So having a start-up business on your resume can increase your odds. Your level of hands-on experience will work in your favor in such a situation.

If you take full advantage of your college years and use them to start your own business, you can stand out from the crowd. You will learn many valuable lessons that have not come from just doing college assignments. Also, you will have faced numerous challenges and learned to handle failure. You will already have bridged that distance between college and the real world, giving yourself a head start that can set you firmly on the road to success.