It’s the time of year when UCL Entrepreneurs need to think about who will carry on its ‘legacy’, celebrating the underdog, abusing the b-worders etc… which we’ve had so much fun doing this past year.  I’m going to warn you that this is a fairly long blog post, but I’m viewing it as an initial blockade to try and weed out those who don’t really give a shit.

I think everyone should know exactly what it’s like building up a society from the ground up. And that may take a thousand words.

We’re holding our AGM fairly early (28th of February), and this is because of the experiences I had last year when inheriting a team chosen by my predecessors.

The problem is this: it was decided for me who I would work with and what positions they would have, without me having even met them, or worked with them, or seeing what they were good at etc…

It was like inheriting a job. You get a job, you work with people you are given with, you manage a team you are given, you put on events – and then you trade in that experience for an actual job after university. I’m sure this is true for a lot of the other societies here at UCL.

To be honest I didn’t want a job (I still don’t), and as expected I didn’t work well with a few people who I inherited. So they left/I asked them to leave because they didn’t share the same values as me. To them it was a position to be traded in for a job, to me it was something completely different, and so I didn’t enjoy working/spending time with them.

The whole reason why I chose to run for ‘President’ of UCL Entrepreneurs in the first place (whatever that actually means) , chose to spend so much of my time thinking about the society as opposed to my degree and my own ideas, went through the tough times, lost motivation, made bad decisions, made good decisions, regained motivation, learned why I made the bad decisions, had huge successes etc… It was because I viewed it as what it might be like to build my own company – with no risk.

I’ll say that again. It was like trying to build my own company – but with no risk.

Now this is different from the way we are told to start companies. All these competitions seem to focus on business plans rather than how to build a team.

The whole point is you have an idea or a way of thinking, and because you feel so strongly about it, you try to convince other people around you why how you feel is so imperative and why what your trying to do is so important. A lot of the people you meet won’t agree with you, and that’s fine. You fail, you move on and deal with it. But occasionally you meet people who are of a similar mind to you. And they say things which you understand completely and which surprises them because you can tell they don’t seem to get through to people. And that’s really special, especially when they want to join you.

For me – it was the fact that people, including so many of my friends, salivated over the prospect of getting a corporate job. Like that was the best thing they could think of and that that was all they ever wanted. All I could think in my head was like are you serious!? Ok so fair enough you have a well paid job, probably in London, you work hard and there are perks but come on do you really lack the imagination to dream of something bigger?

Now let’s be clear I’m not aiming this at those who have a corporate job – I’m aiming this at people who can’t think of anything to do that’s better than a corporate job. That thought depresses and frustrates me even as I’m writing this.

So this was my main idea. The main idea that I felt strongly about then and continue to feel strongly about now – and I think that’s been very important. Very very important. Having something that’s consistent, something that when people think of the society they think – ah yes that’s what they stand for.

I was also very lucky, it wasn’t just me who felt this way. My best friend (Will Hines) ran for Vice-President and got it, and we live together. So we could talk about these things whenever we wanted.

For this reason, there are only 3 positions open at the AGM: President, Vice-President and Treasurer. Because it’s these positions that have to keep the enthusiasm, keep the fire. And that’s hard so they should make the big decisions – including selecting who they want to work with.

The other positions of Marketing Director, Events Director, Secretary, Social Director, Fund Director, Tech Director, Creative Director etc… (probably more will be available) will all be decided with the new P’s,VP’s and T’s input (with exception to the Fund Director as he/she will need to shadow the current Fund Director the previous year to get the gist of seed-investing and the way we do things. This is the job of managing £16k, people can’t just waltz in and take full control.).

This is why I think the opportunity to be one of these 3 positions is special. It allows you to try and build a start-up team in real life, to try and achieve something you all agree on, and use all the societies resources to help you do that. And because of how well it worked out for me and Will – we HIGHLY encourage people to apply in a team. So if you’re thinking of applying, convince a couple of your friends to take the other roles with you. If you’re serious about it you really won’t regret it.

I like to think of the society as a weapon. There are a few things you must inherit (The Apprentice Challenge and the Fund) but all in all it’s just a means for you to achieve what you really want to achieve around UCL. Like a megaphone for your enthusiasm. It doesn’t matter what it is (within reason it is the Entrepreneurs Society after all), as long as it’s something you want to do, or something you want to change, or anything that we feel will draw people towards you.

The fact is that I know exactly who I’m going to call when I’m onto something. Because I’ve already worked with them in this sort of atmosphere. It’s given me an idea of what the phrase ‘good people’ actually means. And I think these people know exactly who they are.

