Sahil Baghla
Sahil is the CEO/Co-Founder at online fan merchandise store Bluegape.com
I was in my final year when I co-founded bluegape.com with one of my batchmate and a junior (Ayush – He was in his second year). Most of the people we came across at that time advised us to take some industry exposure etc before getting into our own venture. We were focused on our Idea and we were determined, and hence launched bluegape.com on 13, Sept 2011 (We are even celebrating our b’day this coming September and you are invited).
Let me give you 10 reasons why you should launch a startup from college rather working you ass off for someone else. May be I can convince some of you to do that
1) Free office space + wifi + electricity etc : A decent apartment with all these facilities where 4-5 people can work and sleep comfortably in Delhi/Bangalore or Mumbai will cost no less than 30K per month.
2) Teammates : You need rockstars to work with you to build great business and it’s very easy for your friends to take risk with you while they are still in college. Once they are in Job, you will spend half of your energy in convincing them to work with you.
3) No Salary Tension : I just came to know after getting out of campus that how much a designer actually cost
4) Free resources : You will find many people in your campus with subject expertise to help you on tech, design, marketing etc. Outside world they call it consultancy and charge like anything.
5) Media : You will get a story to tell that how you managed between study and business. Believe me people/media love to hear that
6) Mindset : You can make absolutely any crazy decisions because you have never experienced the industry and you don’t understand the limitations etc. No business can be build without crazy decisions.
7) Attention : Believe me most of the CEOs/Big Shot Guys love to see and help young people with smart ideas. They will give you time to meet and discuss your idea/proposal etc.
8) Expectations : Your girlfriend/boyfriend don’t expect any fancy gifts from you while you are in college and believe me you can’t afford it while you are doing a startup and this money can be used for your business.
9) B-Plan competitions : In valley there’s a famous saying that you can get money from 3Fs (Friends, Family and Fools) until you prove your business. For us the initial funding source was savings some of our money from our Internships (I did two interns in US before launching bluegape.com ) and we won two b-plan competitions. Believe me you actually need some good money to launch your business. Practically no business can be profitable from day one. You atleast need money to register your company, payment gateway, hosting etc even before startup and you can go profitable.
10) Satisfaction : Finally and most importantly, No matter how big your business will be. You actually see yourself as big shot guys like Google/Dell/Facebook/Apple/Microsoft who started out of college.
