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CNBC’s “College Voices 2020” is a series written by CNBC fall interns from universities across the country about coming of age, getting their college education and launching their careers during these extraordinary times. Danial Khan is a student from UC Berkeley studying electrical engineering & computer science as well as industrial engineering & operations research. The series is edited by Cindy Perman.

Microsoft, Facebook, Reddit, Insomnia Cookies. We’ve all heard the success stories: A college student, usually a prodigy, has a brilliant idea and works day and night, drops out of college and makes it big. But you don’t have to be a prodigy and you don’t have to drop out to be successful.

Pedro Pachuca, an engineering student at UC Berkeley and the co-founder of SportVue, a start-up aimed at revolutionizing the way sport players train.

Source: Pedro Pachuca

Pedro Pachuca is a sophomore at UC Berkeley studying electrical engineering, computer sciences and business administration. He’s also the co-founder of SportVue, a start-up aimed at revolutionizing the way sport players train. Pachuca started the company during his freshman year with his friend and roommate, James Li. He says college is a great time to start a business because it’s a lot easier to seek out help and mentorship.

“People want to help you if you’re in college because it’s like ‘Ooh, bright new talent,’ rather than being right out of college where they see you more as a competitor,” Pachuca said.

And, then there’s the financial aspect.

“It’s actually less risky to do it now than later, because right now you’re under the umbrella of school, and some of us have the umbrella of our parents,” Pachuca said. “If this was right after school, then you’re going to have to support yourself and you’re gonna have to turn to venture capital much faster and dilute equity much faster.”

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If you’re working on something that targets college-age students, you have a built-in focus group all around you, said Danielle Strachman, a general partner at the 1517 Fund, a venture capital fund that invests in young founders. 

In my experience, I have found being able to walk up to users in libraries or post in Facebook groups is an amazingly powerful tool.

“Also for some students, it’s really helpful if they’re working on something to have access to facilities and labs,” Strachman said. “But you have to balance out the time constraints, you’re also going to be a student.”

Here are answers to some frequently asked questions about launching a start-up while you’re in college and some pro tips for how to get started.

Do I need to take business/entrepreneurship classes?

There are varying opinions on whether business/entrepreneurship classes are helpful when you want to launch a start-up.

Taking entrepreneurship classes is like “building up your muscles for the big fight,” said Mike Kyriacou, a lecturer at UC Berkeley who teaches “Venture Applications of Data Science.” Classes are a risk-free environment where you can try out experiments — and that will help students to be more prepared when they venture out into the real world, he said.

And, never underestimate the power of making connections. Many of the people in these classes are going to go on to do interesting things.

“They’re going to be execs here or there so you’re building relationships with each other and you all become great dots to connect with each other in the future,” Kyriacou said.

Pachuca had more mixed feelings on the benefits of these classes.

“In business classes, professors try to codify intuition and then teach it to other people, which works to an extent, but it’s hard for students to pick up on intuition.” He then highlighted that “I think business school really gives you a lot of good frameworks to think about. For example, they gave us frameworks on how to categorize customers which I think I’ve used a lot.”

Chris Cherian, a business student at Wharton and the CEO of Gatherly, a start-up aimed at transforming how online events are held,  adds: “It’s a half-half — some classes are super relevant while others aren’t. For example, I really hope I won’t have to worry about debt restructuring for Gatherly,” he said jokingly. On a serious note, he said the technical financial modeling skills he learned from classes have been extremely helpful for him as he ventures into the business world.

Chris Cherian, a business student at Wharton and the CEO of Gatherly, a start-up aimed at transforming how online events are held.

Source: Stanley Wong

If you don’t want to take a class to sharpen your skills, many colleges have an entrepreneurship scene with amazing start-up accelerators. My time at the Cal Hacks Fellowship start-up accelerator taught me an incredible amount about the entrepreneurship world and how to start a business. In the accelerator, I learned how to talk to users, discovered the world of venture capital, and received advice on the decisions my team made.

How do I learn the technical stuff?

