What a Tech Startup Is and the Entrepreneurial Mindset
An entrepreneur is someone who sees a problem around them and builds a solution valuable enough that other people want to use it, and even pay for it. Tech entrepreneurship means the solution uses technology, for example an app, a website, an online form, or a simple device.
Ordinary businesses and startups
Imagine two students at your school. Rina starts selling risoles in class. She already knows her product, knows her buyers, and her goal is to keep sales steady. This is a good ordinary business. Bima sees a long queue at the canteen during break and asks: "What if students could order food from the third lesson onwards and just pick it up?" Bima does not yet know whether his solution will be used, how many people want it, or how to earn money from it. This is the mark of a startup: a young organisation searching for a business model that can be repeated and can grow, under a lot of uncertainty.
The startup mindset
- Start from a problem, not from a cool idea. The first question is "whose problem am I solving?", not "what app do I want to build?".
- Treat an idea as a guess. "Students want to order food early" is a guess that must be tested, not a fact.
- Test quickly and cheaply. Bima does not need to build an app straight away. He can use a Google Form for one week and see how many orders come in.
- Learn from data, including from failure. If there are only three orders in a week, that is not shameful; it is valuable information.
- Be responsible. A good business is honest with customers, protects other people's data, and does not disrupt learning.
The Build, Measure, Learn loop
The book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries popularised the Build, Measure, Learn loop: build a simple version, measure how users respond, then learn whether you should continue, change direction (pivot), or stop. You will use this loop throughout the course.
A student startup does not have to become a big company. Its main goal is to learn to solve a real problem in a measured and responsible way.
In this course you will move from finding a problem, interviewing potential users, building a Business Model Canvas, making a no-code prototype, and calculating costs and prices, to presenting a pitch deck in the final module.