The importance of supporting young entrepreneurs - by Rishi Chowdhury

by Startacus Admin

Rishi Chowdhury, Founder of IncuBus Ventures, a startup incubator for 18-25 year olds, tells us all about his campaign to support Young Entrepreneurs...(He's also a Startacus member too!)

I have long been eager to get out of the 9-5 and go full time on my own startup… and I’ve only been working for 3 years. Even that was in a cool fast growing startup with awesome people.

In recent years we’ve seen record levels of youth unemployment and rising university costs and this has led to many 18-25 year olds looking at alternatives to the 9-5 with many instead looking to creating their own careers by starting a business.

As great as this is to see, we all know many businesses fail. In fact some statistics show failure rates as high as 4 in 5 businesses failing in the first year. This number is lower for those startups that have been through a startup incubator.

It’s even more important when we look at the 18-25 year old demographic which typically has less experience in the world of work in general, let alone startups.

This is why I’m developing, alongside my co-founder George Johnston, a startup incubator programme specifically for 18-25 year olds. We offer two programmes, one 6 month programme and one 3 month programme.

The 6 months includes 3 months work experience in a local startup, learning skills and gaining experience. This would then be followed by 3 months working on building a startup in our space; a renovated double decker bus. We offer desk space, mentorship, resources, training workshops and introductions. The second programme is just the 3 months building a startup on our bus.

We believe the key value we can offer will be the advice of our experienced mentors who have been there and done it all before. As well as this the network connections that can be made with brands, startups, press, investors and even customers will be very valuable in growing the startups. On top of that training workshops to develop the individual as well as the entrepreneurial skills will provide useful in all walks of life going forward. 

You can help us support young entrepreneurs by pledging your support to our Thunderclap campaign below. It’s free and will help us amplify the social message of our campaign.

 

Like Rishi you can sign up to Startacus and tell us your tale, and we encourage you all to support Rishi and the team with their Thunderclap campaign. Interested in finding out more about Thunderclap? Well. here's a post to explain all the Thunderclap basics too! 

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Published on: 25th March 2014