Being an entrepreneur is like being on a varsity team
In our team meeting on Friday we were throwing around some initial feedback we heard on a number of things and the following analogy was discussed:
Deciding to live in VeloCity is like joining a varsity team. You have to commit to being an entrepreneur; balance the demands of academics with developing your skills and learn to place entrepreneurship on the same level as academics.
This makes a lot of sense to me. If you are on a varsity sports teams there are set practice times, expectations on training, and expectations on how you perform in your academics. Sometimes the team needs will conflict with academic or personal needs but all members of the team figure out a way to balance it all.
As a student and an entrepreneur it doesn’t seem to be a whole lot different from being on a team. If you don’t put in the time in practice and developing your skills you aren’t going to perform. So what would the core skills be? At VeloCity I see the opportunity to work on the following three skills:
- networking and communicating your ideas (and/or pitching)
- taking risks and managing risks
- ability to prioritize tasks and doing what it takes to complete them (Waterloo students are exceptionally good at this, generally speaking)
Working on these skills is not something you can do just when you have time. You must to have the passion and the drive to create opportunities and take advantage of the opportunities that are created at VeloCity for you.
No surprise the analogy came from Sean Van Koughnett (the guy who made VeloCity happen) who spent many years committed to varsity Basketball at Waterloo… and from what I hear he was pretty good 