Entrepreneurship
About this course
Interested in starting up a business? This course will inspire you to become your own boss and employ other people. We will get you acquainted with the start-up world and its opportunities. Learn the steps to set up your business. Try out practical tools to generate a successful business idea.
Global trends in business, start-up and freelance worlds
As a millenial, you are open-minded, creative and tech-savy. You are also advanced in global development.
Explore what the future holds for you.
The development of the freelancer generation - becoming your own boss - and working freelance is booming and will continue to expand.
What the next generation of freelancers will look like
This is your chance to be part of this movement and opportunity. Setting up a small company or founding a start-up with the skills and talent you have, joining forces with other creative, tech and business oriented friends and colleagues could be your next challenge, and it is really doable! So go for it!
While it will be a hard and at the same time a fulfilling journey, it is important that you are aware of global trends in business and where the world is going. Being up-to-date, informed and inspired about creative, business, social and technology trends may uncover ideas for your future business.
Areas like
- global pandemic,
- artificial intelligence,
- virtual reality,
- zero waste,
- climate change,
- fin-tech,
- renewable energy,
- digital anxiety or others
may be your source of inspiration and where your next brilliant idea is hidden.
Most importantly, it is your job to be done to find a real problem that people are facing and solve it with your solution, taking into account global innovation trends. You could find new problems to solve thinking about the advancements in technology of the last years.
Explore the global trends in technology, consumer goods and even society in general, and think about how these trends could uncover new needs that people have. You may get inspired by:
Trends that will define 2021 and beyond
Check out some stats and things to take into account when chosing a start-up or freelance path:
How to come up with a great business idea
Self-reflection:
Which area of global trends seems more interesting to you?
Have you thought of a need or a problem people are facing that you could help to solve?
Are you ready to move on?
Motivation
"Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart.''
Steve Jobs
One of the keys of a successful business is motivation. It is at the core of your company and what motivates you to get up in the morning and overcome the difficulties that are bound to come your way. Slower sales than expected, over optimistic business plan, bureaucracy, trouble with the team or having less time for yourself or your family - those are just a few most common challenges of setting up your own business.
Boost your motivation by loving what you do by Steve Jobs
So it is essential that you remind yourself daily of the reason that you decided to start in the first place. Maybe make a poster, a post it or maybe just a screen desktop to remind you of this passion that urged you from the beginning. It will help you to reflect once it gets tough.
Know yourself and set up a routine. Are you more productive in the morning or afternoon? When do you prefer to do mundane tasks? Can you work in an open office or do you need peace and quiet? What about the members of your team? Talk this out in the beginning not to have some problems arise later.
Get inspired by Elon Musk's (Tesla, SpaceX) daily schedule
Founding a business requires a lot of time and effort. Talk it over with your family as well and make sure they understand the contribution it requires. But make time for family and friends because they are your biggest supporters and they will be there to back you up. Create a routine for your day. Try to get the everyday decisions down to a minimum. What to wear, where to go for lunch, what road to take, etc.
Radical wisdom by Ricardo Semler
Save the decisions and your precious time for the big decisions regarding the business you will have to make each day.
Self-reflection
Why would you want to set up your own business?
What are you passionate about? What are your top skills?
Failure
''Do not be embarrassed by your failures, learn from them and start again.''
Richard Branson
Failure in some degree is bound to happen almost definitely. It might not ruin the company or the progress but mistakes that haunt you will arise anyway. There is no such thing as overnight success.
The big brands like Apple, Amazon, Microsoft might sound like woke up one morning as millionaires or even billionaires but that is not the case. Every company has had a start and has to go through the same steps and deal with mistakes and failures. The important thing is to be able to accept them, learn from them and eventually become stronger. That does not mean it is easy, painless or cheap but that is the way that humans learn and develop.
Do not give up - by Jack Ma (Owner of Alibaba)
Do not fear failure. It is a normal thing to happen, and it will eventually happen time by time. Adopt a growth mindset which is the ability to see failure as an opportunity to learn from. Remember you are awesome and you have had plenty of successes in past that you can be happy about rather than getting depressed about a failure.
At this point come back to your motivation and the reason you started your journey in the world of business. If it is still valid and inspires you, then you are on the right track.
Self-reflection
What is your usual behaviour when you fail in doing or achieving something?
What could you improve next time you face a failure?
How to become an entrepreneur
How did successful businessmen start their careers? How did they find the right business idea? Where did they get necessary resources, energy and inspirtation along the way? And how did they understand that they have what it takes to be an entrepreneur?
To speak frankly, probably there is no ''one fits all'' answer. Every person has its own path, profile and story. What it takes is to experiment and most importantly to try out your own luck and see where it leads you to.
Do you have the right attitude, courage and capabilities to start up a business?
40 signs you have what it takes to be an entrepreneur
If you can associate yourself with at least 1 of them, you are on the right track. If you see yourself in all 40 of them, you have all what it takes to become a successful entrepreneur!
But what are the things to think about before jumping in a cold water or how to prepare yourself before starting up a business?
Check out these valuable interpretations and advice from the world's best:
6 things to consider before starting your own business
Lessons from world's top entrepreneurs
Starting your own business requires a lot of hard work, inventing a right product, having a strong team, taking risks and believing in what you do:
10 rules to create a company by Elon Musk
You may also be interested to know how does establishing a company work in practice.
