July 12, 2010, 7:00 AM ET
By Aditya Mahesh
In the last two posts I contributed to Hire Education, I talked about how entrepreneurship becomes more popular as the job market becomes increasingly more difficult to navigate. That’s especially true today as the time it takes to find a full time position has dramatically increased for recent graduates. In these time gaps, showing activity is key, and entrepreneurial activity is a perfect way to fill this void. It shows potential employers a drive and sense of purpose, and allows you to develop your sense of independence, time- and budget-management skills, and professional skills. And it makes you more “bankable” as a potential hire. In some cases, entrepreneurial activity can turn into a new career path.
However, the most important aspect of any successful business is passion. You need to love what you do to have the drive to make it work. The easiest way to do that is to build a business around your hobbies. What do you love to do? How can you possibly make money doing it? It can be a difficult question to answer, but one that requires inspiration as a starting point.
In my experiences at UC Berkeley, I have come across many instances of students who had a passion, found a way to turn it into a business and got it to work. There was one student in my class who loved to bake and started a small bakery out of his apartment, which he eventually turned into a full-time supply business catering to many local bakeries in the Berkeley campus area. Another had a passion for fashion and clothing, and went online to find overseas suppliers to create sunglasses they could then distribute.
Yet a challenge emerges when your passion doesn’t result in a product or service you can easily sell. In this case you need to get more creative. Take for instance, Saleh Altayyar, an undergraduate student at UC Berkeley and aspiring hip-hop artist. (You may remember Saleh from my first post on Hire Education. Saleh is vice president of the College Entrepreneurship Organization at Berkeley and runs Auto1Pay, a used-car dealership in Modesto, Calif.,, which has now launched an export division selling vehicles both in the U.S. and abroad.) While it was difficult to sell CDs/MP3s in an industry moving towards a free-distribution model, where the music itself becomes a marketing tool, Saleh came to me with an idea for a start-up that would help him promote his content, help others share their music, and had the potential to become a successful business. After months of development, BeatThatVerse.com, was launched, a full music Web site for up-and-coming hip-hop and R&B artists that combines social networking, social bookmarking and sharing of content, and traditional media.
The advantage of projects like BeatThatVerse is that even if they are not profitable, they provide something concrete that can be shown to employers to enhance your resume, especially if they relate to the positions you are applying for. Students interested in careers related to product development and management, finance, marketing and other directly business-related positions can really benefit from this strategy.
If you want to get started with an online project related to your hobby, start with a simple blog. Network with people with similar interests to see what the pain points are and where a business opportunity may exist.
Aditya Mahesh is an undergraduate student and president of the College Entrepreneurship Organization at the Haas School of Business at University of California-Berkeley. He is a regular contributor to Hire Education.
From The Wall Street Journal published on July 12, 2010, 7:00 AM ET