I feel it’s one of the best things that I’ve done but also one of the hardest, because it’s take so much focus. But this is the kind of person who I am. I get depressed if I’m bored, and I certainly wasn’t bored this year.

So if you are still reading and haven’t been scared off by what I’ve just told you, here’s how you can apply for one of the 3 positions:

- Send me an email (president@uclentrepreneurs.com) saying which of the three positions you are applying for, and what you want to do with the society in ~200 words. By this time you’ll probably have realised that I could not care less about what internships you’ve completed or what degree you study. What I want to happen is that I read what you’ve written and I feel excited by it. I feel drawn to it. I feel like if I was around next year, I think I might get involved in what you feel so strongly about.

- Tell me the names of who the other members of your trio are (if applicable).

- If you’re a trio it helps if you are all talking about the same thing.

Then we’ll meet with you all for a coffee (or one of you). Then we’ll decide who/how many we’d like to hear speak at the AGM on the 28th of February.

Here’s the event for it:

Looking forward to meeting you.

All the best,

Will Jones

President UCL Entrepreneurs 2012-13.

UCLe is all about engaging with the entrepreneurial community, and in London it is exceptionally easy. We’ve been to Wayra, Silicon Drinkabout, Entrepreneur First, General Assembly …it goes on. They’re all on our doorstep, and then want to meet us.

It is important to build an entrepreneurial “network”. Why? Because building a start-up is hard, and it is unlikely you are going to know every solution to the problems you are going to face. This “network” can provide support, advice and acts as a testing ground for your business.

Why have I put “network” in inverted commas? Well, to many “networking” has distinctly corporate overtones. Having been to corporate (ahem banking) event I found myself surrounded by sycophants, clasping their C.V.s, and pouncing on anyone who looked like they were wearing a tailored suit and had a decent salary. Conversations were geared around qualifications, predicted degree classifications and one-up-man-ship. I soon got bored. Who wants to wear a suit anyway?

Going to my first entrepreneurs event in London however was quite the opposite. I wasn’t judged by my age, or sex and everyone I met was genuinely interested in what I had to say and what I thought about their ideas. You’re not judged on what you have acheived academically, it’s all about what you have done, are doing and plan to do. You can’t just “talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk”. After these events, I haven’t just made contacts I genuinely feel like I have made friends. And, most importantly I have learnt. I’ve learnt more in a few months of going to these events than I could have hoped for, advice is candid and from real experience.

It’s a community, not a network. Experience it for yourself, learn something new each week and meet founders of the next big thing. You never know, you might be one next.

- Rachel & The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee

Well, frankly, we are almost as surprised as everyone else that we’ve gotten the opportunity to do this.

First, some background. We regularly run the ideas drop-in sessions where people come to us with ideas, we vet them and help them develop them into something viable that they can work on. These are extremely useful and we’ve gotten some hilarious ideas; UCL students and the breadth of their imagination will never cease to amaze us. But we did notice that there was something missing in between what we do and the further support offered by UCL. Several of the members of the committee have started our own businesses and we wanted to create a program where some of the knowledge we’ve gained through doing this could be imparted to other future student entrepreneurs. The basic mistakes that we had done for you. We also wanted to give students the relatively small amounts of money we knew they needed to test their ideas. The idea of our own investment fund and mini accelerator program developed.

Pretty central to an investment fund is of course, something to invest with. As Will wrote earlier, we’ve rejected all our big name corporate sponsors, so first off all we needed some money, and we realized quickly that the amount we were looking at we’re beyond anything the union or any sponsor would give us.

NACUE, the National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs, runs a competition for student societies once a year and this year had introduced a new category called the New Frontiers award, where £8000 would be awarded to a society to do something completely different and “explore new frontiers”. Not only were we required to submit a four to six page business plan, we also had to produce a YouTube video and pitch our idea in front of a panel of judges from big start ups and investment banks. In addition e price would have to be matched by an institutional investor.

Despite some initial problems where I ended up sitting on a balcony in Shanghai producing the video in 15 minutes by myself and the business plan being cobbled together via WhatsApp, we were shortlisted together with six other societies. To our horror the pitch was supposed to be only three minutes long with seven minutes of follow up questions, and the nine thirty the evening before an email ticked in that we weren’t allowed to use power point after all. This meant the judges had read our business plan thoroughly and had prepared their questions beforehand, the pitch was mostly for us to introduce the idea ourselves and to add anything. The room was also packed full and our every word was being tweeted by some people with some serious amounts of followers. To be honest, none of us remember much of the actual pitch itself, and obviously the question topics we had split evenly between us and prepared barely showed up. Most of them were on investment strategy, which was what we were the least certain off, as even after many hours of googling we had found no one in the world that had done anything quite like this before. We were literally trying to break new frontiers.

