By the looks of things, today’s young people are chomping at the bit to get started in the world of entrepreneurship. Leading startup studio Founders Factory has discovered that more than 480,000 university students run or plan to run a business alongside their studies. A third of current students are considering starting their own business regardless of the pandemic.
And who could blame them? There’s been high growth in VC investment in recent years, and sectors like sustainability, health, remote working and so on are abuzz with innovation and capital. Students right now are engaged and self-aware – and see business as a legitimate avenue through which to make a real difference.
Of course, there’s the looming recession and a 90% failure rate for new businesses to contend with – but this is, apparently, where Founders Factory and social learning platform FutureLearn come in.
Hoping to meet current demand for upskilling and reskilling, the two organisations have developed a £62 online course called ‘Venture Design: How to create venture backable businesses from scratch’.
Participants will spend 4 hours a week for 6 weeks learning the basics of spotting gaps in the market, data collection, idea generation, and pitching – before ultimately trying to persuade the Founders Factory Venture Design team they deserve a place on the mainstream FF programme.
According to Sahil Sachdev, Head of Venture Design, Founders Factory “see this as a great way to engage with founders who are at the beginning of their startup journeys and leave the doors open to learners to pitch their ideas to us.”
In 2018, over $254B was invested into new ventures – and while there’s plenty of COVID-related financial uncertainty to contend with at the moment, Founders Factory and FutureLearn are confident that SMEs will be at the heart of the UK’s economic recovery.
Justin Cooke, Chief Content and Partnerships Officer at FutureLearn, says,
“As we experience huge shifts in the ways we learn, work and live, this course will make a great contribution to efforts across the UK to add new skills and capabilities to our workforce and economy.”
The course is open to all ages, and operates on a rolling basis. Its aim is to equip a new set of people - whether just entering the workforce, recently redundant, or in search of a side hustle - with what they need to navigate an economy ripe for regeneration.
