TOP 5 TIPS for Becoming an Entrepreneur

Are YOU a budding young entrepreneur with lots of ideas and big plans to set up your own business? 

With the B-Start Up Launch pad starting on Tuesday 7th June, set up by Careers Network, the Student PR Team asked Head of Development at Virgin Startup, Ian Mason; Cloud Architect at IBM, Pete Cripps; AND creator of Student Beans, James Eder:

What advice they would give to students wanting to start their own business....?

TOP TIP #1: It's best to learn as you go along

Head of Development at Virgin Startup, Ian Mason, told us about how he had set up a few businesses in his time before working at Virgin, and advised that it's best to learn about business as you go along.  More experience in setting up your own business, whether it fails or not, will help in the long run.

"If you're looking to make yourself more employable, then being more enterprising and experiencing entrepreneurship can help you to do that" Ian Mason

TOP TIP #2: Create an experience

So, maybe you have an idea that has been done before, but you think you can do it even better? Pete Cripps from IBM says you should create a better and improved experience of something basic. Just like how for example, Costa took coffee and created millions of coffee shops. Work with people to find out what bothers them, and improve it. Identifying a specific problem or opportunity is the single most important factor for success in business. 

"Capture the emotions that switch people on. This is a very important thing to recognise" Pete Cripps

TOP TIP #3: Be patient

Businesses like Apple or Virgin aren't hugely successful overnight. They have all faced numerous setbacks, failures, flaws and it took time to become the worldwide companies that they are today. Ian Mason described to us how these things take time:

"There's no way I would have been able to set up the business I have now back when I was at university" Ian Mason

TOP TIP #4: Networking & Connecting

Pete Cripps thinks that the most important thing to remember is to keep networking. It's about going out, exploring, getting connections, using the skills out there and meeting other people. Bringing people with different views of the world together to solve a problem gives you a variety of different perspectives. James Eder also agreed with this, and talked of how important it is to talk to new people as often as you can. 

"University gives you the unique opportunity to mix with so many other people in different disciplines" Pete Cripps

TOP TIP #5: JUST START!

James Eder told us that the big thing that stops most people from starting their business is thinking their idea is not good enough, or not trialling, or just not going for it. It's about just trying it out, getting out there and learning from your mistakes.

"As long as you're learning and thinking 'how can I do this better?' then you can only move forward" James Eder