The Grey Entrepreneur

Even previous to this current economic crisis, there has been a strong movement in developed economies for students to more seriously consider the riskier alternative of being entrepreneurial. Before we begin, let me define entrepreneurship as executing innovative solutions to solve real problems. At a glance, this may sound as vague as anything you've read about entrepreneurship. But go back. Read it again. Innovative solutions to real problems. Let's begin.

The economic crisis has proven to be a real catalyst for change. Churchill reminds us; "The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty." My opening suggested there was an issue with risk profile. The resistance towards an entrepreneurial lifestyle was limited by the risk of failure, and the assurance of employment. That given no longer the case, the crisis itself has provided the greatest stimulus.

Why am I focusing on students?

First, because I am one, and so I'd like to think I know the topic area. And secondly, because I think that's where most of the changes can be made. Sure, most people are risk adverse. What about students? Well we have the good fortune of, for the most part, having reduced liability. Most of us don't have a mortgage, don't have car loans, don't have to support a wife and children. This risk profile changes dramatically as soon as one graduates, and continues to change throughout their life.

As the wave of student entrepreneurship catches on, there are a lot of players in the marketplace trying to feed of it. You have General Catalyst, VC firm in Boston, with a particular mandate to better understand the immense intellectual capital amongst students in Boston, and the eventual purpose to fight competition to invest in the newest technologies coming out of MIT, and the best ideas from Harvard. They have even brought on Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook, and brains behind mybarackobama.com to lead this charge. Providing students with more capital, it might be the way to go, but maybe not in the volumes of millions as even Series A traditionally goes by.

Then there is the Kairos Society, founded by Ankur Jain, a national student entrepreneurship organization that prides itself on bringing together the top student innovators with the common theme of doing good in addition to doing well. They are very high level and have not made much impact on the ground, at least not at Emory, Babson, Northeastern or MIT, where I have been able to track them closely given my start-up sells on those campuses. I'm also going to give my friend Krishna Gupta from Romulus Capital a plug. In a similar vein to Kairos, they've seen a need for better collaboration opportunities between different students from different universities. Through their network, they are better able to connect the engineer from Carnegie Mellon with the entrepreneur at USC, whilst giving them a small amount of seed capital.

Of course there are your traditional incubators. Unfortunately I do not know enough about the Y Combinator's of the world outside of what you can find in free domain. I can only speak of the couple I'm involved with at Babson. Currently I attend the Summer Venture Program, a 10 week summer incubator that follows the traditional model of office space, service providers and mentoring. In the fall, I am going to moving into the E(ntrepreneurship) Tower, a live-in residence of 21 entrepreneurs; again, trying to create the contagious energy provided by such environments.

Within all these players, I do think it primarily comes down to educational institutions. I had the fortune of speaking with a few entrepreneurship academics from around the world at Babson's annual Symposia for Entrepreneurship Educators. What I found surprising was that many of them had not engaged with their student entrepreneurs. You had academic policy makers who were doing 'ground-breaking research' with no real understanding of their customer. I strongly believe there is still a serious disconnect with what entrepreneurial educators value as important, and what is realistic for an aspiring, committed student entrepreneur. The wave for students toward entrepreneurship is moving swiftly, and if educators and curriculum builders do change and adapt to ever-developing demands, they are going to limit not only the growth of their students, but the quality of life and social progress of the world.

Finally I want to reference my title, and hopefully this will be the part where you finally feel after reading all this stuff, you're finally getting some value. All large statements are generalizations, but hear me out. There are three types of entrepreneurs. On the one extreme, you have the born-entrepreneurs. They are the Sergey Brin's who have a dream about the search engine to change the world, wake up, write it all down, and start building. Whether it be through inherited resources or acquirable ones, they have the personality and environment to be successful entrepreneurs. The other extreme you have the unfortunate circumstance of people who were never going to be successful entrepreneurs. Whether it be a lack of drive or passion, or just a vague interest with no clear understanding of what they wanted to do, the odds were always against them. In either case, there is probably little you can do to change the result.

The really interesting entrepreneur for all the players aforementioned is the Grey Entrepreneur. They are the ones who have a good chance of succeeding as they dip their toe, and put in their feet, and then start swimming, hopefully catching a wave. And it is these Grey Entrepreneurs that can be most affected from education, mentoring, support and environment. When you help Grey Entrepreneurs, you are the real catalyst for progress as you create the leverage from which they leverage with their innovations.

For any academic policy makers, incubators organizers, student entrepreneurs and business people interested in talking about specific policies I have, would like to know of anything in the article in more detail, or just interested in the topic discussion, you can reach me on 781 591 9924, and I'll get back to you within 24 hours.