Taking classes can be helpful when it comes to something technical like software development – but it isn’t necessary. I’ve found that one of the biggest advantages of a start-up is that it pushes you to do things you never thought you could. In a previous start-up idea that I worked on, my team and I had no idea how to do anything in web development, but we decided to take the leap and teach ourselves how to do it.

Kyriacou had a similar view, saying “Go for it. When you’re building a company there’s two things: Figure stuff out and get stuff done right,” he said. Classes are a great way to learn how to figure stuff out but don’t be afraid to challenge yourself into learning new things outside of them as well.

For nontechnical founders, taking technical classes can also be a powerful tool to bridge the gap between the technical and nontechnical side.

“I can talk to the engineers a lot more effectively because of my coursework” in computer science, said Amaan Pirani, a student at Columbia University and the head of sales at Gatherly. Even a basic understanding of the technical side of a business can be super helpful for working more harmoniously with your team.

Amaan Pirani, co-founder and head of sales at Gatherly.

Source: Akbar Pirani

Where do I find start-up ideas?

“The way to get start-up ideas is not to try to look for start-up ideas,” Paul Graham wrote in his article, How to Get Startup Ideas.

Most student founders create their start-up by finding a problem that they, or someone close to them, faces in their life. For example, the Gatherly team realized a need for a better way of hosting large events online when they attended a conference, where “it felt like you were in a large room with 300 people all in a giant circle.” They felt that there could be a way to emulate the real life experience of walking between different conversations and talking to people without a constrained environment. So if you keep your eye out and talk to people, you may just come across an idea that makes you say “Aha!”

Pachuca explained the importance of these “Aha!” moments.

“One guy just not too long ago was traveling with a suitcase and thought ‘Dang my luggage is really heavy.’ So what did he do? He slapped wheels on luggage,” Pachuca explained. “Suitcases had existed before this for many many years, and wheels had existed before this for many more years, but no one had thought to put them together before until he did. And this is because everyone had this pain point but just said ‘this sucks,’ but no one did anything about it until he thought of solving it. And that made him a lot of money because he solved a problem for a lot of people,” Pachuca said.

As avid sports players, Pachuca and Li saw how common it was in both soccer and hockey for players to keep their head down, which both harmed their performance and put their safety at risk. They decided to “introduce technology in a space where technology wasn’t really used before” by creating a device that notifies the player with a small light whenever they’re playing with their head down too much.

So, keep your eyes and ears open — you never know when your next “Aha!” moment will strike!

How do you start a business in college?

• Come up with an idea. Be observant. Find a problem that people face – then think of how you can solve it.
• Figure out your value proposition. Basically, you need to be able to summarize your idea by saying “Our (product) helps (target customer) who need to (solve job/problem) by (differentiator on how your solution solves the problem). This ensures that your product actually solves a problem. The more specific it is, the better.
• Ask around. This is the idea of the start-up null hypothesis. Before diving into an idea, you have to test that a problem worth solving exists, and that the solution fits the needs of your users perfectly. From my personal experience, I advise that you do this before spending enormous amounts of time working on the product or service. These are called “customer discovery” interviews and are essential that you’re solving a real problem.
• Make an MVP (minimum viable product). The idea of an MVP is to make something that pretends to be your product as quickly as possible, and as little money as possible. Buffer, a start-up aimed at helping people build their brand on social media, has a great “How We Did It” blog post about how they created the first version of their website that was two pages total — one that explained the product, and one that signed people up for an email list. For user testing, lots of experts use the absolute minimum effort when evaluating an idea, such as a series of slides on a slideshow that make it look like the user is using your product.
• Make something people want. This sounds rather obvious, but one of the things many founders miss out on is the importance of talking to users frequently. You solve this with “prototype interviews,” where you show off your MVP to users to make sure that your product is actually solving their problem. User interviews are actually an art in themselves, and you’ll get better at them as you go. You can read more about these in Zach Fichman-Klein’s article “12 Tips for Conducting User Interviews.” 
• Ship & Iterate. This is the idea of building your product up in small bits, and speaking to users after each iteration. This helps ensure that you don’t waste your time building features that users don’t want.
• Make sure that your product has a business plan. This is the major difference between a product and a business, and only one of those two gets you a start-up. (However, it’s important to note that even making a successful product as a student goes a long way in teaching you and getting your foot in the door.) This step involves knowing your market (you may find this Wall Street Journal article helpful) and making a go-to-market strategy (this in-depth article on how to think of these may help).

