“Find a job you love and you will never work a day in your life” - Confucius.
This is the mantra that connects all entrepreneurs. They start companies to solve problems they are passionate about solving. I used to think that being an entrepreneur was all about making lots of money, and preferably doing so very quickly. After spending time with successful entrepreneurs, I realised that financial gain is rarely their primary motivation. They normally have an incurable compulsion to address an issue, and to do so successfully. This could be anything from making really tasty food to manufacturing the world’s fastest computers - they are passionate about meeting a need, creating some benefit for their customers. In fact, some of the greatest entrepreneurs are not driven by profit at all. They recognise that money is a by-product of doing something genuinely valuable, rather than a reason to do it.
Starting a company or a social enterprise whilst you are at university is not only an exciting and admirable career choice, but also an opportunity to explore something you care deeply about. Imagine the sense of pride you would have seeing something you had designed in a shop window, or knowing that your service solved a genuine problem for someone. Knowing that you spotted something that needed to be improved, and actually did something about it! If nothing else, making a real attempt at starting and running an enterprise will be an incredible learning experience, and something that will set you apart from others even if you later decide it’s not for you.
Right now you are at a unique point in your life. You’ll never have the same opportunities as you do while you are here. Of course that goes for all sorts of things, but it is particularly true for those who have considered starting their own ventures.
When you start a business, you run the risk of failing. But right now, the losses potentially incurred are pretty low. There probably isn’t anyone who is financially dependent on you and, if it all went wrong, you could probably go and live with your parents (as embarrassing as that might seem).
Ten years from now it is likely that someone will depend on you financially. You probably won’t be able to face the idea of living with your parents anymore (this would now be embarrassing for the whole family), and you’ll have bills to pay. Compared to such responsibilites, right now you have (almost) nothing to lose.
You’re in a sea of the most creative and intelligent people around - this is true of both students and staff. If you leave it too late, all of these guys will be way out of your price range. Bristol University attracts some of the brightest minds there are and it would be a mistake not to ask them for help with your venture; they will probably advise you for free.
You also have ‘the protégé effect’ on your side. You would be amazed how much help people will give just because you are young and willing to learn. It’s incredible how often experienced entrepreneurs say they wish they had started their businesses earlier, and on that basis they will often bend over backwards to give you advice.
The University has two student societies focused on enterprise: Bristol Entrepreneurs and The Social Enterprise Project. They host events with inspirational speakers, masterclasses on specific subjects in start-up business, competitions, and can help to arrange work experience.
For those students with business ideas already brewing, or those with businesses running, Bristol University Business Angels offer investment, one-to-one advice, peer mentoring, and resources (such as office space in the soon-to-be-launched student business incubator).
The University’s Research and Enterprise Development department is also available to help: they run an annual New Enterprise Competition with an astonishing £35,000 prize fund. The competition is now open, so start putting together your entry.
For the first time this year, Bristol has awarded an Enterprise Scholarship, which was funded by one of our most successful entrepreneur alumni, David Milne, founder of Wolfson Microelectronics. The enterprise scholarship was given to final-year medical student Luc Bujega to support him with his business, Poster Placers.
Luc and his co-founder Hugh Sims-Williams saw an opportunity to target advertisements at medical professionals in staff-only areas in hospitals and colleges, something which had not been done before.
Poster Placers facilitates high-impact nationwide advertising campaigns in medical schools, hospitals and on-line. They allow companies to target doctors, surgeons, medical students and other healthcare professionals by placing posters in their workplace and on educational websites.
For this work Luc was recently awarded the Scholarship, giving him support, office space, and some financial backing to start his business whilst carrying on with his studies.
If you have an enterprise - social or commercial - that you wish to pursue, Bristol offers truly unique avenues to help turn your passion into reality.
For more information visit:
bristolentrepreneurs.co.uk; thesocialenterpriseproject.org.uk; buba.org.uk; bris.ac.uk/red/newco/competition; posterplacers.com
Casino Royale, networking event hosted by BE at Zero Degrees, Tuesday, December 1. More details on their website.
George Mills Bristol Entrepreneurs
I started a design company because I am a compulsive doodler. It is perhaps not the most conventional foundation for a business, but doodling has been my inspiration in a creative - and now business - sense for as long as I can remember. Doodling at school offered an escape from boredom and provided an outlet for any ideas that I had knocking around in my head. Bristol, however, was the first environment in which people really appreciated my scribbles and scrawls, inspiring me to design more seriously. From the confines of my unventilated student halls, my brother, a few friends and I started spray painting our ideas and images onto t-shirts, hoodies, and any other item of clothing we could get our hands on through bartering or nagging. We developed a good reputation and started being asked to produce designs for anything from house parties to festivals. Having mastered the intricacies of Photoshop, my brother and I moved into the world of flyers and posters for clubs, societies, and bands before finally setting up our own clothing and designs company: Handsum Designs. It goes without saying that this did not happen overnight, but the driving force behind everything we have done has always been the enjoyment of what we were doing.
Our initial foray into proper t-shirt printing came about largely by chance. A friend-of-a-friend in Barcelona - where I was on my year abroad - worked for a clothing printing company and so, together with the odd bit of artwork, we started selling our printed designs at a couple of galleries, clothing shops and bars. We had the enthusiasm and the opportunity, and our designs seemed to go down quite well. I would undoubtedly have continued designing and spray painting regardless of what others had thought, but there is a great sense of achievement and encouragement when someone appreciates something you have done. It was great to see a stranger walking down the road wearing one of our designs and imagining that they had woken up that morning and thought to themselves: “I like that, I’ll wear that,” (although in some cases it might simply have been the only clean garment they had lying about) or going to a house party and spotting one of your designs hanging on the wall.
The process of then setting up a business seemed like a natural progression and it has been a massive learning curve; meeting bank managers (some more helpful than others), clothing suppliers, compiling spreadsheets, writing up business plans... All for the sake of getting an image from my head, onto a t-shirt, for someone to wear.
And that, I feel, is a key point. In this age of Dragons Dens and Apprentices where success is measured solely by profits, where stamping on the competition is the only way to get ahead and the amount of money earned considered the only indicator of worth, I feel that an important part of running a business is in danger of being forgotten. The notion of doing something simply because you enjoy it and because you can is being ignored. Theo Paphitis is worth an estimated £165 million, Alan Sugar works 19 hours a day and has amassed an estimated fortune of £730 million. But is that really the only goal that all budding entrepreneurs must aim for; must we allow money to be the sole gauge of success? It often seems that those who do not strictly follow this ethos are somehow considered uncompetitive and unwilling to face the real world.
I’m not saying that setting up our business has not been time-consuming and difficult; this is a very competitive real world into which we are launching ourselves. But I can confidently say that if I never sell another t-shirt in my life, or if I lose all the money I have invested in this venture, I will not consider myself a failure. Through scribbling and doodling away I have had the opportunity to work with internationally renowned bands, have been commissioned to design posters and clothing for festivals, and have worked with artists from all over the UK, Spain and Germany, all of which have been tremendously exciting and all of which have given me a sense of achievement that has no price tag.
The next step is to launch www.handsumdesigns.com in December, something which had not even crossed my mind six months ago. It won’t be the best website ever created, but in a couple of years time I will be able to look back on my time at Bristol and say that I left with so much more than a degree, a tolerance for alcohol and a resistance to sleep deprivation.
handsumdesigns.com
Tom Lindo Handsum Designs
30/11/2009
