Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship is awesome.

To breathe life into an idea with the hope that other people will see what you see, and believe in it, and maybe even buy it - whatever that is - how cool is that?

As some of my thoughts shift to the coming project-building phase, I've started to wonder whether there's room in this program for entrepreneurial experimentation and building. If we're going to build a storefront project, why not make a product and really sell it? Heck why not build a storefront manager and sell that as a service.

Are we going to have projects pre-determined for us, or do we determine them ourselves? If we determine them ourselves, why not make something for the purpose of existing in the world, and not just in our portfolios?

I had a conversation with a 'senior' in the program back in week 1. He told me that he was given the advice that when applying to jobs, you want your portfolio to not just be full of school projects. That employers want to see that you've built and contributed to projects that have a real impact. That in some form or fashion - open-source, for-hire, or maybe even on spec - that other people interact with your software and maybe even depend on it.

We got into software engineering to make things. Why not make real things now?

What might that look like? I'm not sure. I think about all of the talent in this program and what we're doing with it. In most cases, cultivating and growing our skills so that we can contribute to companies that are already out there. Could Hack Reactor - or any other bootcamp, be a startup incubator? Can the students be the incubators? Could the wider bootcamp ecosystem or student community be the incubator?

As a student, thinking about questions like these are really motivating. How sick would that portfolio be - yeah these are the sites and apps that we're making now that actually work and are actually used. Projects that we have to actually manage and maintain and grow like we're going to be doing when we're professional professional engineers. Projects that have real stakeholders. That have team-members who are invested in the project and its success. Maybe not invested-invested but also yeah, maybe.