From here, a lot of start-ups diverge in their path. Depending on a lot of factors, a start-up may choose to go into marketing, raising investments, experimenting with revenue, expanding the team, and many other options. One way to know which direction to head in is to have mentors who are really experienced in the start-up field give you one on one advice on where to go next.

Of course, this is just a rough guideline — every business is different. The world of start-ups is very diverse and depending on your idea, you might go down an entirely different path. 

So, when do I drop out?

Whoa! Just because Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg dropped out doesn’t mean you have to.

That being said, balancing school with a start-up can be tricky — especially if a business starts to take off. So, you just have to figure out which path is right for you. How much time do you want or need to spend on your start-up?

Most of the student founders at Gatherly dropped out of school for a semester to make sure they were putting in 100% with their business.

“In the beginning, we were reading this book on how a lot of start-ups have this culture of ‘If you don’t have good output, you’re fired,’ and we wanted to create this culture but then we thought ‘Wait, we’re all 20-year-olds who are objectively bad at our jobs.’ That’s when we realized that input is the most important thing,” Pirani explained. “For me, it would be impossible to take classes and have a high input, but for Chris [who’s still enrolled for the fall semester], he’s been able to take classes and still have an insanely high input, given that they’re pass/fail.” 

Pachuca and Li, meanwhile, are working full time on SportVue and have moved across the country to Minnesota just to build a closer community with their customers. But, they have been able to juggle their coursework while they’re building the business.

“I think staying in school is the right decision for me right now,” Pachuca said. “Online school let my team move to the best place for our business and connect with our customers. As of now, school doesn’t pose a significant barrier to my start-up but, as we grow, we can definitely see it interfering with our progress at which point we will consider taking a break from school.”

Being involved in the start-up world changed my outlook on life in ways that I would never expect, and as someone from a technical background, it taught me a ton of useful skills, from interviewing people to conflict management to gathering conclusions from data. When I went through a start-up accelerator, it really changed my mind on why it’s important to have personal connections and marketing skills. So even if you’re not business-minded or technology-oriented, or if you’ve never thought about it before, it might still be worth a shot.

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Orlando Pride midfielder Bridget Callahan (22) shoots the ball during the NWSL soccer game between the Orlando Pride and the Washington Spirit on October 5, 2019 at Explorer Stadium in Orlando, FL.

Andrew Bershaw | Icon Sportswire | Getty Images

Women’s football had a great 2020 even in the middle of a pandemic, thanks to broadcast and streaming deals that brought the sport to more viewers than ever before.

Finding viewers outside of a dedicated core fan base and delivering games on a handful of consistent platforms will be key to further growth in 2021. Women’s sport is a feel-good story, but the next phase is about hitting the hard numbers, attracting new broadcast partners and corporate sponsors.

In the summer of 2020, the National Women’s Soccer League was the first U.S. professional sports league to return to activity, breaking its attendance records by nearly 300%. The first and last games of the Challenge Cup, which were the only ones to be shown on CBS and not on the subscription service CBS All Access, drew 572,000 and 653,000 viewers, respectively, on par with an English Premier League game that week and Major League Baseball Game on TBS broadcast in the same time slot. Last year’s NWSL final, which aired on ESPN, only drew 166,000 viewers.

Company sponsors also got on board. The NWSL signed contracts with Verizon, Google and Procter & Gamble before the Challenge Cup.

“The league has done strangely well,” said Lindsay Barenz, VP of Business Development for the NWSL, during the pandemic.

Multi-year partnerships with CBS Sports and Amazon Twitch were “game changers,” added Barenz. For regular playing time, CBS showed some games on its main network, 14 on the CBS Sports Network and the majority on CBS All Access. Twitch would stream all of the games internationally and a handful of free games domestically.

