This year at South by Southwest (SXSW), The Blackstone Charitable Foundation will be discussing the trends shaping entrepreneurship across college campuses today. In preparation for our panel on creating networks of student entrepreneurs, we surveyed the Student Start Up Madness participants and Blackstone LaunchPad network on their experiences to uncover the key questions we want to tackle while we’re in Austin next week.
QUESTION 1: Why did you start your venture?
When you look at the main reasons why students start their venture, almost 75% of ventures came from a good idea or a personal experience. We were surprised to see so few students finding inspiration from their classroom or a campus resource, while program staff on college campuses noted the opposite and identified resources on college campuses and class projects as the main driver of student entrepreneurship on their campuses. Interestingly, college campuses are investing more than ever before in entrepreneurship courses, as well as building out majors and minors in entrepreneurship. Based on what we’ve seen, we see a huge opportunity for campuses to not only support existing ventures but also to help identify potential entrepreneurs earlier through a number of venues – both experiential opportunities as well as academic environments – to help foster entrepreneurship.
Question 2: What do you think is the biggest challenge to starting a business?
When looking at the biggest challenges student entrepreneurs face, it’s worth nothing that knowing what to do was a bigger challenge than access to funding. We see this across our Blackstone LaunchPad network as student entrepreneurs come to our campus offices seeking advice or support. That being said, capital is still critical. Dorm Room Fund, who will join our panel at SXSW, is working to better connect students to funders. But is there an opportunity to better connect funding with mentorship?
Question 3: What has been the most helpful resource on campus in supporting your venture?
While we’re excited to see the value of school accelerators like Blackstone LaunchPad, the importance of mentorship is clear. For many students, it’s invaluable to have a guiding voice to help navigate starting their venture. But the challenge we see across all these resources is that they’re often limited to a student’s existing network. For students in rural communities or cities with fewer start-ups, this limitation is especially challenging. As start-up culture continues to thrive, students everywhere need access to high-quality sources of support.
Question 4: What is the main reason why students don’t start businesses in college?
When asked why students don’t start businesses in college, the largest reason was again being unsure of the basic steps in building a business. The second most common concern, ‘lack of exposure to entrepreneurship,’ reinforces this trend – too many students don’t have the resources in place to help get good ideas off the ground. This creates an important call to action for leaders in both the academic and start-up communities – empower entrepreneurs as early as possible.
Curious to hear more? Come join us at SXSW.