Nice article by Behance Network founder Scott Belsky of Harvard Business School. Its not often that we get first hand accounts from entrepreneurs like this article in the Harbus (the student weekly at Harvard Business School). There is a lot to learn from active campus entrepreneurs like Belsky. Here are some selections from his piece:
Soon after I got accepted to HBS, I left a job at Goldman Sachs with the intention to travel, write, and bask in idea-generation for a few months prior to moving to Boston. Instead, I became obsessed with one idea in particular and inadvertently started a business prior to starting business school. The two years that followed were a roller-coaster of challenges in building a start-up team, developing, launching, and marketing a series of products…and showing up to class on time.
“Behance” was founded after about 100 interviews I conducted with creative teams and individuals - people in large agencies/companies, small design firms, and talented freelancers. I was fascinated by the inefficiencies in the marketplace, notably how Creatives build professional networks and how companies find and hire creative talent. I realized that the creative community was extremely disorganized and inefficient. The problems existed both on a micro-level (low personal productivity and brainstorms were often a waste of time), and a macro-level (people relied on old rolodexes or MySpace pages, and there was no “professional” online platform for Creatives).
The summer before HBS was spent developing an outline of a company that would boost productivity and help organize the creative community. The first few hundred dollars were spent on the trademark “Make Ideas Happen,” and then it started: I was scheduling meetings, and telling enough people about the concept that I suddenly felt accountable! With a small round of funding from friends and family, I hired a Chief of Design to focus full-time on developing the business, just three weeks before I packed my bags for Boston. (more…)
David Miller