Even as more sports leagues returned to competition in the fall, the NWSL averaged 383,000 viewers for its fall series games, which aired on CBS. According to the league, the games, which were also streamed globally on Twitch, averaged just over 732,000 live views, and the most watched hit hit 1,000,000.

These deals came after the U.S. women’s national team won the 2019 Women’s World Cup and sparked new interest in the sport. In previous seasons, most games could only be streamed online, be it on Google’s YouTube, on teams’ websites or on Verizon’s go90. TV coverage for a handful of major games jumped between Fox Sports’ secondary channels and Disney subsidiary ESPN in various years. And NWSL’s multi-year contract with A&E Networks to broadcast games for life failed when A&E left in 2019, one season earlier. The NWSL only reached another TV deal after the World Cup when ESPN recorded 14 remaining games between ESPNews and ESPN2.

The NWSL was difficult to follow for avid fans and difficult to stumble upon for potential fans. The new rights contracts should ensure consistency and high quality production for the coming seasons.

Then the pandemic hit.

It was far from clear that women’s football could save the year, but it probably helped to be the first to come back with little athletic competition. The NWSL’s month-long Challenge Cup, played in a “bubble” in Utah, began June 27, two weeks before the men’s Major League Soccer returned and a month before the National Basketball Association launched its bubble at Disney World.

When it comes to growth, there is a tradeoff between maximizing sales and reaching the widest possible audience. Under the current contract, most NWSL games are only available through CBS Sports Network or CBS All Access, which are paid subscription services.

But the choice was “part of maturing as a league,” said Barenz. “Part of the maturity of our fans is that there is an economic exchange of values ​​to get access to our games.”

In order to get access to all games in other leagues like the Women’s National Basketball Association and male colleagues, a paid subscription is also required, Barenz emphasized. The NWSL, the longest running professional women’s soccer league in the United States, is now entering its ninth season (as the WNBA will hit its big 25).

Alyssa Naeher # 1 of Chicago Red Stars hits a loose ball during an NWSL soccer game between the Chicago Red Stars and the Orlando Pride at Orlando City Stadium on September 11, 2019 in Orlando, Florida.

Alex Menendez | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images

Go international

A new business model could help increase more broadcasters’ interest in women’s football. This is where the startup Atalanta Media comes in.

Atalanta acquires media rights for smaller women’s sports leagues and offers them to broadcasters free of charge, along with fully produced games. In return, the company retains sponsorship opportunities so that it can also make money. This fall, Atalanta partnered with NBC Sports to bring the FA Women’s Super League, England’s premier women’s league, to a US audience for the first time.

Atalanta aims to break the frustrating stalemate between skeptical investors and leagues in dire need of more investment.

Broadcasters want “more evidence” before buying the rights themselves, said Esmeralda Negron, co-founder of the company and former professional footballer. “But there is no proof of that [women’s soccer has] has never been available week after week on premium channels. “

“If we don’t do that,” Negron said of buying the rights to leagues like WSL, “it wouldn’t be available.”

With the Atalanta partnership, NBC Sports will broadcast 50 WSL season games from September 2020 through Spring 2021, either on the NBC Sports Network channel, the NBC Sports app, or the NBC Sports website.

The first eight WSL games on NBC Sports Network had an average of 63,000 viewers, and the most viewed game reached 100,000 viewers, according to the network. A network manager told CNBC how important it is to tie women’s football to Premier League coverage in order to raise awareness. Given that the US games usually air weekend mornings (given the time difference) and are in an unknown league, this is a good place to start.

NWSL match ball during the 2020 NWSL College Draft at the Baltimore Convention Center on January 16, 2020 in Baltimore, Maryland.

Jose Argueta | Getty Images Sports | Getty Images

Next year

2021 will bring new tests and possibilities. As more sporting leagues prepare to return for the full season and people get more outdoors to do, women’s sports can become more difficult to interest. However, if the Tokyo Olympics go as planned, a strong performance from the U.S. women’s team could also raise awareness of football at the club level.

Next year the NWSL plans to host the Challenge Cup again, followed by a full season. What was originally conceived as a means of saving the year has become valuable property.

