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Hi, and welcome to another episode of the Innovation
Tower Station. Today we are joined by Prakriti
Igar. Prakriti, welcome to the podcast. Hi, lovely
to be here. Pleasure having you. Prakriti, would
you like to introduce yourself to the audience,
please? Yes. I am a second year student at the
LSE and I'm currently studying management. Alongside
this, I am the managing director of Kickstart
Global, which is UK's largest student net incubator.
Happy to share more about that as we go on. Yes.
I'm fascinated that you're only on the second
year already managing director of the company.
So, well done. How did that come to me? So, essentially,
I joined the team last year. There was an event
that was happening and I essentially just walked
up to the team saying, I love what you're doing.
and ended up joining and the rest of its history.
It sounds like a very cringe story, but it is
very much true. The Kickstart team is also really
nice and flexible in the sense that it works
very much like a startup. So when I joined, even
though my role was like a specific category,
I ended up basically doing everything. And then
we've grown a lot since then. So it was kind
of like there was a bunch of people who really
wanted to take it forward. And that was one of
them. And so it got passed on to me by lovely
directors who were there before me. I love the
go -getter attitude. I could just walk in and
say I want to join and that's kind of it. Did
you have any idea what they did back then? Yeah,
so I attended the event because when I came into
LSE, I really was into startups. And I think
when I wanted to study management, what I meant
was that, oh, I want to start my own startup
one day. I do think that in London, there's a
lot of other careers, of course, that are like,
a lot more popular, for example, finance, investment
banking, consulting. And I think that this ambition
of mine kind of got lost. And thanks to kickstart,
I came across it again. And I found it really
interesting that they were helping students build
student startups. And I was like, well, I don't
have an idea right now. But I do really believe
in what you're doing, which great and yeah just
ended up joining. I didn't know much about it
then but now I do know it inside out and thanks
to all of the alumni who are super helpful and
kind of making sure that I have all the guidance
that I need to run everything. So just for our
audience, what exactly do you guys do at Kickstart?
Yes, so a bit of background. So Kickstart started
10 years ago and the main reason why we started
was that there were a bunch of entrepreneurship
societies across the UK, which had a lot of students
who were interested in starting startups. But
when it came to actually building teams, which
are resilient and like cross -disciplinary and
have the right skill sets to make it happen,
they would fall short. So let's say if there
was someone from LSE who was like great at finance
and wanted to build a fintech app, they can't
exactly do it without the UI designer or someone
who can kind of code the app for them. And I
think the idea was to bring together talents
from the best universities in the UK and get
very domain intensive experts together and put
them into teams and help them form teams and
build it. We've been doing this for 10 years
now, so over the years it's changed quite a bit.
What we do now is we help any founder under 24
in a lot of ways. they can come in without an
idea and they leave with an investable MVP. Our
alumni over the past 10 years have raised like
35 million. I think it's gone up to 36 like yesterday
because someone else, one of our alumni hands
in, which is a fintech raised another round.
So yeah, we're sector agnostic. We have a lot
of cool startups, approximately 70 in a lot of
different industries. So we have them in health
tech, med tech, sports tech. And all of this
has been done by students who are working part
time. So sorry, full time students who are doing
this kind of like on a voluntary basis. And we
do not charge our founders anything except for
their commitment and the fact that they have
to show up for every single thing in the program
if they're selected. Wow, this is quite impressive.
Well, that's quite a lot of money. And is this
limited? So this is not limited to LSE, right?
So we actually work with all the universities.
Yeah. So we have approximately 55 university
partners which operate across the UK. This year
we've also expanded to, let's say, Edinburgh,
Leeds, Leicester and all these places. So we
have quite a broad reach across the UK. Obviously,
I end up talking to a lot of students, so to
speak. What do you think are the main points
for students when they're launching their business?
Is it hard? Is it easy? Obviously with you guys,
I'm assuming it becomes a lot easier, but what
is the market like? I do think building a startup
is never easy. I think a lot of the approach
that we had in a few years, two years back was
that a lot of students come into this thing,
oh, this is like the easy way out. And we're
going to choose like building a startup as a
career because, well, it's like very difficult
to apply for internships. But actually that's
not true because building a startup is perhaps
harder. if not just as hard sorry is just as
hard if not harder than let's say pursuing any
other career but i think the main pain point
that students have is a not having the right
people to speak to because in the uk there's
not exactly that many role models of kind of
like founders and especially in university itself
there's not that many let's say seniors or alumni
who can look at who you can look up to who ready
to guide you on what to do from day one with
kickstart coming in because we have access to
that community and because we have our eyes on
the best talent we're able to put these people
in the room together so I would say one is the
lack of community of student founders themselves
but also the lack of community of people who
can give them advice and we solve both of them.
I do think after you've become a student founder
the pain points are different but I do think
at the start it is both of these. Once you already
have a startup then I do think the pain point
would be to be able to get investment before
you graduate from university. Naturally if you
have an offer from Lexa McKinsey which is paying
you like some 60 grand it's very hard. in comparison
to that, to take the riskier option of building
a startup, even though it would be more fulfilling
and let's say even more profitable in the long
run. So a lot of our goals now is also helping
students in that later stage and making sure
that they're able to secure funding and have
the right introductions to investors before they
catch it from university. What do investors say?
