Assembling a team

Finally, it’s time for Joe to assemble his team, take his completed business plan, and launch his company! Luckily, he can use the connections and team-building skills from earlier to assemble the superheros he needs to take his idea to the next level. Finding people to join him can be a Herculean task, but it helps to always be thinking about it.

A neat exercise worth trying is to a take a few minutes to consider who you would have join your team if you were starting something new right now. Pick around six people who you think would form the ideal team, assuming anyone you ask would say yes. You have to know them personally. Now figure out what skillsets and backgrounds that group of people is missing, and start searching for new connections to fill the void. You’ll find that you quickly build a picture of exactly the kind of person you need to be looking out for as you build up your network. Hat tip to Ben for this one!

More classes

I want to emphasize that Joe should strive to take advantage of everything MIT has to offer while he’s going through this process. For any resource he’s lacking, there’s almost certainly something offered to help solve it.

Need to bring on a business student? Take a class or two at Sloan, and make an effort to chat with Sloanies about what you’re working on (15.411 and 15.412 are pretty useful for life in general if you need suggestions). A good time to look into doing this is when you have a product built and need to start acquiring users and growing.

Need to find some technical talent? Take some generally applicable Course 6 classes like 6.036 Introduction to Machine Learning and make some friends while working on the projects. Go to the various Media Lab hackathons (such as Reality, Virtually, Hackathon! and Hacking Arts), as well as HackMIT. A good time to explore these options is once you have a well-thought-through business plan and product roadmap.

Need some guidance and structure when starting to work as a team? Take 15.378 Building an Entrepreneurial Venture class together. Worried about balancing your startup and everything else at school? Hope that 6.S078 Entrepreneurship Project comes back so you can register and get credit for building your company!

If you have a specific industry in mind, there are plenty of chances to deep-dive through specialized Sloan classes that bring in amazing founders and investors in your vertical. The 15.S0x series are particularly awesome if you’re into energy, fintech, or healthcare.

At the point where you can no longer balance school and your startup? MIT has excellent leave policies for students in good academic standing. Chat with S3 for more details!

Mentors

I’ll conclude the story with how Joe should continue once he gets everything up and running. Without a doubt, the most important thing to say here is that he should be talking to the Entrepreneurs In Residence at the Trust Center early and often — they are so awesome and can provide incredible insights and advice. If any of his teammates go to Harvard, the i-lab also provides a comparable experience and can be a neat place to work out of. He should keep going to all the events around both campuses; it’s insane how often seemingly useless or irrelevant connections become useful down the line.

There are a few other resources on campus worth mentioning, where plenty of great mentors and advisors can be found. The Engine is not necessarily focused on students right now, but can be a great place to hang out and meet people. MIT VMS has a ton of brilliant people who can give advice on any aspect of starting a company. If you’re working to commercialize technology from a lab, make sure you hit up the Deshpande Center!

Funding

Once Joe reaches the look the point where he needs external funding to keep growing and building, there are a bunch of options, which I recommend taking advantage of in the following order.

MIT Sandbox is a new program that offers no-strings-attached grants to students pursuing new ideas. This is essentially free money Joe. Take the free money. There’s a quick application process and a panel to pitch to, but this should definitely be the first stop for any student that needs funding.

Following this, there are a ton of pitch competitions held throughout the year which not only provide a great chance to raise awareness of Joe’s company, but often have cash prizes. Check out RECESS, Plug and Play, MIT 100K, and IPO for four organizations which throw well-run events.

Once the team, product, and market have been settled on and demonstrable progress has been made, it’s time to consider raising a small “pre-seed” round from external investors. This is where I get to excitedly tell you that there are venture funds run by students! The partners making funding decisions are your peers, so it can be much easier to approach them.

Dorm Room Fund, where I work, is one such student-run fund. Of course, there are also others. Each one is slightly different, and you should do your research. Dorm Room Fund, Rough Draft Ventures, and Contrary Capital are the ones Joe will most likely encounter at MIT. I recommend talking to all three at once — we often co-invest!

A huge advantage of working with fellow students is a safe and understanding environment; we’ve all been in Joe’s shoes, and know how daunting this journey can be. We’re here to help! At DRF, we have a particular love for the MIT community — we’ve funded over 15 MIT startups in the last few years, including crowd favourites like Spyce, lovepop, RapidSOS, and Grove.

With some money and traction going for him, Joe is now ready to apply to one of many accelerators out there. His best bet at MIT is to try to grab a spot in the latest batch of the Trust Center’s delta v. delta v provides MIT startups with up to $20k of equity-free funding, a space to work, and introductions to more of the venture community. It’s a no-brainer if you can get in! If not, MIT Fuse is a shorter, but equally rigorous month-long program that’s worth checking out.

If Joe wants to look off campus, YCombinator, TechStars, and MassChallenge are all well-respected external accelerators that can provide the funding and mentorship required for insane growth. I’d recommend applying to all of them!

Conclusion

So, that about sums up Joe’s journey. Or at least the start of it. With a lot of hard work, and even more luck, he’s now the CEO of a well-funded seed-stage startup which is acquiring users at an unprecedented rate. Familiar strangers are strangers no more as hundreds, then thousands of people receive little buzzes, notifications filling them with context on the people they pass every day. Or something like that…

I want to conclude by saying that this is not the path I took through entrepreneurship at MIT, and is simply a reflection of the best of my experiences and those of my friends. If anyone tries following a part of this, or has strong opinions about something I’ve said, I’d love to hear! Drop me line and let’s grab coffee.