But our strategy, stunning good looks and immaculately ironed shirts pervaded, and after a nerve racking award ceremony where they first said that two and not three societies would get the award, to then give what at the time, seemed like an absurdly long introduction, UCL Entrepreneurs was announced as the winner together with Royal Agricultural College Entrepreneurs. We can all attest that this was easily one of the best days of our lives.

Being able to take something like this, which started out as an idea over the summer, to this level of fruition in November, is what UCL Entrepreneurs is all about.

Wanna apply? Drop us a line.

- Edvard & The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee

We’d done it! We were successful. Our team made up of Will Jones, Wisdom, Sarina and I had just barely passed round 1 of the UCL Apprentice Challenge. We had got close to giving up when we couldn’t find a Russian Flag, but we got creative. We’d managed to haggle with London shop owners in the west end to get two other items at a discount, a feat in itself when in central London. We came back to the offices of Ernst & Young and felt like Roman emperors of old striding through newly conquered Gaul. We were unbeatable. We were ready for whatever challenge the UCL Apprentice Challenge was going to throw our way next.

“Are you ready for your next challenge guys?” our chaperone Anna asked.

“YEAH!” we were like five year olds who’d just discovered we could make candy.

“Your next challenge, is to sell the items you just bought, use the rest of the £20 we gave you, and generate as much profit as you can before 4pm.”

Our hearts sank to the floor. How the heck were we to generator a profit in 4 hours? We weren’t natural profit makers! We were just a bunch of students who stupidly signed up to a competition we thought would be cool. We walked to the nearest Costa like 10 year olds who’d just lost at Halo several times in a row. We sat down and began to despondently brainstorm ideas.

4 hours later, our team walked away from the challenge £150 richer by buying and selling apples.

***

So just what the hell is the UCL Apprentice Challenge?

The UCL Apprentice Challenge is our flagship competition. It is when children wantrapreneurs crawl in, and fully formed hustling entrepreneurs walk out. It is one of the largest steps out of your comfort zone that University can provide. (And I’ve done Theatre, been on stage etc). We’ll challenge you, we’ll make you take risks, we’ll show you just how much better you can be.

Before that day, I’d never known I could do sales. In fact, I’d held a B2B sales job in the past, and sucked at it. After that day, I knew I would never be afraid of selling stuff again.

On the 11th December we’ll be hosting round 1 of the competition. Those that get through the semi final, get to go to the final. Those that win the final get to show our University of London cousins just what UCL is made of.

Are you ready for the challenge of your life? Email applications@uclentrepreneurs.com before Friday 7th December and we’ll send you an application form. Fill in that application form and send it to the same email address. Don’t have a team made up already? Don’t worry neither did I. Apply as an individual and we’ll put you in a team. More information can be found at the facebook event.

Good luck my fellow entrepreneurs.

- David Heasman, Lord of the Lions and The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee

The vast majority of large UCL societies accept huge sponsorships from investment banks, professional services and consulting firms. In return, they have company logos sprayed all over their marketing materials. Until this year, we were one of these societies, sponsored by three such big players.

What do these companies get out of this sponsorship? They want to be on the minds of smart, graduating students from a world-class university – for the purposes of recruitment. This is the classic university society revenue model – and if you don’t care about what your members do after university, then it’s acceptable (I suppose).

However, as an Entrepreneurs Society, we take great interest in our members plans beyond university. We are trying to encourage students from UCL to take on their own challenges and start their own businesses, rather than being shoved into the corporate path. Companies know that going straight into firms is the easy option; it’s well known that companies try and recruit entrepreneurial students, who have grafted on their own back to try and achieve something big themselves without have to be told what to do. In short, we have some of the most desirable students in UCL.

Consequently we find such companies getting in touch with us, actually offering sponsorship for promotion of their graduate programs – but we politely refuse. You (our members) are worth more to us than that.

We are, therefore, heavily reliant on our own money-making skills (proven by our £20 Challenge), but also on UCLU, who hopefully will grant us some additional funding for this year (fingers crossed).

The sort of sponsorship we would love to receive would be non-recruitment based, from people/organisations whose purpose is to invest in, mentor and grow student businesses. Angel investors, previous startups or even Venture Capital firms who want to really get to know and be involved in the startup scene at UCL are all potential partners. We would love to splash around your (infinitely less vulgar) logos/names all over our marketing materials! If this sounds like you, and you’re interested, do get in contact.

Thanks for reading,

Will J and The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee