Why a Degree in Entrepreneurship Could Help You Start Up

Sponsored by the University of Warwick

Meet Takis Malavetas and Gregor Tuertenschaller: two wide-eyed entrepreneurs from Greece and Austria, who met at the University of Warwick on an MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship where they discovered a shared interest in e-grocery delivery. Their business, HomeRun, now delivers groceries for the likes of Tesco, Marks & Spencer and WholeFoods.

Takis and Gregor stayed on after graduation to develop their business: Warwick provided them with the contacts, salaries and working spaces they needed to start up, and Christian Lerke, a student from Germany joined them as technical partner. The trio delivered to students on campus to learn about the business and later got invited to Y-Combinator, the most prestigious startup incubator in the world, based in Silicon Valley. After angel and investor funding they are  now successfully running a business in London, where they have grown to employ over 10 people.

The success story of how HomeRun came to be is by no means exceptional. Dhruv Jain, a 24-year-old from New Delhi in India, launched PrintOctopus, an e-commerce platform helping Indian designers earn money through printed merchandise, after studying Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Warwick. He said: "My supervisor worked as an e-commerce consultant, so what he taught me was real and practical. I could bounce ideas off him and he kept me thoroughly grounded. What’s really interesting is how my business plan evolved during the year. By the end of the course, it was completely different to how it was when I started.”

Being an entrepreneur is tough, with nine out of 10 startups failing, with a lack of good mentorship and business-specific knowledge in finance, operations and sales & marketing often the main culprits.

CB Insights recently combed through 101 post-mortem essays published on Medium by founders to reveal that 42 percent of startups failed because there was no market need for their product. A rookie mistake that could easily have been avoided with proper research, training and guidance. Could further training in entrepreneurship be the answer? 

Experts running the University of Warwick’s MSc in Innovation and Entrepreneurship seem to think so. As Jay Bal, Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the University of Warwick, explained to us, the number of skills needed to be up to the job of starting a business can be quite dizzying: from the latest in tech to human resources, marketing strategy, supply chain and logistics management, not to mention accounting and finance, you need to have a finger in every pie. Even if you are going to recruit talent and get involved in only a few of these disciplines yourself, you should be able to have critical discussions with experts about all areas of business using the correct domain language. This is a key focus of a master's degree in entrepreneurship, ensuring you gain a broad overview of many different disciplines as well as the business terminology you’ll need to thrive.