StudentPreneur Podcast: Stories of Students who are Entrepreneurs | Student Entrepreneur | Young Entrepreneur |

Meet this week's awesome studentpreneur: Joseph Kekulawela, 28 y.o., Master student in Psychiatry at Melbourne University and his co-founder Aksha Akin from FirstStep in Melbourne, Australia.

Joseph and his co-founders realised that 87% of young Australians don't own share whereas the Australian market has been returning 8% on average. They created FirstStep to allow teenagers and young adults to save their virtual loose change and invest it directly on the stock market for hopefully a return of 6/7%.

Quotes:

• Look out for University accelerator programs, they are the greatest support
• We learned from the other teams at the accelerator programs
• Balance: you need to be very focused and conscious of what needs to be done (prioritisation)
• University students volunteers can be used as a free sales force.

Sydney Incubate program, the greatest support:

• 14-week program.
• A total of 48 startups over 6 classes.
• Access to mentors.
• Learning from workshops: user testing days, very useful.

Tools:

• Slack
• Trello
• Google Hangouts

U2U (Uni to support you):

• Get industry leaders to come to speak and promote the entrepreneurial mindset.
• Mentoring opportunity, having workshops about startups.

Links:

email: [email protected]

Twitter: @getfirststep

Website: GetFirststep.com

Facebook Page

Sydney Incubate

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Meet this week's awesome studentpreneur: Marko Rados, 26 y.o., Master student in Electrical Engineering and Computing at the University of Zagreb and entrepreneur at iFlight in Croatia.

Marko and his co-funder and best friend Mario created Mario created iFlight to help airline pilots manage their busy schedule. While at University Marko travelled a lot and had a passion for aviation. It helped that his cousin was a pilot. On day he had a lecture on research on fatigue and that was his trigger. He decided to build project for a subject at Uni, academics provided health devices and Professors helped. The end of subject was a turning point: 2 team members dropped but Mario & Markos decided to continue it for their thesis.They started entering competitions such as compApp which forced them to think in a business way. They had to pitch in front of 400 people without experience and ... it didn't work!

They applied to the University Startup World Cup competition where they met teams from around the world and the advanced startup community in Denmark. It was an amazing experience that helped them realised they were not crazy, there are other motivated people like them!

When they came back a big Croatian company that sponsors the faculty wanted to meet. They negotiated for three months a partnership. Marko and Mario are now graduating and will continue iFlight with this partnership.

Books & Podcast:

• ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson .

U2U (Uni to support you):

• University needs to understand studentpreneurs
• We need more competitions.
• We need co-working space

Links:

Website: Aerofer.com

University Startup World Cup: website and Facebook

LinkedIn

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Meet this week's awesome studentpreneur: Alex Sumsky, Business student at the University of Sydney and entrepreneur at Forever Network in Australia.

Alex started at 16 with a couple of friends. He had a passion for sport and liked to whoah people. He started to entertain friends and then got into a network effect. Spending time one-on-ones was his best market research. His venture stayed a hobby for a year and then turned into a business because of traction! It grew quick: 5,000 fans is the mark when your facebook page will start growing exponentially. At 18 he tried to monetise his 600k fans. He received job offers straight from high school because of his business and then found. Alex got people from his job to follow them. He started in the US and then stopped and rebooted.

Here are a few of his insights:

• 'Everyone's mistake: monetise too early but since I was a student living at home I didn't need to monetise. The longer you can postpone to monetise your fans, the stronger your relationship with them.'
• 'I struggled with time management and I would lose track of studies.'
• 'Incubate was the best decision. connected with so many people.'
• 'I have decided to work only with people who have failed.'
• Strategies: 'You always have more time when you schedule - stay committed to deadlines.'
• 'I love to read.'
• 'I am the least talented person on the team.'

Books & Podcast:

• How to win friends and influence people by Dale Carnegie.
• Podcast of sportswriters: Grant Land.

U2U (Uni to support you):

• More focus on case study. Create opportunities to compete.

