During my first year at university, there was a recurring problem that students across the city were facing. A few friends and I set out to attempt to solve the problem faced by so many of our peers. I had the idea at the end of my first year, and after interning at a startup for a few months I felt I’d developed a good foundational understanding of what it takes to make the idea a reality.
The majority of my second year was spent making the necessary relationships, going through the university startup program for advice and funding, then validating/testing the idea. Of course, in the UK your second year grades begin to count to your overall grade, which added an extra layer of challenges to creating a startup whilst at university. Albeit not the most calculated move, the startup began to take precedence over my university degree as second year raced away. I was not the most natural student in the subjects I studied, coupled with the fact my degree was intensive, ‘winging it’ was not going to be as easy as it was for some students. I was then fully aware how vast the challenge was going to be to manage my degree alongside pursuing the startup idea.
Another element to balance alongside those mentioned was the social life of university. I lived in a unique student house during my second year, housing 13 students – which was great socially as there was always something going on. However, this quickly proved to add an extra level of complexity when trying to juggle my degree, startup venture and social life. I didn’t want to compromise such aspects of my student experience therefore I resulted into prioritising university work during the day alongside getting startup work done where I could to get the startup off the ground. During the evenings – when I wasn’t going out with friends – I would work into the early hours where there were no pressing distractions. This routine allowed me to make rapid progress during the nights without overly compromising other elements of student life…but with some compromise on sleep. Stress often piled on when deadlines came by every few months, as you don’t want to stall progress when launching a startup as it can take weeks – maybe months – to regain that momentum.
Fast forward to the end of second year, we’d tested the idea and launched a pilot version amidst end of year exams, ready for when students were about to embark on their post exam celebrations. This was a success which allowed us to then start planning for the big launch during the start of the next academic year (for freshers). However, launching the pilot amidst my summer exams affected my grades a significant amount meaning I had to make the grades up in my final year to achieve the grade I needed. My focus and prioritisation had ended up being very much skewed to the pilot launch, albeit my conscious efforts I mentioned previously in trying to prevent this.
After a summer packed with interning again at the same startup as the summer before, getting ready for the big launch and unfortunately my grandfather passing away – it was the start of my final year before I knew it. Juggling multiple things had been the theme of my last year or so at this point, and I realised I was no master at it yet either. A lesson I learnt was it is near impossible to not subconsciously prioritise one thing over another, even if you try and maximise all your time available. Our thinking is often riddled with bias, I was substantially more passionate about the startup than my degree studies, and it proved difficult to equate the two.
We launched the startup, to great initial success: we had thousands of users and even managed to get a few news features from the launch. However, from my second year my biggest learning was I couldn’t grow the startup as well as fulfilling the university work necessary to get the grade I needed. My team and I made the very difficult decision to give the startup the backseat for our final year and focus on securing our degrees and graduate jobs. In the end, this turned out to be a good call as we all achieved these things.
I would recommend to any student to give a business idea they have a go, as many say, there isn’t a better time to do it. But, my advice is to be prepared to be under strenuous pressure from all your responsibilities and desires, it’s impossible to be 100% productive with every second of the day so don’t fool yourself into thinking you can. Always be honest with yourself upon monitoring or reflecting how things are going and never be afraid to give yourself a break as stress will mount when you’re juggling multiple things. Many of the skills I developed and the experiences from creating a startup at university have allowed me to fast track my career post university, to which I deem the whole experience unique and invaluable.