University is the time for experimentation, the time for taking calculated risks and asking what if?
It’s 2019 and the university trimester has just begun. Some students are setting foot in the university’s four walls for their very first time, whilst others have been here before, coming back a little older and more experienced from their various holidays, work commitments and internship placements.
Some of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs have attributed their influential impact to their foundational years spent at university or college. Take these three case studies as evidence.
Mark Zuckerberg
Zuckerberg co-founded and launched Facebook from his dormitory room in 2004 whilst attending Harvard University with college roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Moskovitz and Chris Hughes.
Originally Facebook as we know it today was only launched to select campuses but soon expanded rapidly. Eventually the social networking site expanded beyond colleges and to the general public, and now has over 2.3 billion users. What started as a little experimental project in the college dorm room has become an integral part of our lives now and how we communicate with each other.
Mike Cannon Brookes and Scott Farquhar
Closer to home are two entrepreneurs that co-founded the Australian software development company Atlassian. Mike and Scott met each other at UNSW in 1998 as part of their co-operative scholarship program. The pair soon became good friends and launched Atlassian in 2002. The aftermath is history.
Atlassian’s current market capitalisation of US$25bn and both co-founders boasting a net worth of greater than $US1bn, highlights UNSW’s conducive environment for promoting innovative thinking and creativity, with the university placing 33rd in the world for the number of millionaires among its alumni.
Steve Jobs
Although Apple as we know it today was created after Job’s time spent in college, he followed a passion for calligraphy by attending his college calligraphy classes that were outside of course curriculum, simply because he enjoyed it. Little did he know that this training in calligraphy would help influence and become the stunning and aesthetically pleasing typography of the revolutionary Apple brand that we have all come to know and love. You never know where following your interests and trying new things may lead you or how it may come in handy at some point down the track.
At whatever stage of lif you are in, we at Blitz want you to know there is positive in the unfamiliar, in the new. In particular trying out new things, as cliché as it sounds, will get you closer to figuring out how you want to drive your life and who you want to be during and post-university life.
