What is your advice to a level 300 student of computer engineering wanting to start tech startup
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You build a tech startup by building it!
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I’m in a similar situation. Let’s talk. PM?
OK diakon,
Kalv I love your statement
Thanks man. But that’s just a honest opinion. I also want to build a startup. I have a team but nothing has happened yet. We just gotta build something first, then we take it from there!
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That is true, am actually learning some development stuff, since am yet to get someone that can join me on the journey and then using that to build my product
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no, dont just build somehing first. you have an idea to solve a problem. spend time in researching. you can research in many ways. thats going to save you time and efforts down the road.
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Its great to hear that you are already thinking of starting a startup right out of school.
- What’s motivating you to want to build a company?
- to make money or to solve a problem that is affecting hundreds of thousands or millions of people who would be happy to know there is a solution and would also want to use it?
If the idea is one for which you can make a business case with, then you are good to go.
But dont start by building the company but by validating your idea in your community, amongst friends etc. This you can do by making a hypothesis…
if your hypothesis proves to be valid, then you can make a business case and then start forming your company.
that would be my idea…
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everybody wants to build 
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It’s only by building and test that we get to know weather our idea are worth the time.
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Of course all that must have been done before building. 
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Something in me knows there are rules to building anything but at the same, I still know rules don’t matter sometimes. I’m sure Zuck built first, got it out there and people started using it. Then he moved on to FB…
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First try contributing to one of the million Open source projects out there. Even if all you do is helping with documentation…
You are right. However, Zuck had an idea and he probably tested with his fellow students. He was also not alone, but had other colleagues with whom he could easily brainstorm and polish ideas. he also started with the most MVP, tested, refined, built, tested again…As i said earlier, testing can take a number of forms. testing must not be scientific. in Zucks situation, if it worked in his university, it would work in other universities: that was most probably his premise…Lovin this discussion:-)
Read your books, enjoy your university experience. There is plenty of time to build a company after school.
You are not Zuckerberg. You are not Gates or Jobs or Sam Altman and tens of fancy dropout stories or student CEOs you have read. More likely, you’ll never be.
You see life is more like the basic motion equation. v=u+at. where u, initial velocity and a, acceleration and v, final velocity.
You and Evan(of Snapchat) have different u, and a, and regardless, how hard you work, your v, will always be different.
Enjoy school. One of my few regrets in life is I didn’t quite enjoy mine as I would have love to. I was in the constant pursuit of a first class in Engineering the entire 5years.
The girls, important friends for life, the social structure should not be replaced with the harshness of startup life just because you want to be the next Evan.
And if however, you see starting a startup in your life’s radar, it might just be best time for you to start building relationships, becoming helpful, work with startups during your semester breaks and learning.
I’ll leave the wisdom of PG here when he was asked this same question in Stanford.
Almighty Paul Graham thinks it’s a bad idea to start a startup even as a Stanford student.
Put things in perspective. PG is the God of startup wisdom and Stanford is the world’s most enterpreneurial school. So…
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There is nothing wrong with getting your feet wet but don’t lose focus on your studies.
Ensure you graduate and graduate with a good class. You are already more than half way there.
To wet your feet, here are some options (you can do all or just some. It’s up to you.
Note that I am assuming you clearly know the pain you are trying to help people ease. You know your target market. You try to know the industry.
- Start learning and engaging in discussions in that space
- Note the influencers in that space and try to develop a relationship with them
- Start blogging in that space. Share helpful insights. Provide your perspective
- Work on the minimum viable product and test it with your target audience. You blogging and engaging in discussions in that space will have familiarized you with them. Learn how they interact with your product, Seek their inputs, how to improve it for them.
Again, work on this in hours that won’t affect your studies.
By the time you graduate, you will know if this is worth pursuing further and have gained some experience.
you say this like it’s a bad thing…
Your school friends are the first set of blocks in your network. While in school, do enough to be known as “that IT/Business/Start-up guy” but not too much to come out with less than a 2.1. This means profit, for now, being optional and dropping out (being a Nigerian) is out of it.
My friends and I did a game show thing (like who wants to be a millionaire). It wasn’t enough to detract from studies and until now, our mates and juniors know us for that, making it easy to convince them of future ventures. Some other guys chased their books solely, or entered student union politics, we reach out to those ones when we need academic problems solved or want political connects.
Summary is: let your mates know who you are. From your username and the fact that you’re on radar, I think you’re on the right track.
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haha, it’s definitely not 
I was actually bored when i made the comment
You’re right man.