How to Start a Startup on Accident
So for our first post we wanted to throw out something that would give you a little bit of background on Catalyst and at the same time, shed some light on a very interesting concept in entrepreneurship.
We’ve been working pretty under the radar up to this point, so odds are you have no idea what Catalyst is, who I am, what we do, where we came from, etc. I do want to answer those questions with this post, but most of all, I want to get you to think about something you might not have been thinking about before, and is a core idea that Catalyst was founded on.
You probably know that all startups start with the same exact thing: a problem to solve. Whether it’s a fake problem, a tiny insignificant problem, or a huge problem that every human on Earth is looking for a solution to, it can be the thing that a startup idea is born from.
But in order for a startup idea to be born from that problem, the problem needs to be approached by the right person and solved the right way.
You’ve encountered problems, and maybe you thought, “Yeah, that sucks, but it is what it is”. Or maybe you’ve experienced a problem, thought of a solution, realized it didn’t exist, but thought creating that solution was WAY too big of a task for you, so you didn’t do it. Or MAYBE you’re the one who’s encountered a problem, thought of a solution, realized it didn’t exist, and went ahead and solved that problem. OR you went one step further–you solved the problem, but THEN worked to find out exactly how many people you could solve that problem for, AND tried REALLY HARD to solve it for them. That’s a ton of fun, and that’s entrepreneurship.
So to sum up that word dump, there are a lot of ways to handle problems. But the "entrepreneurial" way to handle a problem is not only to solve it, but to solve it for as many people as possible. It takes a certain mindset to approach problems that way, and the best way to adopt that mindset is to surround yourself with people who already have.
If you really understand that, you’ll start to do things differently.
Last fall, after Jack and I had gotten our feet wet in the entrepreneurship and VC space, we were on a high of ambition, inspiration, and a desire for impact. We wanted to continue our momentum into the space, but UF offered no opportunity to do so. So we created our own by founding Gator Venture Capital.
Once we ideated the structure of the GVC Analyst Program, we knew it had potential as a very real and effective solution to our problem. And we realized there were a lot of students who experienced the same problem we did. And what’s more; we saw that the work we were doing was genuinely helping entrepreneurs and VCs. These observations are what got us to start building Catalyst.
We very easily could’ve just kept running Gator Venture Capital as we did this last spring semester. But because we had been exposed to and mentored by some incredible startup founders and VCs, our minds immediately began wondering how we could have as significant of an impact as possible with the work we were doing.
So essentially, we had adopted the entrepreneurial mindset by accident. We both gained experience in VC to build our resumes in order to pursue more traditional roles in banking and consulting. But by immersing ourselves into the world of innovation, we adopted the mindset that led us to begin turning Gator Venture Capital into a global organization through Catalyst.
I guess the gist here is this: if you adopt the right mindset and open your mind to the idea of not only solving, but scaling solutions to the problems you encounter, you will open up endless possibilities for the impact you can have on this world. And as I said before, the best way to adopt that mindset is to surround yourself with people who already have.
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