I am proud to say that I’ve officially dropped out of college to pursue the entrepreneurial dream. I have nothing against college, but I don’t believe college is necessary to be successful as an entrepreneur.
When building my startup and working with other college graduates, I quickly learned that a lot of important things are left out of the curriculum. No matter how amazing of a business school you attend, there are a lot of startup lessons you won’t learn.
In this article, I share 5 startup lessons they won’t teach you in business school:
1. No Book Can Help You Manage A Startup
Every startup is a different breed of its own. They don’t follow the ‘typical’ rules of corporations or small businesses and they feature completely different roadmaps than most companies.
Given that each startup is different, there is no pre-recorded lecture or curriculum that can teach you how to launch and manage a successful startup. These are lessons that you can only learn by hiring advisors and experiencing things on your own.
2. Building Company Culture
Startups are successful not because of their ideas but because of the people seeing those ideas out. The people you hire and the culture you build in your startup will eventually determine whether you will be successful in the long run or not.
Zappos didn’t do anything extraordinary from an idea standpoint. However, they built a company culture that was very different from others out there. They made sure to hire people who were hungry for success and really believed in the vision. Every startup has its own DNA but unfortunately, you won’t be learning how to create that in a classroom.
3. People Must Like You
Many people don’t realize how important it really is to sell yourself and your ideas. People think that a 4.0 GPA and fancy degree is just enough to get them whatever they want in life. However, that isn’t true.
People aren’t going to invest in you, work for you or partner up with you if they don’t like you. You have to sell yourself and be the type of person that others are willing to work with.
4. Success Doesn’t Come Fast
You read stories about how Netflix, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other startups found massive success in your textbooks. However, many key facts are left out. One of those facts being that you never really get to hear about the struggles or failures the founders of these organizations went through.
There is no formula or method to success. It requires a lot of persistence, perspiration and sacrifice. These are key things that you won’t learn in business school because they’re too focused on showing you what successful people did. However, the path to success is slow and requires a lot of grit.
5. How To Be Investable
One of the quickest ways to grow your business to the next level often requires money. In order to obtain this money, you must pitch your ideas to investors. More likely than not, you’ll get thrown around before anyone takes you seriously.
We hear about all the startups that get invested in, but never the ones that get rejected. It’s just the way the world works. No matter how wealthy someone is, they will NOT pull out their checkbook to write you a 6-8 figure check unless you’re able to sell the vision.
Conclusion
Don’t get me wrong, I think there is tremendous value that can be attained from college. However, at the same time, I think there are many important lessons that are left out. In this article, I shared 5 startup lessons they won’t teach you in business school.
photo credit: J. Paxon Reyes via photopin cc
