Free Online Resources Future Entrepreneurs Can Tap Into

What does it take to become a successful entrepreneur? Well, there is one trait that entrepreneurs have in common: a consuming passion! A passion for what? It doesn’t have to be something specific. Elon Musk, one of the most well-known entrepreneurs, had a passion for coding at a very young age. When he was only 12 years old, Musk developed his first code: a game he called ‘Blastar’. The name of the game indicates the growing interest Musk had in space. His passion went seas beyond mastering coding. Two days after he started with his Ph.D. program, Musk dropped out to pursue his entrepreneurial dream. Does it sound crazy? I don’t think so! We have all heard about the dropouts who grew to become millionaires; Bill Gates, for instance. This doesn’t necessarily mean that you should be a dropout in order to become an extraordinarily successful business owner. In fact, there’s no particular formula for success. There are always many possibilities and sometimes it just doesn’t make sense. Check out this blog to get a clear understanding of what I’m talking about here.

One simple explanation that I reached is that, compared to today’s generation, students before didn’t have that much of an option to learn and explore. The risks that such tremendously successful people had to make were huge. After all, we only know of the success stories. Who knows how many failures such risks led to that we have never been made aware of, right? But today’s generations of entrepreneurs are luckier. This brings us to the topic of this blog: do today’s entrepreneurs stand better chances than earlier generations?

Challenges throughout the journey will still be there. You will never hear of an entrepreneur who had a light-bulb moment and three months later, BOOM, they are the owner of the most innovative and successful business in the country. However, today’s, or rather future entrepreneurs, stand bigger chances at early stages of their lives to start an entrepreneurial journey and succeed. In this blog, we will cover the basic and essential aspects of a startup journey and point out features that future innovators can benefit from.

A shock you prepared for is lighter than the one you never imagined

It wouldn’t be an exaggeration if we assume that we have all been made aware of the possibility of failing. It is true that our inner optimism might cloud our judgment and expectations, yet, almost every entrepreneur realizes it is part of the journey. The preparedness for such moments lightens the burden and helps us think with a clearer head, thanks to Chris Gardner and the internet.  In the past, due to limited entrepreneurial education and scarce resources, frustration found an easy way into the minds of entrepreneurs.

Access to free online resources to grow your passion

We might not realize it because we have been living with it for so long a time that it’s become an essential part of our lives. So essential that it sounds bizarre when you visualize how people survived without it before.

Besides socializing, such platforms connect like-minded people who share the same interests. This goes down to the most peculiar and particular of interests. For instance, I was dumbfounded when I first noticed a special group created for silent movies. The bigger surprise was when I saw the number of its members. There are groups for writers, translators, musicians, mathematicians, stargazers, etc.

How can those websites be of any help to entrepreneurs?

In most of those websites, members exchange questions and topics that both beginners, as well as experts, can be part of. One of the most prominent examples is Stack Exchange. This forum is an umbrella to a multitude of specialized forums, there is one for coders, another for different language learners, a third for cinephiles. On this platform, members can ask any question related to the field and the members who have the answer, most experienced in the field, would answer. This will mostly bring Quora to your mind.

With those sources of knowledge on hand, young entrepreneurs have a bigger chance to grow their passion, which might lead to an innovative idea. Turning this idea into reality is still a big challenge. However, more resources are easily accessible and are actually growing in number over time. This is where accelerators and incubators fall into place.

Incubators, Accelerator 

Although incubators have been around for quite a while now, they now have more developed capabilities to admit wider ranges of startups and businesses. Entrepreneurs today don’t have to find an incubator or accelerator – in the event that the startup survived its early stages – in their area to be able to save their business.

Today, there are specialized incubators and/or accelerators with the aim of helping to enrich a specific sector, either on a regional a basis or even worldwide.

Angel Investors & Crowdfunding

How much you believe in your business idea and how smartly you can make people believe in it may be your key to funding your business. Why is this more doable than ever? It can all be done online, no restrictions. Entrepreneurs can effortlessly get the financial support required for the business to take off by presenting their idea in a smart way to people and making them fund it because they so want to have it on the ground.

Learn the best you can online

The internet is so huge that it covers everything anyone can ever think about. It gives a chance for any kind of person to find their voice and share it with the world. How can this be to the benefit of you as an entrepreneur? Well, when in doubt about any software that someone suggested that your company should use, you can just go online, look for alternatives and do a comparative study. If you don’t really have the time, you can consult or simply read the reviews of this product. You will most likely end up either buying it or finding a better replacement that you stumbled upon while looking into the one proposed to you.

Is it too much?

One of the major issues that have been widely discussed is the overload of information we are living with. This must be something that we all have experienced. You open Google to read the news for instance, and suddenly you are exposed to an immensity of newspapers websites, news blogs, not to mention the multi YouTube channels and videos dedicated for news, whether international or local. While you can still manage the news overload, it becomes out of your hands once you’re stuck with this amount of resources about entrepreneurship, business startups and all that comes in the process. Sometimes it becomes overwhelming. What you can do about this is start with an extensive research until you find the resources that answer all or most of your questions. You can consult and ask around in case you cannot find your way.

Internet users today can easily get their hands on such websites while surfing the internet for entertainment. If you intend to start your business in the future, you can subscribe to the newsletters or RSS to them, which allows you to be more acquainted with the business setup in general and also introduces you to the different areas of running a business and how each department works.

For instance, take a look at FbStart; a huge project by Facebook and in collaboration with many international companies that can contribute to the startup ecosystem in one way or another. Depending on the track that best suits your business, that is if you want professional assistance from the beginning (the Bootstrap track) or on a later stage (the Accelerate track), you are provided with the necessary courses and resources that you need to guide you through your journey as a business owner. They have considered everything, starting from the backend infrastructure of your website and ending with translating and localizing the digital content of it (when needed)!

Do your research, find your ideal source and get knowledgeable about business startup. It doesn’t happen overnight, the more you learn now, the easier it becomes for you to actually get it done successfully.