Links:

Twitter: @bballforeverfb

Website: BasketballForever.com

Emails: [email protected] and [email protected]

Facebook

Sydney Incubate program: http://incubate.org.au/

LinkedIn

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Meet this week's studentpreneur Loic Pedras, 32 y.o., PhD Candidate at the University of Coimbra, Portugal and co-founder at SportImpact, Switzerland.

SportImpact is a social enterprise that tries to use the power of sport to develop local communities. it allows to carry messages of environment health, social skilss and peace

Quotes:

• We also work with the Olympic Committee
• We started a Pilot Project in East Timor
• I was doing a little bit of both, I didn't want to let it go but it comes a time when the workload in both is raising.
• I do think you are more productive when you focus on one thing

Links: LinkedIn If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE

Meet this week's studentpreneur Andre Fisher, 19 y.o., Marketing student at University of Queensland and founder at AJF Media, Brisbane Australia. Links: Facebook Website: www.AJFmedia.com.au ; contactandre.weebly.com LinkedIn If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE

Meet Colin Kinner who wrote for the Chief Scientist the Boosting High Impact Entrepreneurship in Australia report - A role for Universities Colin ran incubators and worked in commercialisation at universities. He is now a consultant with deep knowledge of startup best practice and hands-on experience in its implementation. He provides strategic advice to organisations that support startups – including incubators, investors and government agencies. He recently wrote the report Boosting High-Impact Entrepreneurship in Australia that was released by the Office of the Chief Scientist in Australia. In this episode Colin shares all the best practices from the report. Full report and a two-page summary. Here are a few of his insights:

• We need role model like Atlassian.

• We downplay how successful we are in Australia.
• 'At University of Sydney the Technology Venture Course was delivered for a few years by Matt Barrie, the CEO of freelancer.com and that was an awesome course.'
• 'Some important skills needs to be learnt in class so the mentors don't have to explain them during 1 on 1s: cash flows, customer acquisition, capital raising,
• 'At a simplistic level business plans are largely a waste of time (...) it's just writing fiction. I'd much rather see a lean canvas.'

• 'Incubators are a no brainer, we need more of those. For instance, the University of Melbourne incubator is very well ran.'
• 'Multi disciplinary team are really important. One of the challenges in Australia is that we see startups founded with people with no technical skill, you need your hacker then you need your hustler and hipster.'
• 'There has never been a better time to be an entrepreneur event though it's never going to be an easy journey.'

Books: - Running Lean: Iterate from plan A to a plan that works by Ash Maurya - Paul Graham's essays, founder of Y combinator Links: Twitter: @ColinKinner Website: SpikeInnovation.com.au LinkedIn If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE

Meet this week's studentpreneur Astrid Jonelynas, 20 y.o., who went to visit the Silicon Valley with the Startup Catalyst programme. Astrid is a Mechatronics Engineering Student at Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.

In the ecosystem supporting studentpreneurs, there is one element that we haven't talked about yet but is starting to become mainstream: a trip to visit startups. Of course the top of the top is to get to go to the Silicon Valley and visit some of the famous startups. That's what Astrid got a chance to do!

She initially started her first venture in a hackathon. After a few months, it went sour. She then heard of the Startup Catalyst program, an annual mission to Silicon Valley for twenty young people who have the potential to be Australia’s next batch of globally successful tech entrepreneurs. She got selected and went to San Francisco.

Here are a few of her insights:

• Australian are humble whereas Americans are very proud of their accomplishment.
• People are people over there, they are not super stars.
• The main difference is the support for entrepreneurship
• Main advantage of being a studentpreneur

Links: Twitter: @ajonelynas Startup Catalyst programme: StartupCatalyst.com.au Astrid's blog on the trip: AstridJonelynas.com LinkedIn If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE

Meet the organisers of the Global Youth Entrepreneurship Conference: Angela a University of Queensland alumni, Jo 21 y.o. International Business and Tourism & Hospitality student, and Adi, 22 y.o., Commerce and Accounting student at the University of Queensland, Brisbane. GIYC, a conference for studentpreneurs GIYC brings 100+ worldwide students from a diverse range of backgrounds to Brisbane, who share the common interest of innovation, technology and entrepreneurship. These international delegates are from a range of prestigious universities whom we have partnered with, including Oxford University, National University of Singapore, the University of Tokyo, Aalto University, Hanken School of Economics, Peking University, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, National Central University of Taiwan and more. Domestic students with an IT or business background will also be present, creating invaluable global networking opportunities, both professionally and socially. Students will also enjoy the fantastic Australian Summer, along with beaches, BBQs, petting a koala or even feed a kangaroo. Apply online at GlobalInnovativeYouth.com/ Cost: $650 (accommodation, food and local transport) Date: Opening day on the 11/01/2016 and Hackathon on 15/01/2016 Links: Twitter: @GIYC2016 Facebook: GIYC2016 Website: GlobalInnovativeYouth.com/ Instagram: GIYC2016 If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE

Meet this week's awesome studentpreneur: Giorgio Doueihi, 19 y.o., psychology student at Sydney University and co-founder at Fluid Education in Australia. Wrap up: We all had got our school pushing new systems or apps on us that no one used but what did we do about? Giorgio decided at 16 to build his on app, that would meet his own requirements. He had self-taught coding at 13 by going on online forum, posting problems online.He found out that other students had the same requirements and did not like the school app. The school realised that the students were more engaged with Giorgio app than the one they had purchased, so they decided to adopt Giorgio's app and even paid him! It's a couple of years later that Giorgio and his co-funder kickstarted the business by being part of the Sydney Incubate accelerator program. He then went on top pitch at other programs to get in, such as Fishburners and Muru-D

Book and Podcast -Book: Better habits - Podcast: 'How to start a startups' by Ycombinator. U2U (University to support You): -Be more open minded about extension on work. -Funding entrepreneurs at Uni Quotes: - 'You are never too young to start a company or have an idea. I started when I was 16.' - 'Try to find problem in your own life you can try to solve because you have more expertise' - 'Coding is not that hard, set aside a couple of hours, go online and start small' Links: Twitter: @giorgiodoueihi Facebook: Facebook.com/fluideducation LinkedIn: Giorgio

Meet this week's awesome studentpreneur: Patrick Henry, 27 y.o., postgraduate Law student at the University of Copenhagen and co-founder at Sensohive in Denmark.

Wrap up:

Patrick wasn't born knowing exactly his passion and what he wanted to do in like! Like a lot of us he discovered his passion after High School. At Uni, he was elected to run the student association with much competition and was thrown in the deep end but he got experience to run an organisation. From that experience, he tried to start different businesses before he got onto something with Sensohive. He picked robot engineers students as co-founders and bootstrapped with a lot of failures on the way. His biggest learning was to accept that you will fail again and again but that you have to learn from the failures methodically. Patrick is always looking for constructive criticism, even though I didn't like to be criticised. That's how he picks his mentors.

Finally, Patrick shares the incredible experience he had in being involved with 50 studentpreneurs from around the world at the University Startup Worldcup competition.

Quotes:

- 'Check how big the entrance barrier is'

- 'After High School I didn't know my passion but sometimes that's what leads to the best thing'

- 'I owned nothing of the businesses I worked for, I wanted to own something, that's why I started Sensohive'

- 'We all do things that are outside our education [in our business]'

- 'I chose the mentor who gave me the most constructive feedback and a pitching competition'

- 'Get to pitch as many times a possible'

- 'The biggest failure come from people who are not motivated all the way through'

- 'If you can't sell it, you can't beep doing what you love.'

- 'Read outside your comfort zone.'

- I practice pitching everywhere, even in front of my class’

Balance:

- 'Sometimes I do manage and sometimes I don't. There is no way around it, you have to make compromises. Remember that grades are not everything.

Books Podcast, and Blog:

- Alex Ferguson: My Autobiography by Alex Ferguson

- The Advanced selling podcast

- Richard Branson's blog on virgin .com

U2U:

- Expand entrepreneurial project from developing ideas to supporting the actual running of a business.

Links:

- Sensohive.com

- Sensohive on Facebook

- LinkedIn: Patrick Henry

If you have what it takes you can apply to share your story on air. CLICK HERE