With student debt loads haunting college grads and jobless joining street protests, President Obama yesterday announced plans to ease student loan burdens by capping payments at 10 percent of what borrowers earn. On top of helping young people in lower wage jobs, the White House hopes the program will aid aspiring entrepreneurs whose student debts might otherwise discourage them from starting businesses.
The White House is building on the existing income-based repayment program that limits loan payments for low-earners to 15 percent of their income, and forgives all debts after 25 years. Starting next year, the cap will be lowered to 10 percent of income (a change that was already slated to happen in 2014). The payment timeline will also be shortened to 20 years, after which remaining debts will be forgiven. The White House estimates the change will lower payments for 1.6 million borrowers.
Coordinated with Obama’s announcement, the Young Entrepreneur Council (a nonprofit membership group) is unveiling a $10 million “Gen Y Fund” that will invest up to $250,000 in startups and cover founders’ federal student loan payments for up to three years. The group is also pushing for legislation that would expand loan deferments and forgiveness specifically for entrepreneurs.
The theory that student debt holds back young entrepreneurs has gained enough traction that venture capitalist Peter Thiel is actually paying would-be founders to drop out of college. I haven’t found any hard data on how educational debt actually affects people’s decisions on whether or not to start a business. But college tuition is rising twice as fast as inflation, and by some estimates Americans now have more student debt than credit card debt. There’s a lot of teeth-gnashing over how many top graduates (especially in math and science) go to Wall Street. These efforts to lower loan payments may make some of them more likely to start companies instead.
So finally a few days afterStartup Weekend London2011 I have had the chance to reflect on what was a great weekend!
For those of you that don’t know Startup Weekend, it is an event held from Friday evening to Sunday night where a bunch of ambitious and determined entrepreneurs come and pitch an idea, build a startup and present to the judges over the 54 hour period.
Here is a video to explain a little more:
So I gave a little update ‘27 hours in‘ but this is a more comprehensive review of events.
Startup Weekend Day 1
So Friday evening roles up and so do over 200 entrepreneurs, all ready to network, pitch, build, eat, drink and generally have a good time. Stocked up on pizza and beer over 60 participants took to the floor to pitch there ideas. With only 60 seconds per pitch and 64 pitches it was a frantic hour and a bit. Ideas where then voted on and over 20 where then picked.
This is where it got even more frantic as those chosen now had to form a team, how, by shouting over everyone else to attract people over to you. With half an hour to find attract people with the right skills the room felt like a busy trading floor. It was evident that developers were in high demand, as always.
I joined a team called Social Stadiums, pitched by Sam, the idea was a social network for sports stadiums where fans could comment, sharepics/vids, vote on polls and even purchase merchandise and food and drink from the app.
Due to such a large number of participants the venue was moved to Ravensbourne college right in front of The O2, formally the Millennium Dome. A beautiful venue as this was, it did not have the capacity to accommodate people overnight, which the previous venue did.
This meant after the pitches it was virtually closing time and so with little chance to meet the team so far we decided to hit the bar and get to know each other over a couple beers.
Startup Weekend Day 2
Saturday morning and with half the teams based in Ravensbourne college and half the teams based in Club Workspaces in Clerkenwell (the original location) everyone got underway.
We had a large team, a very large team, 11 to be exact! There goes the lean startup model, but at least we had a lot of skills available to us. Having such a large team brought about in benefits as apart from a large skill set we got to work intensely with a diverse amount of people that we have all got to know each other well. The downside was that it took a little longer in making decisions and sometimes peoples roles were undefined. But everyone wanted to get stuck in and took it upon themselves to get involved, contribute and be proactive. 10 guys and 1 girl, 3 designers, 1 designer and the rest in business and marketing roles, it certainly was an interesting team, if what a little unnecessarily big. But we all got on well, which always help.
After spending most of the day figuring out what we are going to work on and talking to mentors, which where useful although after about the fourth one a little annoying. Slowed us down a little having to explain what we were doing 6+ times. They did give us some great pointers and take apart aspects of our strategy which put us on the right track.
