So, you’re building a world changing company in college? Great! Let’s talk about how to maximize your college experience.
The “Student Card” is one of the most valuable assets many 14-23 year olds are given, and I fret it is under leveraged. If you’ve been dealt this card and are looking to leverage it to help scale your startup, let me explain how I've tried to make the most of my "card."
Good Will: When you have a .edu email, chances are more ppl will respond to you. It's no shocker that people feel compelled to help young, ambitious, students achieve their dreams. Also, it’s worth noting that if you’re sending cold outreach emails from your school email, you’ll almost never land in spam (your school's domain is pretty strong lol). So use those grubby little student hands of yours to send a billion cold emails, and heck, maybe even run your company’s sales outreach campaign off your school email (don’t tell Michigan, but I totally plugged my Umich gmail into Lemlsit and Apollo lol.)
Opportunities to Learn: Internships, shadowing opportunities, co-ops, fellowships, externships, etc. are plentiful for 14-23 year olds. Now if you’re already in the mist of building something, a lot of these opportunities may be too time intensive for you. But, if you’re still in the early stages, and or looking for something like a more low key venture type fellowship, then boy do you have options.
The truth is, it's really hard to find top talent to hire. It's a no brainer for companies to entertain your curiosities and help you learn through these sorts of initiatives.
Hiring: If you’re building a great startup in college, then you need lots of help. Building a killer team is going to be crucial to your success. Lucky for you, if you go to a top school, you’re surrounded by an immense amount of amazing new potential hires. Your recruiting efforts just got 10x easier by proximity and there are no shortages of free interns looking to work for you if you spin it in the right direction. Not to mention, you’ve got a ton of clubs on your campus that also probably want to give you free labor. Tap into those marketing, consulting, and whatever else clubs on your school’s campus and give them something cool to work on (i.e your startup.)
Free Stuff: There are so many free and discounted resources for students. My university gives me $100k+ of online subscriptions and softwares for free, and that is not uncommon amongst schools. The world knows students are broke, and that alpha is for you to extract. I have a friend who started his own hedge fund, and he may indefinitely stay enrolled in one credit at his university so he can keep getting access to all the free softwares he needs to run his fund. He’s netting so much value just by paying for one class!
Student Initiatives: There are many unique opportunities designed for students and young people. Free fellowships, trips abroad, volunteer initiatives, etc. The point is, there are a lot of chances to see, learn, and experience the world on someone else's dime when you're young. Not only that, there are about 10 billion pitch contests and business plan contests that are specifically for college founders. When I was building a new startup last year, I hired a virtual assistant overseas to help me apply to literally every single college pitch contest type event that my company qualified for. Sure enough we raked in a ton of non equity dilutive capital and extended our runway!
There are many more variations of value and alpha that students can derive from their years in high school and college. I could write pages on all the amazing opportunities I've been given over these years of my life. The trick is learning where to look and to always be looking. And if you’re too busy to look, pay someone or get an intern to look for you!