The league is also adding teams, including a Louisville club that will play in 2021 and a Los Angeles team that will join the following year. LA club Angel City FC will be majority-owned by women and will be supported by all-star investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian and actress Natalie Portman.

There are also growth opportunities in existing deals. The goal of women’s football is likely to be to show more games on flagship networks like CBS and NBC, not just their sports networks or apps.

“Premium broadcasting plays an important role in enhancing the visibility and profile of leagues and players at the club level,” said Negron. “That never really happened on the women’s side.”

Women’s football needs to benefit from its increased visibility this year or else it risks losing its hard-won momentum. As Negron said, “Audience is what drives everything in this sport.”

Tracy Miller, 60, carries an object through the floods left after Hurricane Laura landed on the Texas-Louisiana border in Cameron, Louisiana on August 30, 2020.

Callaghan OHare | The Washington Post | Getty Images

Two days after Hurricane Laura hit Louisiana in August, Tameka Nelson returned to her beloved daycare in Lake Charles to find her in ruins. She fell to her knees and sobbed.

The storm tore off part of the roof. Years of toys, handicrafts and important documents were destroyed inside. Nothing could be saved and the building had to be demolished.

“It was devastating. Everything I worked for is gone,” said Nelson, 40, who has run the Nelson Academy daycare for 15 years. “I lost everything.”

Nelson found a rental building and spent her savings building a new daycare center. But with no government funding and no deadline to get approval to open the space by the end of the year, Nelson fears her time and money will run out.

Hurricane Zeta lashed the Louisiana coast this week, the fifth storm to hit the state during a long and stressful season. The storms have decimated homes, forced widespread evacuations, and cut power to thousands of people. The working-class town of Lake Charles was hit particularly hard by Hurricanes Laura and Delta in August and October. Thousands of people are still displaced.

During the dangerous global coronavirus pandemic and one of the most brutal hurricane seasons, people are trying to restore their homes and businesses – an excruciating process that has become routine for Louisiana residents.

Some have endured weeks of frustrating haggling with bureaucracies for insurance money and government aid. Others are desperate for help repairing destroyed properties but are long waiting for sought-after shooters, some of whom have been dealing with damage to their own homes.

“Knowing that my community needs me because parents have to go back to work and my workers need their jobs to pay bills. I’m at a loss,” said Nelson. “I pray to push forward.”

Amid the turmoil, Louisiana residents share unpleasant memories of past devastation from major hurricanes like Rita in 2005. They also prepare for future storms, which will become increasingly frequent and catastrophic with climate change.

Hurricane Laura collapsed the roof and destroyed the interior of Tameka Nelson’s daycare center in Lake Charles, Louisiana.

Courtesy Tameka Nelson

Cameron, a town south of Lake Charles, has been gutted by hurricanes in the past few decades. After the area was devastated by Hurricanes Rita and Ike in 2005 and 2008, many people left the country and the population dropped nearly 80% by the end of the decade, according to the US Census.

Laura destroyed entire homes and killed over a dozen people in Cameron. Six weeks later, Delta released further destruction. The combination of storms made it difficult for some people to tell which storm was causing what damage.

57-year-old Jennifer Picou from Cameron and her 60-year-old husband Terry lost their home to Rita for the first time 15 years ago. When Laura blew through the house this year and ripped the roof off her house, the couple replaced it with a makeshift one. Then Delta came along, tore it down, and continued to flood the house.

They are now living in an RV and struggling to manage their local fishery with no electricity, running water or cooling. However, Picou claimed they were lucky because their home was insured in a way that many Cameron residents are not.

It is unclear how many Cameron residents can afford to rebuild homes after the hurricanes this year as construction costs are inflated and building codes tighten.

“It’s total destruction here,” said Picou. “You come back with nothing. This is heartbreaking.”

Recent hurricanes have damaged residential and commercial properties in Louisiana at least $ 12 billion, according to estimates by real estate data analyst CoreLogic. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has already approved more than $ 180 million in personal and home aid for victims of Hurricane Laura.

Kaitlynn Hollier, 32, a mother of four who lives just outside Lake Charles, said Laura destroyed her home in August. She and husband Jeremy, 33, moved their family to a temporary RV that was eventually destroyed by Delta.

