UCL Entrepreneurs Society

UCLE is a start-up society designed to connect aspiring entrepreneurs to the resources and connections that they need. Our team is made up of active startup founders, and we provide an informal way to get confidential advice on your businesses and ideas. We'll also be setting up a few cool projects as a society... after all if we can't lead by example you probably shouldn't be coming to us for advice.

[ucle-blog]

Day 8. The Entrepreneurial "Network".

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

[ucle-blog]

Day 6. The Fund.

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

[ucle-blog]

Day 4. The UCL Apprentice Challenge.

Wednesday 12pm. 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 [email protected] 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

[ucle-blog]

Day 3. We Say No To Corporate Sponsors.

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

[ucle-blog]

Day 2. The Best Things In Life Are Free.

Wouldn't you agree? One of the biggest and most positive changes for us this year has been a serious revamp of our membership fees.

Namely, there aren't any now! As a society we decided that in order to reach as many budding entrepreneurs as possible, we needed to break down any barriers to entry. 

We had previously charged a small fee in order to sustain our coffers, but decided that we could make up this shortfall in other ways. And that's exactly what we did (see £20 Challenge etc.). And if for some unspeakable reason you haven't joined yet, what are you doing? Free-99!

- Will H & The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee

[ucle-blog]

Day 1. The £20 Challenge.

On behalf of UCL Entrepreneurs Society, I would like to thank and congratulate all the teams that took part in the £20 Challenge. Without their participation and enthusiasm, we couldn't have made the event such a success.

The day before the event, we were seriously worried that it might rain. But we were lucky; the weather was just fine, with the event taking place in the main quad. I arrived at 10AM, meeting with Prati and Catalina and finding the quad empty and with none of our equipment. After calling Hilary (our Treasurer), Will (our President) and UCL Estates, we realised that we had to set up the tables and quad on our own! So we started the day with some muscle work, moving tables and chairs from the North Cloisters to the main quad. 

By 11am, most of the teams were ready. We had 5 teams competing for the champion of £20 Challenge. "Entreprenuts, Team 2, A-Team, Asian Invasion and Team Smoulder, you are up!" At 11am sharp, the £20 Challenge officially kicked off. 

All of the teams sold food and drinks. We had Team Smoulder selling lemonade, lemon cakes and other lemon snacks. We had Team 2 selling fruit and fruit smoothie (business with a high profit margin). We had Asian Invasion selling coffee, brownies and cakes. We had A-team selling cakes and chocolate. And we had Entreprenuts selling toffee apples, bananas and shining shoes at Euston Station and places around UCL! Particularly, team Smoulder and A-team were there for charity - all of their prize money would go to charity! I wished them the very best of luck! 

Just when the competition was getting intense, we suddenly stumbled upon a new participant, Wei. He was taking part in the competition alone, selling origami flowers. Finally, we had a team that was not selling food! He sat down in front of a table and started making the flowers; he was so skilful that they looked real. So, it was not surprising that he soon became a crowd magnet. Passers by, especially girls, were fascinated by his skills and his beautiful creations. He might not have made the most profit but he definitely deserved a special thanks! I remembered that a middle-aged man stopped in front of his stall and talked to him for a long time - the man was a origami enthusiast! He had wrote a book about origami art and how to make origami at home. He then immediately made some amazingly cute origami animals on the spot. Wanna have a look? Go to our Facebook page and you will be amazed!

15 minutes before the competition came to an end, teams launched their last-minute sales tactics, approaching every single person who passed through the main quad. They were almost on the verge of giving their remaining food and drinks for free. What they desperately wanted was money! 

After 3 hours of intense competition, we announced TEAM SMOULDER as the champions! Congratulations!!! They made an incredible profit of almost £100 in three hours, all in the name of charity. And we all know that they would have done even better if it had been a sunny day. I was so happy that they won, because their prize money would go to charity -  Bravo!

Did you miss out? Don't worry, we have many more events coming up. Just keep an eye on our Facebook events calendar! I'll fill you in on a little secret: the UCL Apprentice Challenge is now been open for application…….

- Felix & The UCL Entrepreneurs Society Committee

[ucle-blog]

Day 0. The Start-Up.

UCL Entrepreneurs was started in 2007, and has had a good few years, with over 100 active members year-on-year, over 2500 on our Groupspaces email list, 900 twitter followers, 700 in our facebook group and countless events.  Yet how do you really define entrepreneurship? For the new committee, we want to be more than a funnel for corporate jobs, unlike other notable societies… UCL students can definitely achieve more than that.  Last year was a transitional phase, but now we’re a new society with a new mission - to maximise the returns for UCL Entrepreneurs. As we’re a non-profit, this doesn’t mean making money, and membership will be free to reflect this, from now on. Why do we come to university - is it just a stepping stone for the job afterwards? Or do you want to do something yourself and be your own boss? It comes down to who you want to be - a top dog at GS or Christopher Nolan? At the committee elections, a number of people attending said they had never seriously considered self-employment as a possible career path. We want to change this mindset.  Getting a job is harder and harder these days, and increasingly, large businesses are looking for those with entrepreneurial experience. This is shown by the increasing number of corporate-sponsored competitions looking for people with these skills, like Entrepreneur First and New Entrepeneurs Foundation. And if it doesn’t work out, that job will still be waiting for you.  At its core UCL was once a start-up as well, resulting in UCL Advances, UCLB, the London Entrepreneurs Challenge, Bright Ideas and countless other opportunities. We were recently inspired by Rob Fitzpatrick’s 10k Bootstrap Challenge, and over the next year, we will be similarly chronicling our progress as we look to achieve the following targets: 1. Actively help 10 projects on the UCL campus. 2. Connect with 5 international entrepreneurs societies. 3. Set up 3 society-led ventures. 4. Secure non-recruitment based sponsorship.  5. Obtain a 1-page spread or news piece in a leading newspaper or corresponding website. 6. Bootstrap. We were a society, but now we’re a startup.

- The Wills & The UCL Entrepreneur Society Committee