The day was long but enjoyable and after dinner everyone retired to the bar in The O2 for a night organised by one of the other startups in attendance, PartyWithALocal. They do exactly as the name suggests, find locals for you to party with when travelling.
Startup Weekend Day 3
The last day of the weekend begins with a few looking a little worse for wear afterthe previous night, but with the pitchesonly now hours away, heads were down working hard. As the afternoon rolled on teams began practicing their pitches. After lunch we grabbed a couple mentors showed them our pitch. They shot it down, changes needed to be made. Again, new pitch, more mentors to hand us even more advice and therefore changes. It was all fantastic advice and come 4 ‘o’ clock we felt we had a great pitch, but the multiple revisions gave us little time to practice the pitch. We did however take on all the questions mentors asked us and create the perfect responses. This proved useful as you will see later.
As the clock hit 4.30 the presentations began. 4 minutes to pitch and 4 minutes of Q/A from the judges. In a room of well over 200, it got a little toastie to say the least. There were plenty of beers and crisps to last the four hours or so of pitches.
Our pitch for Social Stadiums, came just after the midway break, so people were a little more fresh and alert at least. Our presentation started fantastically, Sam did a good job, but unfortunately as we came to our slide where we embedded a video, of some market research we carried out, the volume didn’t work. In trying to rectify this the tech guy switched screens and in the end we were glad that we added subtitles on. Anyway despite the disruption the pitch went well although we were unable to finish due to the time lost during the video incident, aagghhh technology!
So the Q/A next and thankfully we fully covered every potential angle they could come at us beforehand. Sam answered every question with aplomb and impressed the judges with the answers.
The Results
Did we win?! No
The prizes were as follows:
The main prize, most innovative, went to Portal Entertainment an independent cross-platform production company (who were already a little more established before they turned up at the weekend)
The most likely to get funding were Trendset.me who delved into crowdsourced market research.
The finally prize was most likely to make a million which went to Invizuaa digital marketing accountability company. (Again a bit disappointing since they were already more established before the weekend)
Oh yeah and since there were a couple of fun apps that would definitely go viral, they made up a category, funniest app which went too ImClockingYou, who I thought had a fantastic app and funny, well done pitch. Basically you can set time limits, say if you are going shopping with your girlfriend and the time limit is exceeded she forfeits and you gain a reward from your girlfriend. It can be anything that you determine from cooking dinner to ‘special time’ as they put it in there pitch. It works both ways and for any situation you wish. It’s a pretty funny idea, and that’s why they won funniest app I guess!
And all though these were the winners there where no losers over the weekend, I think everyone learned something and was part of a fantastic experience one which many will want again and one which many entrepreneurs encounter across the world at other Startup Weekends.
So what are my takeaways, well here are a few Startup Weekend Tips:
Remember your building a company, not just a product!
This was the first thing we did, build a strategy and make sure we knew what we wanted to say on the Sunday night pitch. This helped us prioritise the app we built. This is what will help us take the company forward in the future as well. With the number of Bus/Marketing guys in the team, it’s no surprise we took this route.
Find a way to be different
There are a lot of people, ideas and pitches, and with only 60 seconds to pitch you need to make sure you stand out, whether it is how you present or what you wear it doesn’t matter just make an impact or your cool idea might get lots and forgotten about amongst tens of other cool ideas
Make the most of the mentors
They’re there for a reason. You may think you have the greatest idea in the world but don’t be afraid to share it with others, that’s the only way people can pick holes in your idea. They are there to help push you in the right direction and offer advice on your pitches, ideas etc…
And one last thing, enjoy it! It is a great experience and make the most of it, just have fun.
Emerging Students is conducting a global search for new and emerging movers and shakers across universities around the world. These will include students/recent alumni rebelling against mediocrity during their time at university and beyond. These individuals however, are not simply people of achievement but of substance and character.
The top 20 movers and shakers feature will seek to identify 20 university student and recent alumni who have shown much potential. This final list will feature students and alumni from a variety of universities around the UK, an authentic representation of highly commendable emerging students alumni across the university graph with a rebellion against status quo expectations and loyalty to no university brand or status.
A panel from Emerging Students and pending partners will decide on a shortlist from which those candidates will be contacted for a short interview and then the final list will be chosen and published in the Emerging Students launch issue.
This will be an annual feature in hope of raising the standard of expectation and aspiration of university students/alumni across higher education community.
The Top 20 finalists will have access to a world of opportunities, including amazing industry placements.
ABOUT EMERGING STUDENTS (ES)
Emerging Students (ES) is a new national/global university news and media company providing reportage on university culture and the real world. With the aim of redefining university culture in the UK, (ES) is a new subculture and expression; students & alumni aspiring to talent, character and knowledge and in doing so defy mediocrity.
Covering anything from emerging entrepreneurs, rogue university policy makers, graduate fashion, Film makers in Peru, alumni shakers to the best place to buy fresh bread for life on campus. (ES) is blend of engaging thought, design, rich culture and tight community.
NOMINATE
To nominate yourself or someone – email top20@emergingstudents.com with NAME, SHORT BIO and contact details!!
Blessing Maregere and Adam Bradford are two ‘young entrepreneurs’ from Yorkshire. Young entrepreneurs are not commonly referred to, yet… These two ambitious young people are about to change that and are celebrating Global Entrepreneurship Week by holding a Boat Party for Entrepreneurs on the River Thames!
Blessing is an Award-winning 18 year old social Entreprenuer and Author. He is the Managing Director of Munch Student, CEO & Founder of Bright Futures Enterprise and author of ‘Who said you can’t be young and successful’. His early success motivated him to inspire the next generation of Entreprenuers. Adam is also an award-winning 18 year old entrepreneur, founder of UnITe Technology International group of companies and Peter Jones Enterprise Academy National Ambassador of the Year.
The Boat Party is an event for aspiring entrepreneurs, business leaders, social entrepreneurs and professionals to network with like minded people and celebrate Global Entrepreneurship Week. Live entertainment, music and drinks will be available on the boat.
So much more than just seven days, Global Entrepreneurship Week (GEW) is an entrepreneurial movement of individuals and organizations: inspiring, connecting and equipping entrepreneurs while showcasing the support that is available to them all year round.
Every year in November, host companies within each country co-ordinate a network of partners to run events that inspire and challenge both aspiring and existing entrepreneurs.
GEW 2010 was the biggest and most successful year yet, with a record 104 countries taking part.
The Boat Party will form part of national celebrations to encourage entrepreneurship to catalyse the economy’s recovery across the country, and across the world.
ROCKTAILS is a premium frozen cocktail, sold ambient and frozen by the consumer. It is created for 20-35 year old females who entertain more and more at home, but can’t get access to convenient, bar quality cocktails.
Background
Naomi and her co-founder Helen both left uni and moved to london to work. Naomi worked for an FTSE company while Helen worked for AISEC.
After spending time in the corporate world , Naomi decided to leave her company to find something she was more passionate about.
Helen long year’s sabatical came to an end and instead of going through the corporate route, she decided she wanted to do something much more fulfilling.
The co-founders who initially met through a leadership development organisation AISEC were set for the next adventure.
The Idea
After spending their fair share of time in cocktail bars, they realised it was much more complicated to re-create the bar experience especially when it came to house parties or cook-up for friends.
The ingredients were expensive, it was time consuming and no-one wanted to miss out on the party preparing cocktails.
They kept waiting for someone else to spot the opportunity and create the service. For years, nothing happened until Naomi decided to plan a summer money spinner and instead of selling alcoholic slush puppies, they decided it was time to put their passion to action and create the cocktail and since then, the idea has blossomed.
