Lessons learned as a Blackstone LaunchPad Fellow

by Raiza Pilatowsky Gruner | Geography Ph.D. | Co-founder, Planeteando

Since then we have grown our platform as science communicators with Youtube videos, a podcast series, and a network of student writers who are interested in developing their environmental science communication skills. This year we decided to move one step forward and create our own production company, Estudios Planeteando, with the goal of providing our services to researchers and professors who might be interested in creating their own content but don’t have the time or skills to do so.

With that in mind we applied and were selected among 50 student entrepreneurs for the LaunchPad Summer Startup Fellowship. LaunchPad Powered by Techstars is a network that supports student entrepreneurs with funding and well-designed programs focusing on developing entrepreneurial skills. Being part of this program opened our eyes to the world of entrepreneurship and subverted our expectations about launching our own company.

Here are the five key lessons we learned:

Be flexible to change

At the beginning of the fellowship, we thought we were almost ready to sell our services and it was just a matter of announcing our new venture for us to get some customers. However, we realized it was not as easy as we thought. Our mentors from Launchpad and our campus director at UC Davis, Sumiko Hong, challenged us to think about other dimensions of our venture, such as our legal constitution,  our business model and our market.

We learned that building an enterprise is a continuous process of practice, reflection and opening ourselves to new possibilities.

Even as a nonprofit, look for sustainability

From early on in the process, we decided that we want our enterprise to work as a nonprofit, and we figured that the “business” part would not have anything to do with what we were doing. Nevertheless, the first and most important piece of advice that we got in that area was that we still needed to think about the sustainability of our project: if we expect to rely on donors, how can we make it without having to rely on them very often? If we are charging for producing our videos, what would the best model be to cover our wages while also giving a good price to our customers?

Listen, listen, listen

While a lot of steps of launching a new venture have to do with talking about the project and taking action, it was surprising to see how much of this process is also about listening: to our potential customers (a crucial step that changed our perception about what professors and researchers want and need); to our mentors (they constantly challenged our ideas and gave us feedback); and to our own team (they helped us keep track of what our initial goals were).

Be specific on your targets

I have been describing our target market as “professors and researchers.” That is because we used to think about our market in such a broad way. Thanks to the fellowship and the guidance of our mentors, including Techstar’s Enterpreneur Toolkit and materials from the Mike and Renee Child Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, we were able to also become more specific and focused with our targets: we defined that we want to collaborate with professors in Mexico whose areas of expertise align with our own.

Strategic collaborations

The last main takeaway from the fellowship was that collaborations among peers are critical. At the beginning we thought that we should be looking to team up with other entrepreneurs who were in a similar sector as us—in this case, media or education. However, there was also a lot to learn and share between other students who had established a nonprofit or who were looking to develop their venture in an international setting. That advice allowed us to make important connections with other entrepreneurs and help each other out throughout the summer.

If you are also a student at UC Davis with a potential idea for a startup, our final advice would be: take that step! And from what we have learned thanks to our experience this summer:

Be ready to be challenged, rethink your expectations and listen to the great people around you while you enjoy this ride called entrepreneurship.

Blackstone LaunchPad Powered by Techstars is a network of 24 university programs that introduce students to entrepreneurship, help them develop entrepreneurial skills and enable them to independently achieve success in whatever venture they pursue.