The Dark Side of Young Entrepreneurial Students

Most young entrepreneurial students possess common weaknesses which made them very difficult to be mentored by successful and older entrepreneurs. They easily succumb to the dark side because of their desire for personal success and gain, rather than thinking that the organization is bigger than themselves. Here is a breakdown of these features lacking in them.

Two days back, over a supper with Justin and an older and distinguished entrepreneur, we discussed about the importance of finding good and talented people. Both the older entrepreneur and I agreed that the best enterprises are determined not by their ideas or cash, but by the team who found the startup. Both the entrepreneur and I believe that moulding young people into successful entrepreneurs is far simpler than trying to convert someone who is around our age and has no experience in entrepreneurship. While I have spent some time discussing the dilemma of young entrepreneurial students, this article will talk about the dark side of young entrepreneurial students. I don’t classify someone as an entrepreneur unless he or she has formally started a company or social/non-profit enterprise. I refer to this group of people to be between 18 to 30 and most of them are studying in the tertiary institutions.

Here is a break down of common poor features which both the older entrepreneur and I see in young entrepreneurial students.

1. Lack of Focus: When a student wants to work on a business idea, he or she needs to see it through. Most young people tend to jump ship too quickly or overload themselves with too many projects. Most successful entrepreneurs are focussed on one thing, their idea/startup/product and nothing else. Here is the advice: focus and make one successful startup, and once that happened, you can multi-task to make all the other appealing ideas work because you will have the credibility and attract people to work with you.
2. Lack of Loyalty: Contrary to what most people see in American corporate culture that everything is cut-throat and destroying each other, loyalty is an important attribute that most successful entrepreneurs have. As a matter of fact, successful entrepreneurs will grow those who are loyal compare to those who jump ship too early. Most young entrepreneurs don’t believe in that. Of course, there are two sides of the coin. Some senior people does not want to groom the younger people and led them to jump ship. In those cases, I can understand the frustration of the young people. How about those who are helping the young to grow? The process of teaching an entrepreneur is long and tedious and takes some time. These are the kind of students which will fail the credibility test. If the student is lack of loyalty, he or she will definitely lack consistency. That inconsistency will lead to lack of quality and that lack of quality will lead to them losing credibility.
3. Lack of Knowledge: Almost 95% of the students I met in Singapore has very little knowledge about the industry or how the markets move. That’s why you find them crowding among themselves in a networking event. It means that they have nothing to talk to the industry people or the people who might be able to help them in the future. They find that reading good books and periodicals are a chore. Here is the secret why most Cambridge students manage to secure good jobs for themselves and it has been taught by the careers centre. Before you enter into the networking event hosted by that company (be it an investment bank, management consultancy or etc), one of the items on the checklist is to read the Financial Times (yesterday and today), Harvard Business Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Economist. If you cannot impress the people who are here to recruit you with the knowledge and understanding you have, what makes you think that you can start a company? I often hear students telling me about the industries they want to go into and the moment I ask them which the top 5 companies in that area and their competitors, they cannot answer me.
4. Lack of Quality and Professionalism: I cannot fault students for this, but the problem is that they don’t learn from their mistakes. That is when quality steps in. If you see the person repeating the same mistake over and over again, you can just fire the person.
5. Lack of Speed : Speed is the major problem in most young people I see in Singapore. If you are really passionate about what you do, you will spend time beyond your work to do it. After all, if you are an entrepreneur, what you are doing should be fun. The same fun must also translate to your team. I find that most young students have this tendency of procrastinate and let opportunities slip by. The standard of young entrepreneurs that I have seen in Boston and Cambridge, can engage quickly and also produce quality work. This is something I find lacking in the student team. There is no sense of imperative action. For a startup, to beat your competitors is more than about cash, but your speed to innovate and finding ways to block your competitors from capturing your markets. Someone from INSEAD interviewed me recently and he asked me what the successful factors in making SimuGen happen. I told him that it was speed. At that point, I was racing against time to ensure that the startup is in good shape before I leave UK. The team has literally less than 3 hours of sleep per day to ensure that everything is right for the presentation and the business plan. We actually check out each other’s scope and offer assistance when necessary. All we want to see is that our message gets out and tell ourselves that we cannot afford to procrastinate.

Most young entrepreneurial students need to realize that good mentors look for certain features in a person and grow them into successful individuals. It is a hard and ardous journey for a young entrepreneur. If you cannot bear the starting from bottom down to ground up, then I can safely say that you are not suitable to be an entrepreneur.

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