At the end of August, the two co-founders decided to move out of london and work full-time on their startup, after weeks, weekends and evening planning the business whilst also juggling their full-time jobs.
On 7th Spetember 2010, they opened their makeshift office in Cardiff and the rest now is history.
The company won the Wales ‘The Pitch’ Heat and are also nominated for Venture Candy Metro Advertising Award, as well as being in the last 5 for Startup Britains MAA Marketing Award.
High School Teenpreneur Shahed Khan has spent his summer networking with everyone and pitching to Venture Capitalists. Why? Because he has ambitions to see his business idea be successful. While he is only 16, he has already got a team of 4 people for his company Viatask.
Viatask is a social errand running platform. It connects people who need errands done, but are too busy to carry them out themselves, with people who have some free time to carry out these errands and gives them a chance to make some cash.
Shahed separates these people into ‘Posters’ & ‘Runners’, I think you can guess which is which. He got the idea after watching ‘Million Dollar Listing’ where a rich business man paid his concierge to travel to America and buy him a house for his family.
He realised there are many people who may have the time to accommodate doing errands in their spare time and getting paid, while their are many people who don’t have the time to run errands due to work commitments and are able to pay others to complete these simple tasks.
Whilst many people come up with business ideas, Shahed went through with it and started up Viatask and has been pitching for investment during his summer holidays. The 16 year old businessman looks at the positives of being a young entrepreneur, “My age alone is a great marketing strategy for the company. Not a lot of entrepreneurs meet young entrepreneurs like me, so I get a lot of their attention.” he says.
Although people tend to remember him and give more attention, he does find attending many networking events impossible as they are held in over 21 bars! He is also due to head back to school soon but is determined to make it work. He has a good sized team who can all contribute, he says ”Without a great team you can’t build a startup.”
The number of teen entrepreneurs is on the rise and as barriers to entry are low and more successful young entrepreneurs start to garner media attention, I’m we will see more and more teenpreneurs. Good luck to Shahed on building his startup.
SoundCloud has often been called the YouTube of sound. Co-founder Alex Ljung has ambitions to see this come to fruition. When starting the company in 2007 he wanted SoundCloud to be to sound what YouTube is to video and what Flickr is to photos.
Location
The Swedish startup set up HQ in Berlin, in the middle of what is becoming a hotbed of startup activity. Ljung calls the city a startup itself, an ‘ever-changing and innovative, creative with a bit of an anti-establishment attitude.’ Ever since the Berlin Wall was brought down the city has seen the growth of the creative industries technology, design, fashion and music while rents have stayed cheap.
Growth
SoundCloud has thrived and grown in it’s surroundings and as well as taking over Europe they are now expanding into the US with a base in San Fransisco. The company has seen massive growth in the last year with over 4 million new users, taking the company to 5 million users in June of this year.
Investment
In 2009 SoundCloud received it’s first investment of $3.32 million from Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures a European Venture Capitalist. They then went on to raise $10 million in Series B funding from Union Square Ventures and Index Ventures, adding Fred Wilson and Mike Volpi, respectively, to the team.
In the beginning
The Company launched its service to the public in October 2008. When going into the music industry there is often a battle between music labels and these audio sharing tech startups. The two founders Alex Ljund and Eric Wahlforss however, went in working with the artists and labels to try and ensure that copyrighted content is not shared.
Sound was a large part of Alex and Eric’s lives and having worked with sound for a long time they realised that there was a lot that needed to be fixed. This is were it all began. See more in the video below, just ignore the Adidas logo at the end, the video was produced by them for SoundCloud.
Just 12 months ago the three founders of Love Da Popcorn were working full time at advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi. They wanted to start something themselves and spotting gap in the market for a range of unique flavoured popcorn without being heavily loaded with sugar.
The three founders are Christian Hartmann, Martin McLaughlin and Tom Callard seem totally mad but that’s what makes the company really. The three brand experts have created exactly that, a fun loving, creative and slightly nuts brand for Love Da Popcorn and a lot of that image comes from the image of the three founders. They are looking to modernise and inject some life into the old popcorn treat and make it into a more modern mainstream snack.
On the 7th August Christian, Martin and Tom appeared on the Dragons Den TV show where they pitched Love Da Popcorn. They went in looking for £70,000 and they came out with exactly that after dragon Peter Jones was impressed enough to make an offer. The only problem is that in getting the investment they gave almost half the company away in equity, 45% to be precise.
The small business was built on the passion of the three young entrepreneurs, but after their grilling on Dragons Den a lot of questions were raised that could hamper there success. Thankfully they were able to raise the money they needed but more importantly, have the expertise of the world renowned Peter Jones on board, who can help take them to the next level.
The guys are very ambitious and there hunger for success will, I’m sure, go far.
“It’s been harder than we ever imagined, but it’s also a really exciting time for us. I don’t think any of us understood how difficult it can be to start a business, but we now have an amazing opportunity to make Love Da Popcorn a household name”.
As an entrepreneur you may be well aware of the benefits that your company can offer to clients – but are your potential customers in the loop?
One of the most cost effective ways of getting the word out is to generate press coverage for your business – in print publications, online and through the broadcast media. However, editorial slots in any of these media are hard to come by, so it is important to implement a press strategy to make the most of any available opportunities.
Business owners have two choices when it comes to generating press coverage – they can decide to employ a public relations professional or can go it alone and decide to do their own press in house.
Employing a PR Consultant to Promote Your Startup
For those who are not well versed in the way the media works, employing a PR professional can take a lot of the strain out of publicising a business in the press. In much the same way as a PAYE payment company can take responsibility for payroll issues out of the hands of the business owner, a PR firm will be able to create and manage an effective public relations strategy for an enterprise.
PR professionals will have a great set of media contacts and will be able to channel information about your company to those outlets most likely to pick it up and run with it. They are also well aware of what editors and journalists will find “newsworthy” (interesting and relevant enough to be featured in their broadcasts or publications)
Tips on Conducting Your Own PR Campaigns
If you do not have the inclination (or budget) to employ a professional , then never fear, because there are a number of simple steps that you can take to catch the eye of the press and try and secure some free advertising. Things that business owners carrying out their own press and public relations work may wish to consider include:
Writing and distributing topical press releases within your industry. Press releases must be relevant and not overly promotional. The key to getting a press release picked up by the media is to make your company only a small part of the story.
Consider holding an event to raise money for a popular local charity and inviting the local press to cover your efforts, or issue an expert comment on a story that is already getting a lot of coverage. Press releases can be sent directly to newsdesks of relevant publications, or you may wish to use an online press release distribution service who will forward uploaded information onto relevant media as well as making it searchable online.
Building a relationship with the relevant journalists. Contacts are a journalist’s lifeblood, so if you, as a business owner, get a reputation as a helpful contact, they are much more likely to consider featuring your business in their work.
Join networking groups for your area or your field and seek out members of the press – introduce yourself and share interesting information, don’t give them a sales pitch on your own product or service. Once you know who the key players are be sure to stay in touch.
A few weeks ago we broke the news that London Startup Adzuna, founded by young entrepreneurs Andrew Hunter&Doug Monro, raised 300k in funding. Earlier this week I had a chance to interview the guys and get their thoughts as young entrepreneurs in the early stages of building their startup. The full interview is below:
Hi Andrew and Doug, great to have you guys on YHP, how are you doing today?
Great thanks. The sun is shining, business is booming and England are winning the cricket!
Can you give us a bit of background about yourselves?
We met working at Gumtree in 2005. We both stayed in the local internet space for the next 5 years and finally hatched the Adzuna plan in 2010 on the back of an envelope in a central London pub. The beta version of the site went live in July 2011.
Doug was most recently COO of property portal Zoopla, leading the growth of the team from 5 to 75 people and the site up to number 2 in UK property with 5 million visitors a month. Previously he was MD of Gumtree.com, the UK’s largest classified ads site.
