Innovate in college

Have you ever wondered why some of the best and biggest success stories of our generation are those of college dropouts who started a company, or people who started something right out of college? My personal experience with starting up EventSalsa, an event catalogue for Columbia that was relaunched last week, has led me to the conclusion that there’s no better incubator than college—specifically, Columbia—for a startup. There are four very good reasons for this.

First, we don’t have kids, nor do we need to pay rent. Founding a startup can be a very uncertain period when you don’t have income and face the obvious risk of failure. For people with kids and a mortgage, the security of a more conventional job is all the more attractive. Young entrepreneurs at Columbia can work between classes and on weekends. Our opportunity cost of running the startup is very low, which helps considering the loans that some of us might have to pay back after Columbia. This might also mean that we are more likely to give up easily once we have started, as we haven’t risked as much. But I believe that the overall effect is a large advantage and incentive for young entrepreneurs at Columbia.

Second, we live in an environment where people are open to adapting new technologies and ideas. Take my company, EventSalsa, for example (which has entered into an advertising partnership with Spectator). A friend of mine, Sid Shanker, and I started it, focusing it on crowdsourcing events for closed communities. Our idea works for any closed community, but we decided to start at Columbia—a college community—for the same reasons that Facebook went through the college route. Students are tech savvy and are willing to use something new and give honest feedback about a product or service. EventSalsa, initially launched at the end of November 2011, has a site that has since undergone many changes to incorporate the feedback from users. People wanted free food tags and wanted to know which of their friends were coming to an event easily—both features are now on the website. This shows how college is also a place with the least stigma attached to failure. It might actually be cool to say, “I tried something, but it didn’t work out.”

Thirdly, startups will have a .edu address attached to them, to which anyone in the world is ready to respond. We also have an amazing and protective institution to nurture us, and this is especially true for our college. Here at Columbia there are many programs to help entrepreneurs. Christopher McGarry of the Columbia Engineering Mentorship Program pairs students with alumni mentors in appropriate industries. Dave Lerner—himself a serial entrepreneur—runs Columbia Technology Ventures and gave me some of the ideas I mention in this article.

The last and most important reason why now is the best time for a Columbia student to start a company is that we are still optimistic enough to believe that we can change the world. We are old enough and knowledgeable enough to know how the world works, but still young enough not to be bogged down by it.

What this all means is that right now you are in a unique position. You have passion and drive, you can fail fast without leaving an enormous hole in your résumé, and you have some of the brightest minds in the country as your professors and friends to guide you and encourage you. The best time for a startup is right now, and there can be no better place for it than Columbia. So don’t wait until you graduate.

The author is a School of Engineering and Applied Science sophomore majoring in electrical engineering. He is the president of the Engineering Student Council class of 2014 and co-founder of EventSalsa.