How to set up a company in Latvia
A pupil from 4th to 12th grade can set up a Student Company:
Setting up a Student Company in Latvia
Once you have reached the age of 18, you are entitled to found a company or become a freelancer with a legal status:
Registering as a Freelancer in Latvia
How to set up a company in Portugal
Follow to this website to get to know how to establish a company in Portugal:
Self-reflection
Before you start developing an idea, there are a couple questions you may want to reflect on:
1. What are your strengths and talents and how could they help you in business?
2. Have you done a proper research and do you see an opportinity you would like to turn into business?
3. Are you a lonesome wolf or do you have friends or other people who could be your team?
4. How much free time do you have for trying your luck in business and what risks are you willing to take?
5. What might restrict you from succeeding and how would you address that?
Curious to found a startup?
Startup is an entrepreneurial team. At the core of every successful startup is an engaged and committed co-founder team aligned with a shared vision.
This is one of the first prerequisites on the way to creating a startup together with a search of a business idea or a meaningful problem to solve. The team behind the startup has to have necessary skills and abilities to be able to validate the initial problem–solution and product–market fit, before scaling it to a notable business and company.
Startups do a great job in validating and bringing innovations to the market. They do so with a maximum drive and energy, without wasting too much time and resources. A lot of new jobs and disruptive innovations are created by startups. It is also a big fun to be part of the local and global startup community, and it is a great channel to look for new ideas, inspiration and fresh perspectives on the change happening in the world. They are also the ones that think ahead about the topics that are going to influence big global challenges, technological advancements and societal changes.
Inspire from startup stories around the globe
Hear from the European startup scene
Be part of the future creators' and innovators' movement and inspire from the top talent in the world! Explore what communities are doing, join the startup meetups and hackathons happening in your country! It will bring a lot of new inspiration and expand your network. Who knows, maybe you will find your future startup co-founders in one of those events.
There is a lot of support available that countries and governments are putting in place to support the startups, and often times startups are the ones invited by authorities to come in with the ideas to tackle big challenges.
Self reflection
Which is the most inspiring startup story you have read or heard about in your country? And abroad?
Design thinking
Design thinking is a creative and collaborative way to come up with solutions to solve problems, develop products and services, as well as improve processes by stepping into the shoes of users and co-creating together with them instead of for them.
It is a structured process, a set of methods and a mindset that can help you in your way of finding, developing and testing business ideas and concepts. Most importantly, before having any idea design thinking helps to uncover a problem that people are having and that you, with the help of your business, could help to solve them.
Design thinking process usually has several steps:
- EMPATHISE,
- DEFINE,
- IDEATE,
- PROTOTYPE,
- TEST,
- ITERATE,
- DELIVER.
It is not a linear process, you can come back to any step at any time.
How to apply design thinking in practice? Well, we suggest taking a look at the toolkit ''Design thinking for developing your business idea'' - a publication that offers simple tools to use on the go and try out and test ideas rapidly without major time and resource investment. It provides a collection of methods that you can use when trying out business ideas and thinking of starting your own venture. Such methods and their canvases as Problem hunt, Understand your market, Research tools, User persona, Problem definition, Ideation and Testing tools and others are included.
Explore the Design thinking toolkit
Prototyping
Do you know what a prototype is? Sounds like something very difficult? In reality, it's not! Prototyping brings real fun, and prototypes are very useful for getting feedback on your ideas at a very early stage.
Prototype is an early sample, model or release of a product build to test a concept or process.
It will help you to:
- quickly and cheaply make your ideas tangible before you fall in love with them and waste money
- test and get feedback, before drawing any conclusions on the awesomeness of your idea
- develop, test and improve your ideas at an early stage
- experiment, evaluate, refine and adapt.
Prototype fidelity ranges from low to high, and they can be made for any product, service and process. Start with low fidelity prototypes, and after receiving the feedback from users and other stakeholders, continue to improve it iteratively while you will reach a high fidelity. Low fidelity prototypes can be created in a form of "paper prototypes" or so called "dirty prototypes" - it is a playful and joyful activity that you can enjoy together with your friends!
How to create a prototype?
Find cardboard, colored paper, old magazines, scissors, glue, tape, different tools, things and materials that can be found at home or in the office, and use your magical creative power to create simple, fun prototypes in a short period of time. Set a time limit: 15 minutes for one prototype. We encourage you to create even 3 to 5 prototypes of your ideas to generate maximum creativity and early feedback from users.
Remember! The first prototypes - models and samples, usually built from available materials around you, are not precious. Their purpose is to have a product, service, process or part of it tested without major time and resource investment, then iterated until ready in a form of a product or service to be launched on the market. Prototypes will help you interact with
your users and understand their needs better.
Ready for some dirty prototyping?
When you have discovered the world of design thinking and moving on in your business development, you may be interested to explore other methods such as Lean, Agile and Scrum that could further help you to deep dive into business.
Self-reflection
Design thinking is about stepping into the shoes of people and designing solutions together with people to their problems. By empathizing with problems peoople are facing, you may discover your next brilliant idea that could be at the core of your future business.
Here are a couple of questions you may want to reflect on.
1. What pain points you have noticed around you? What frustrates you?
2. What problems other people are facing? What do people need? Which things are ineffective and inefficient? Around you, in the town, in the society.
Try to be specific and think about a concrete user group which is affected by your discovered problem. Is it just a couple of people or hundreds of people?
