“
E N T R T P OE N E U R S H I P
SEC EIR N
Build on your
ideas through
conversation,
do not hide your
ideas. Just get
started.
Compared to these stories, we haven’t had a real low point
yet. However, we also haven’t exerted pressure on ourselves to
take huge financial risks or do more than we can comfortably
handle. We’re building ProFellow slowly, one person at a
time. Our business is more about building a community than
building a technical solution.
We have personal relationships now with many of the people
who have signed up for our website. We’re also having fun,
which is one of our priorities. When you’re working on
multiple career goals, it’s not easy to have a good work-life
balance. The right priorities only become clear when you
really think about what you want both now and in the future.
Start-ups are very hard work. Coming up with a great idea is
the easy part. The hard part is making it happen, and it can
take a lot more time and energy than you ever anticipated.
It requires a passion for what you are working on. Ryan
and I both have many career goals, including personal and
financial independence. However, what is most fulfilling
about working on ProFellow is connecting with people and
seeing the network grow. For us, we’re already really proud of
what we’ve achieved. In the future, we want the international
impact of ProFellow to be tenfold, whatever that looks like.
It could be thousands more international students finding
funding to study or work in the U.S., or more collaborative
social impact projects by fellows who have met through
ProFellow, or more private sector funding for fellowship
opportunities. Ideally, it would be all three!
We have boot-strapped from the beginning and have used
as many free and low-cost tech tools as possible, including
Wordpress for the blog, Mailchimp for our newsletter and
Wufoo for easy, online forms like our sign-up page. In 2011,
we also raised more than $10,000 USD in online crowdfunding. Online crowd-funding is a great option for raising
seed funding because you don’t have to sacrifice equity in
your company.
I think the New Zealand start-up community would benefit
greatly from better and cheaper access to Internet. When we
first moved to New Zealand we realised we took for granted
the fact that free, unlimited Wi-Fi is ubiquitous in the U.S.
It really does make it easier to be more mobile and actually
boot-strap a start-up.
For aspiring entrepreneurs, we would just advise that
you get out and meet people. Build on your ideas through
conversation, don’t hide your ideas. Just get started. You can
start like we did with something as simple as a blog. You may
not have all the skills yourself to build your idea, but while
you are searching for partners and resources (a process that
takes time) do everything that you can possibly do yourself.
Talk to potential customers, build an informational website,
raise money by crowd-funding, define your market, mock up
a prototype. There’s so much to do in the process of building a
start-up, you should never feel at a standstill.
To find out more about Vicki and Ryan and their
company ProFellow, visit their website at
www.profellow.com
Networking at a ProFellow event sponsored by Stanford University
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