College is a great place, you make new friends, try new things, and have no shortage of homework. During my freshman year at Iowa State, aside from doing normal college things, I spent my time learning as much as possible about how people have made technology solve problems for society and everything that goes into making these ideas a reality.

SCHOOL

In the classroom, learning, especially for Computer Science, is usually seen as not being able to teach the skills needed to succeed in the field. This lack of real-world know-how is why many students work on side projects, contribute to open-source, or do coding challenges. I have always been fascinated with the idea of working on my own project and creating a company. When I was in middle school, I created a company that sold model Rockets. I had a website, business cards, even an online shopping portal; The only thing I was missing was the actual products, needless to say, endeavor never took off. I have been working on creating the next big company ever scene then, and with every failure, the next project gets better and more focused. College was the culmination of years of wanting to make a difference. I would make friends by asking the people sitting around me in my coding classes if they wanted to start a project with me, most did not, but the ones who did turned out to be great people.

HACKATHONS

Something I got involved with at college was hackathons. I attended many hackathons my first year, all around the Midwest, even get second place at one. Hackathons are great exercises in many skills that it takes to make the next big thing. Hackathons, in a nutshell, are a weekend-long event in which teams of around four students create a project usually within a theme to solve a problem that they have identified. Identifying an existing problem and creating an intuitive solution that meets the initial need and generates interest and connection is an incredibly valuable skill.

Company Start, Legal

During the second half of the year, after brainstorming so many ideas for hackathons and other projects, I came up with the idea that I thought could turn into something, the concept of hyper-localized social texting with an emphasis on privacy and in-person connection. I spent a lot of time researching what was needed to start a company and how to succeed. I wrote out the initial concept, drew up a logo, and got the code infrastructure started. The next step was to get my friends together and bring in help to get things going. I wanted to ensure that I was protected legally and that everyone on the project felt like they had the right amount of legal binding to the project and individual protection. I wrote an example agreement and then met with one of the on-campus layers at Iowa State to get some advice on the legal resources for this project. There are many stories out there about starting a company and people feeling like that it was unfair, and I did not want what that to happen.

#startup-lessons #startup-advice #inspiration #startups #careers #founders #founder-stories #hackernoon-top-story