Student Entrepreneurs Not Waiting for Graduation to Create Change

Anika Ayyar does not dream of MTV Sweet Sixteen-style birthday parties. Instead, the thirteen-year-old settles for modest affairs, recruits 3 to 10 of her pals to do the same, and raises money by promoting bashes for charity. This simple idea behind Ayyar’s social venture, Skip-A-Birthday, accounts for an impressive following of tweens and teenagers worldwide.

The economic rollercoaster and a call to service from the Obama administration are sending waves of professionals into the realm of social enterprise. They are shocked to find a vibrant community of innovators— Like Anika, many of whom are high school, college and graduate student entrepreneurs.

To Student Entrepreneurs, School Means Business

Their contemporaries marched into business, engineering and medical schools at leading universities to pursue secure positions. Younger generations now eye those same schools as launching pads for entrepreneurship. And they are not waiting until graduation to do it.

According to John Schwartz’s New York Times article, childhood tales of Google and Plaxo’s birth lure students to fraternize over business plans and marketing strategies rather than games of beer pong. These meetings of the mind happen at the student-owned business program at Washington University in St. Louis, Babson College and more than 5,000 entrepreneurial programs at higher education institutions.

Teenagers, not yet able to drive, flock into business camps like Young Entrepreneurs for Leadership and Change hoping to become the next Farrah Gray. Ashoka’s Youth Venture program ensures that student entrepreneurs do not defer their dreams of starting social ventures until after graduation.

With so many young adults and their more experienced counterparts hoping for the name recognition of Kiva, how can student entrepreneurs meet the triple bottom line of people, planet and profits?

Jacob Jones believes it starts with the idea. The Brigham Young University-graduate launched several sustainable ventures as a student through his chapter of Engineers Without Borders. He converted coconuts into biodiesel in Tonga and consulted with a company in Ghana to improve sanitation. Jones stresses, “Your venture has to meet a real need but that need cannot come from your point of view.”

Ayyar knows that point of view. Her trips to India with her mother’s work in the American India Foundation gave her a firsthand account of teenagers rummaging through debris to find food instead of learning in school. A summer stint at Camp Bizsmart provided Ayyar the tools to turn her desire to help into a viable social venture.

Education and a good idea is not enough to offset the high failure rate of a new business. As many as 1/3 of all new businesses fail in their first two years of business according to the Small Business Administration. The Skoll Foundation and Acumen Fund actively seek social endeavors to fund. Venture capitalists are getting in on the action mining college campuses for the next medical miracle or technological innovation. Like their startups cousins, social entrepreneurs are diversifying their funding search. “You have to be scrappy as a social entrepreneur,” asserts Jones. The engineer presented his ventures to Brigham Young University as an educational tool for other students. The university took him up on his offer.

Already growing up technology savvy, the web has become the young entrepreneur’s best friend.  Student social entrepreneurs are able to tell their story, raise money and rally their troupes instantly through the power social media. One click of the mouse on Change.org enables an environmental group to reach the net activists on the site.

Student entrepreneurs are also using Facebook’s cause channel to post their profile, raise funds instantly and deliver instant messages. They amass thousands of followers through Twitter. Vlogs and shorts videos often advance their cause more than a mission statement.

Social entrepreneurs—students and adults—will attest that having mentors for guidance and evangelists on the frontlines will make or break a venture. Misty Lefrandt, a student at Brigham Young University, espouses mentorship with her organization, Meaningful Life Group, an organization that trains students to become social entrepreneurs. For Jones, having champions in the trenches of local villages to advocate the values of his international ventures can mean the difference between a successful social enterprise and one that does not survive.

One question hovers over student entrepreneurs and sits there like an elephant in the room.
What becomes of the social venture once the student leaves college?

Jones is proud of the ventures that are in existence today, even though he ventured outside of social entrepreneurial realm to work at an environmental engineering firm. He looks forward to using his work experience in business school and later in his next social venture. He states, “You have to be persistent, and take the lessons learned to the next project and keep doing good.”

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