Andrew was most recently VP Marketing & UK GM of local review site Qype, where he grew the site from 0 to 17 million monthly unique visitors in 2 years. Before Qype, Andrew was Head of Marketing at Gumtree.com.
Tell us a bit more about Adzuna and what separates it from other job sites?
Firstly, we bring together all the job ads out there. For example, the largest online job boards (eg Monster) only feature 15-20% of job vacancies.
Secondly, we’re a search engine. We search all the sites to pull out the freshest listings and package them together in a rich search experience with clever, powerful, fast filters. Essentially, Adzuna is doing for local classifieds what Skyscanner & Kayak did for travel.
Thirdly, as well as all the ads, we add unique product features on top. For example, by using your LinkedIn and Facebook contacts, Adzuna exploits social networking functions to allow customers to gain an advantage in their search (or ‘get hired with a little help from your friends’). It makes sense for all these multiple sources to converge because that’s ultimately what people find useful. And we can also give our users true insight from data because we have close to 100% of the listings.
Where did the idea for Adzuna come from?
Online classified ads are very fragmented and too complicated to navigate. Users want to search through all the ads from a single website, which is what we provide at Adzuna. For example, there are currently over 70,000 accountancy vacancies in the UK spread over at least 700 job boards, resulting in a bewildering number of options and destinations for job hunters to visit. The result of this is great inefficiency in matching employers and job hunters, buyers and sellers. We want to make that experience better, firstly by bringing together all of the ads in one place and then by layering on innovations in social, data and mobile.
You guys recently raised £300k in funding, how did you go about raising this and what challenges did you face?
We raised £300K investment from Passion Capital and some prominent angels (with backgrounds at eBay, Skype, BT and Virgin) in addition to funds originally invested by Doug and myself. The fund raising process was fairly painless (Passion Capital pride themselves on making this process as “vanilla” as possible). The only real challenge we had was making sure we didn’t take any “dumb money”. We made sure we had proviso in place to ensure all of our investors (in addition to cash) are able to help us with key areas of the business such as legal, international development and partnerships.
What’s the Business Model for Adzuna?
The business model will be advertising funded both in paid per click/search based but at this stage we are purely focused on building an excellent job search experience that people want to use. Money will come later and in ways that don’t damage that experience – although we know from our previous businesses that consumer traffic in this sector is valuable to advertisers.
So where is the company based and what’s the size of the team?
We’re based in Camden in sunny North London and we’re a team of around 10 people. Our office has a pool table, a table tennis table and free food and drink throughout the day.
Wow that sounds like you have a great office but what was your biggest challenge when starting your own business?
Quitting our jobs and actually have the courage to start. Both Doug and I were working at very successful start ups (Zoopla and Qype) before starting Adzuna. Leaving great companies (and people) was very difficult, but it was definitely the right decision.
Who has inspired you most in business?
Doug – Pierre Omidyar (founder of eBay). Because he was cool dude and a great business man.
Andrew – Daniel Ek (founder of Spotify). Because he’s not afraid to disrupt markets and he’s only 26.
What has been your most memorable moments as an entrepreneur?
We’re very early stage, so aside from putting a very big cheque in the bank account, I think our public beta launch was very special. My friends and family were very positive encouraging about version 1 of the product, but it’s always nice to get some validation and love from some heavyweight news publications like The Guardian, Reuters and TechCrunch.
And what advice would you give other potential young entrepreneurs looking to start their own companies?
Talk to everyone you can about what you are doing / thinking of doing and ask for help. Don’t be guarded with your idea. You need input from everyday people as well as more experienced entrepreneurs who can help point you in the right direction.
What’s next? How do you envisage the next few years?
Our objective is to become the biggest and best classifieds search engine globally and we want that to happen in the next few years. I reckon we might be quite busy in the coming month ☺
Thanks guys for taking the time to join us on YHP!
