When she was a teenager growing up in Ozone Park, Queens, Alisha Karim took a job in a drug store as a trainee working with the pharmacist.
“That job exposed me to the health conditions of the community,” Karim, now 19, told the Press. “I started writing down how I could help the world.”
Sri Varshini Bitla found that being a foreigner in the United States could be a challenge. She always liked helping people find one another when they are in unfamiliar places, said Bitla, 20, of Jersey City, N.J.
The two young women are students at New York Institute of Technology enrolled in a unique course this fall semester — a three-credit course called Eleven Steps To Start A Tech Startup.
They both want to be entrepreneurs when they graduate: Karim in the medical field and Bital, a film buff, enjoys helping people do something simple and relaxing, like finding others to share a movie with.
Babak Beheshti, the dean of NYIT’s college of engineering and computing sciences, said there are few other programs like this one in the country. Beheshti said the course will likely be offered again in the spring semester.
“We are also thinking of expanding the course outside of the college,” he said. “Students came out of the woodwork to take this course,” Beheshti said.
One look at the curriculum shows that this is not a course for the faint of heart. It is primarily for technology majors who, instead of knocking on corporate doors after they graduate, want to hang up shingles proclaiming they are in business — for themselves.
A generation or more ago, many college graduates looked for what appeared to them to be secure jobs with large corporations. The goal, as many saw it, was to work for one company, retire at 65 or so, and go fishing or play golf after.
Times have changed.
Computerization and societal shifts have made a profound difference in the workplace and corporate America. Big corporations no longer seem, to many, as secure as they once did. For years now there have been large layoffs at many major companies, benefits are scarce and pensions rare, giving some the idea that it may be better not to count on big companies for careers. A person can work from home, or anywhere else in the world days these days, making it easier to live anywhere. Being out on one’s own is popular in today’s new economy.
But along with these changes, educators have realized, is the necessity of how to teach people to become successful entrepreneurs.
The NYIT course, taught over Zoom and available to students at the college’s Old Westbury and Manhattan campuses, was the brainchild of Peter Goldsmith, chairman of the Long Island Software and Technology Network, a nonprofit in Plainview. He was joined by two young entrepreneurs who are also NYIT students – Ryan Ahmed, a founder of a start-up, Niura, which has developed electrode-technology earbuds that monitor brain activity, and Pari Patel, Niura’s chief operating office.
Only 16 students are enrolled in the course this semester. The course was so popular that some had to be turned away, Goldsmith said.
Those who were admitted were told outright that a staggering 90 percent of start-up companies fail.
“We have to train the students,” Goldsmith told the Press. “We have to tell them how to start a business.”
Ahmed, who started Niura after his father developed a brain aneurysm, said in an interview that start-ups fail for a variety of reasons. One, he said, is a failure to identify a need that society wants to solve. “You must think about, What is the problem at hand?” he said.
Patel, who grew up in Maryland and graduated high school at the age of 14 and is a molecular biology and humanities major at NYIT, helped conduct a Zoom class on a recent Friday afternoon.
“It’s really important to have this class,” said Patel. “It’s a lot of hands on, but the real world is hard. A lot of time people have great ideas. But we wanted to provide the steps to help them (become entrepreneurs.)”
Practically all of the students at the Friday Zoom are now in the process of developing apps. At the end of the semester, they must produce a plan for a business. On Dec. 13, there will be a “flyoff,” a competition at ListNet’s so-called Ball Park offices in Plainview. The winners will go on to a state competition at a later date.
Gunn Aggarwal, 19, of Yonkers, is typical of many in the class. A sophomore computer-science major, Aggarwal said she has never really considered working for a big company. She is creating an app that would help both buyers and sellers in the real-estate world.
“I want the freedom to do whatever I want to do rather than be restricted by a job,” she said. “Even when I was younger, I wanted to be my own boss.”
