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Why Entrepreneurship Is So Trendy

Why Entrepreneurship Is So Trendy
Former entrepreneur and IE Startup Lab founder talks about entrepreneurship, a trending topic in today’s global conversation.

Start-up Lab Founder Leticia Ponce spoke to IE Business School students about how the technological environment provides endless opportunities to create your own business. Ponce shared tips on how to create a startup, such as focusing more on customer problems rather than thinking about business ideas directly.

Days after the Financial Times ranked IE’s International MBA 4th worldwide and 1st in Europe in Entrepreneurship Teaching, Ponce spoke at an event hosted by the IE Women in Business Club about how entrepreneurship is becoming even more trendy.

“My recommendation to want-to-be entrepreneurs is to keep a journal with people's complaints or problems. The idea is to create value to a customer segment by understanding what it is that really bothers them. Talk to them, listen to them and empathize. Then you can start thinking about how to solve these problems for them,” Ponce said.

Ponce said the world is living in an incredible period in time where technology is converging with social trends and creating tremendous opportunities and excitement for entrepreneurs.

Drawing on her own experience, Ponce said one of the keys to success is scalability. Technology is allowing entrepreneurs to really explode their businesses. It is also important that startups create value, not only for the customer but for society as a whole.

Entrepreneurship courses used to be about secondary research and creating a detailed business plan. Nowadays, want-to-be entrepreneurs are told to go test their problem, see who has this problem and what they do to solve it.

“When you truly understand your customer, that’s when you start creating value for them.”


LETICIA PONCE, START-UP LAB FOUNDER


Ponce wants to help potential entrepreneurs at IE University create this type of value. That’s why she founded the IE Startup Lab in 2011. The Startup Lab provides students with the right methodology to discover problems customers may have, come up with a possible business model, and create a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). At the end of the lab period, the most advanced students in the process get to present their business models to angel investors.

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