#3 - Entrepreneurship Story

I was exposed to entrepreneurship early in life, but one instance was in high school, mainly due to a class I took called “Entrepreneurship.” The main idea of the class was to learn entrepreneurship tactics and strategies and apply them to a realistic venture. The venture that my class came up with was hosting a Fall Festival at the high school for children in grades K-5 in order to raise money for Toys for Tots. I was selected by my class to be Project Lead, and had to create the business plan from scratch. It was challenging and demanding, but so rewarding on the actual day of the festival. We ended up raising more money than we expected and the Fall Festival is still in continuance annually at the high school. Overall, this experience taught me how challenging it can be if you don’t have a team to support you. I relied on my classmates to help me put the Festival together, because there was no way I could have done it alone. Even though we came up with the Fall Festival idea as a class, I still had to prove my individual vision of the Festival to my classmates and get them on board. Although the outcome was an event and not so much a product or service, I learned how to view things with an entrepreneurial mindset. 

I was also just recently exposed to entrepreneurship at my internship placement in London. I studied abroad there this past Spring semester, and had an amazing opportunity to work for a small start-up called StepEx. This company consisted of 4 employees, including myself, and our office was located in a shared innovation hub. Dan, the CEO and founder, is passionate about helping others and making sure everyone has an equal opportunity to higher education, so his idea was to revolutionize student finance by connecting talent to wealth. Dan taught me that being an entrepreneur consists of long, tedious hours of hard work, with many of them being behind the scenes or before any successes come along. Dan had to be persistent and patient for 18 months when working with the UK regulators in order to build a framework that allowed this new type of credit for people and to avoid any financial issues in the future. I learned that not everything goes as planned when you are an entrepreneur – every day something new is thrown your way. For example, issues with the UK government (otherwise known as Brexit), put a lengthy halt on the company’s authorization, setting back StepEx’s time line. In addition, StepEx was still in the final developmental stage when I interned there, so I learned that operational flows can change quite frequently at this time. Not only did my company teach me what it was like to start a business and present a new idea to society, but I was also surrounded by many other entrepreneurs working to become successful too. The innovation hub consisted of companies at all developmental stages, so it was neat to experience and observe the ups and the downs that take place when starting a company. Overall, I learned that to be an entrepreneur, you have to be fully committed to what you’re doing. It’s all or nothing.

I enrolled in ENT3003 because entrepreneurship teaches invaluable business skills and the development of business instincts in unpredictable settings. Ever since high school, I’ve had an interest in maybe one day developing my own company, and figured this was the best class to help determine if it was right for me. There is so much to learn from entrepreneurs and their ventures, and this class offers a more in-depth experience and learning platform than a traditional business class would. I’m convinced that everything I learn from this class will become useful in any future career.