Kaitlynn Hollier’s children from Louisiana visit her home after Hurricane Laura damaged it in August.

Courtesy Kaitlynn Hollier

After weeks of negotiations with their insurance company and camping with friends, the family finally received insurance money for a few months’ rent and can start repairs to their home. But they said the contractors are currently spread out too thinly.

“I’m exhausted. It’s a slow process and we have to repeat everything in the house,” said Hollier. As her family settles into the rental apartment near her home, Hollier is concerned about how the displacement has affected her young girls, ages seven, five, three, and one. During the moving process, she noticed that her girls sleep less and are more irritable.

“Stress manifests differently in children. To have to move so much, to be displaced and to see their home that way,” said Hollier. “We’re trying to rebuild and keep up with the work at school.”

There is uncertainty about what the future will look like for residents of hurricanes like Cameron and Lake Charles. However, some residents who have suffered severe loss are also required to stay if they can afford it.

Nelson, the daycare owner, fled New Orleans to Lake Charles in 2005 to escape Hurricane Katrina, the massive Category 5 that killed 1,800 people and caused $ 125 billion in damage.

Years later, Nelson investigates the aftermath of Laura – the loss of her business, the rubble of a fallen tree on her home – and says it is time to help rebuild the community.

“We came here to start over … we worked so hard,” said Nelson. “I wouldn’t turn my back on Lake Charles. We’ll be here for a while.”

Virgin Galactic’s carrier aircraft releases its Unity spacecraft during a glide test.

Virgo Galactic

Virgin Galactic’s most recent space flight test was halted after the engine of its SpaceShipTwo vehicle “Unity” failed to fully ignite while attempting to take off over New Mexico on Saturday.

While there were no passengers on board, Unity was piloted for the flight by CJ Sturckow and Dave Mackay. Virgin Galactic wanted to reach the edge of space for the third time, in its first space flight from its New Mexico operating base. The spaceship landed back on the runway at Spaceport America, about 50 miles north of the city of Las Cruces.

“The firing sequence for the rocket motor was not completed. The vehicle and crew are in great condition. We have several engines ready at Spaceport America. We will check the vehicle and fly again soon,” the company said in a tweet.

Virgin Galactic confirmed that the spacecraft had successfully returned on a glide flight to land at Spaceport America in New Mexico, where it took off under its carrier aircraft about an hour earlier. The company found that both pilots are “safe and sound”.

“Bike stop, SpaceShipTwo Unity,” Virgin Galactic said in a tweet.

An unofficial webcast hosted by space news site NASASpaceflight appeared to show that the spacecraft engine stalled after a brief shot. SpaceShipTwo was released under its carrier aircraft at an altitude of about 40,000 feet, with Unity’s engine igniting just before shutdown. Typically, the spacecraft is set free from the jet and then fires its rocket motor for more than a minute, reaching a speed about three times the speed of sound.

Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight attempt was the company’s first in nearly 22 months. The previous space flight attempt in February 2019 when Unity reached an altitude of almost 90 kilometers during a test launch from the Mojave Desert in California. The company is working to launch commercial service flights from Spaceport America, where it has relocated operations from its development and manufacturing facilities in the Mojave Air and Spaceport.

Saturday’s flight was the first of three remaining space tests the company plans to conduct to complete development of its spacecraft system. The third will wear founder Sir Richard Branson. The impact of the canceled test on Virgin Galactic’s flight schedule remains to be determined. The Branson flight was previously scheduled for the first quarter of 2021.

In addition to the two pilots, Unity’s flight on Saturday conducted microgravity experiments for NASA, awarded as part of the agency’s Flight Opportunities program.

Virgin Galactic has roughly 600 customer reservations on its books, most of which sold a few years ago at a price of $ 200,000 to $ 250,000 per ticket. The company plans to fully reopen ticket sales in 2021 after Branson’s flight, although it is not known how much tickets will cost after sales reopen. Company executives previously said that due to the high demand for tickets, Virgin Galactic expects to significantly increase prices on its first commercial flights.

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