

Ask HN: What does a college startup club need to do? - ajaimk

I run the Entrepreneurs Society at my college (Georgia Tech). We are rebooting the group and what is the best things we can do for our members next year?<p>Please suggest.
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michaelfairley
Make sure people are making things, rather than just talking about making
things.

Don't have idea competitions. Have an MVP competition.

~~~
andymism
One of the major advantages to actually making things is that the students
will be making things _with each other_. As many have said before, figuring
out who to build a product with is just as important (or more so, even) than
figuring out what to build.

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mjfern
Instead of a business plan competition, how about a competition where students
must create and refine a value proposition and launch a real product or
service (alpha version). The new ventures in the competition can be judged
based on a range of tangible criteria, such as (a) how many customers have
agreed to trial the product, (b) what kind of feedback have customers
provided, (c) how much revenue has been generated, etc. I think such a
competition would provide much more value to students than a traditional
business plan competition, in part because it would force students to not only
formulate a venture idea but also execute and test the idea with real
customers.

~~~
mdolon
From my personal experiences, I don't think that would work as well for a few
of reasons:

\- Students don't have that much time - just creating a business plan and
convincing presentation/pitch was hard enough for most groups at our school.
Actually funding an idea and executing is much harder and more time consuming,
especially if you're taking a lot of credit hours.

\- With our business plan competition, we would start out with a large number
of interested students and that number would drop with each meeting. I'm not
sure how many students would be able to manage (or have interest) in pursuing
their business until the end of the competition.

\- This would only work for certain businesses and eliminate ones that require
research or a significant time investment. When I took part in the
competition, we were competing with a group working on a medical product that
will hopefully save lives one day. They were at the very early stages of their
prototype after having researched the principles behind it for a couple of
years. They won the competition and I think(hope?) used the funds for their
business.

\- I assume it would also be harder to judge, as different businesses have
different measures of success (based on revenue, # of customers, etc.)

All that said I do wish students would actively pursue a business to learn the
ins and outs of it through active involvement. I just don't think it's
feasible to do it through a competition. Maybe the whole entrepreneurship club
could work on a business together though? Or find a struggling local business
and help them - that would be an immense learning experience in itself (I wish
there was a class that did that).

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mdolon
You could start a business plan (or elevator pitch) competition. Find sponsors
to donate a few thousand as the prize money and get local entrepreneurs, angel
investors and VCs to judge.

We do it at UNC (<http://www.carolinachallenge.org/>) and it does a few
things:

    
    
      - inspires and motivates students to start a business
      - brings attention to the entrepreneurship club or business school
      - provides funding to a new company (if the students choose to run with it)

~~~
anuleczka
Definitely a great idea! RPI (my college) recently hosted one, and was even
able to bring in an alumnus who is now at a Silicon Valley VC to judge it.

More details here: <http://www.eship.rpi.edu/elevator.html>

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zaidf
Here's what it shouldn't do: have meetings where they read many different
theories of entrepreneurship off a powerpoint. That represents our
Entrepreneurship club.

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anuleczka
I'd recommend checking out University of Michigan's entrepreneurship club,
called MPowered: <http://mpowered.umich.edu/>

I don't actually go there, but I subscribed to their mailing list when I
considered starting something similar at my college. Definitely a great group
to model!

NC State also hosts some great entrepreneurship events for their students,
including spring break trips to Silicon Valley and China.
<http://www.ncsu.edu/ei/events.php>

Finally, I'd say Stanford BASES pretty much sets the standard for student
entrepreneurship groups. <http://bases.stanford.edu/>

Good luck!

~~~
adam_feldman
I'm a member of MPowered at the University of Michigan. I can answer any
questions anyone has.

It's not listed on the website, but I'm on MPowered's team that's launching a
new program in the dorms that groups a bunch of entrepreneurial students
together to live and work together and mentor each other.

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ssmm
your previous submission suggests that you go to georgia tech. i think you
should encourage students of the club to participate in the already
established events such as:

1.the business plan competition: <http://bit.ly/dcT6TP> 2.the inventure prize:
<http://bit.ly/4xGF6T> 3.social entrepreneurship competition:
<http://bit.ly/94WkWn> 4.yahoo hack week & the like. 5.participate in the
atlanta startup weekend

~~~
ajaimk
We are going to be doing these (and possible sending a bunch of kids to
startup weekend for free too ;-)

We are hoping to do something more cause there still exists a void at Tech.

Business Plan Competition - focus is on the BP and not on doing anything

Inventure - Focus is on inventing something - not startups or the business
side - more on making a (physical) product to sell

Social entrepreneurship - same as business plan

Hack week - The closest thing to what I am hoping for but with more focus on
making money ;-)

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milkshakes
Leverage that alum network. Host a forum. Invite successful entrepreneur alums
to give keynote speeches and participate on panels. Invite vc / angel alums to
network with students.

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JangoSteve
Make sure that you don't put people in charge who enjoy talking about being an
entrepreneur and who merely love the idea of being an entrepreneur. The
entrepreneur society at my school (which I helped run) was about 50/50 among
the membership. Once a few from the wrong side start running it, things will
stop getting done (but at least everyone will look really good doing it).

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pjy04
I agree with doing a business plan/idea competition. I would also do a startup
weekend where people can come together on a weekend and do a 48 hour
competition where people come together to start an idea and implement the
business in the 48 hours. Then hold a panel of judges from professors to give
feedback and vote for the best.

~~~
CoachRufus87
we do something like that at UT: <http://3daystartup.com/>

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pgbovine
i'll offer a snarky comment followed by a constructive one (so i hopefully get
a net vote count of zero)

1.) _at my college (a top 10 engineering school)_

why the mention of 'top 10 engineering school'? is that relevant to your
entrepreneurs society? if so, you should just name your school. perhaps start-
up hackers or founders living near your school could offer some in-person
help. if not, then there's no point in 'half-boasting'.

2.) Find somebody who you look up to in the entrepreneurial world, contact
him/her, and figure out a way to get him/her to engage in a live discussion
with your group. Ideally, it would be an in-person visit, but more likely, a
group video chat could still be useful (e.g., 10 students could huddle around
a webcam and ask questions for the 1 expert)

~~~
ajaimk
Not sure why I wrote that ;-p. Fixed it now though. I think I might have been
trying to add a bit of mystery to the whole thing.

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quizbiz
I would love to do something similar at Emory and eventually get a joint group
going that includes the metro colleges. Please contact me asap. :)