Do they almost say you're just quite young or
they actually say, you know, I like the idea,
let me go and invest? I think because a lot of
students are first time founders, If you look
at any kind of like accelerators, like let's
say Techstars or Antler, what they rely on a
lot when they're getting first -time founders
is just credibility, right? So if you have the
right kind of signals of like, oh, you worked
at Google for 10 years, or you've like, you know,
done this research for 10 years, those are usually
very good indicators that you're going to be
a successful founder. So for investors to back
student founders, it does take a leap. I do think
that with the startup founders that we have been
able to find at Kickstart who... despite, let's
say, having only been in the industry for four
years, do know it inside out because they're
that obsessed with the problem and that obsessed
with the users, we're able to solve that gap
for investors. And I do think having the brand
of, let's say, Kickstarter behind startups really
does help in bridging that credibility gap because
investors know that the flow that usually comes
from us is beneficial to them and does have a
lot more credibility than, let's say, someone
who has just emailed them out of the blue. And
where do you find all this investing? Mostly
LinkedIn. I think it would be if, I think someone
asked me recently what's like things you're good
at and I think I said emailing and LinkedIn,
like a lot of this simply comes from reaching
out. We also have, you know, 10 years of history.
So we have investing partners who let's say invested
in a startup seven years ago, and they've backed
us since because they've seen the quality of
startup founders that we've got them. There's
also a lot of investors in our own alumni network.
So people who graduate from Kickstart and then
end up becoming investors are super useful. But
a lot of it is also simply angel investors who
stumble across our events, are impressed by the
quality because they never suspected that it
could be possible to have star quality from even
student founders and then they basically never
leave. That's a great success story. I mean,
from talking with your community, do you think
students are still... A couple of years ago,
everyone wanted to be able to start. Do you think
that's still very much the case? Absolutely.
I think it's quite funny, actually, when a lot
of people tell me that, oh, we went to this place
and it seemed like everyone wanted to build startups.
I think being... in that startup community now,
it does feel like that because let's say when
we release applications for our fellowship, we
do get let's say like thousands in one day, right?
I think this is very different on ground when
you actually walk into a university because I
remember feeling like I was basically one of
very few people in LSE who actually wanted to
build a startup as opposed to like join any other.
I know a lot of people at Imperial, for example,
as well, who are surrounded by like 90 % of the
people who let's say want to go into like con
trading and it's very hard to still stand the
ground and realize that what you want to do and
by a competitive advantage lies is building a
startup. So yeah, I absolutely don't think that
a lot of people are going to build startups and
I think A, it's still that hard to find a community
and B, we still need a lot more student founders.
We still need a lot more people doing this from
the get -go rather than deciding to, you know,
give all their talent to other things. What do
you think are the main mistakes that founders
make, especially at such an age? That's a very
good question. I think the biggest mistake that
founders probably make is mistaking a lot of
LinkedIn and cloud stuff for actual progress.
I think I've seen a lot of founders who've spent
a lot of time building that idea, but a lot of
it is brand building, which is great, but not
actually getting to it. maybe just the idea of
that they don't have enough time. I do think
that student founders, but already doing a degree
in let's say half the time that it's supposed
to and to be able to fit a startup in that it
is very important that you actually stick to
it and do it consistently. So some of the biggest
success stories that we've had at kickstart.
are that they let's say did a fellowship like
two years ago and they're still building a startup
and it's now that they start seeing results.
So perhaps giving up too early because you don't
think you don't have the time or giving up too
early because you don't think you didn't get
like success within the first two months would
probably be the biggest mistake. What's the normal
age for students? Are they 20 year old or are
they post grad or master degree student? So we
have founders under 24 that can mean anything
so we do have people who you know even people
who are pursuing PhDs and then we have a lot
of master's students. Most of them are like second
or third year undergrads, simply because that
gives them enough time to actually build a startup
while they're still with us. And I guess it must
be fairly clear while still studying, right?
Because you obviously have commitments, you need
deadlines for exams and all that, so it must
be exciting. Exactly. What type of support do
you take up? At Kickstart? Yeah. So we have...
we run a couple of different things the main
thing that we run is the fellowship so the founders
under 24 fellowship runs for 20 weeks where they
have weekly master classes mixers and mentorship
so when it comes to weekly master classes that
means you meet with business icons who've been
doing this forever and they kind of give you
advice and this is not like a fireside chat so
it's not like a lecture hall but like a thousand
students and there's like some old white guy
like just talking about what he's done in his
life no it's a room of 10 very carefully selected
student founders sitting together on a table
and getting one unknown advice from very experienced
founders so this year we've been grateful to
have the backing of a lot of incredible people
we've had this year of octopus group founders
of oak north we've had the founder of too good
to go then founder of flight story. Like a lot
of these people who've like founder of amicable
as well, they've come down to literally where
we work in shortage exchange, who by the way
are partners with us and are absolutely incredible
sat down with us and just talked for hours. I
think it's also underestimated how much founders
are also craving deeper connections with emerging
founders, because a lot of them, like, you'd
expect them to prefer, let's say, fireside jobs.
But they're more than happy to kind of have one
-on -ones with these student founders. So that's
the kind of support that they have, because they
get access to the phone books of essentially
all of these millionaires who've done this before,
who are very relevant to their fields. Secondly,
they have mentors. So we have dual mentorship
at Kickstart, which means that you have one mentor
from an industry. So if you're building a climate
tech, you'll have someone who's, let's say, build.
a wind farm before, and then you also get paired
up with an accelerator mentor or an investor.
So if we think that the next step for you after
Kickstart is perhaps going to YC, then you will
be paired up with someone who's been at YC before
and can essentially help you make sure that you
get there. Basically, it just creates a great
strategic funnel for making sure that they have
the support to get resources beyond Kickstart
as well. The third thing is mixers, which is
essentially just get togethers and co -working
with the kickstart team and the kickstart community.
Every single Saturday, we meet together heads
down from like 9 a .m. and we're usually that
like 12 a .m. in the night, just building together.
And this can also mean like by the students and
stuff like that. Yeah. And yeah, just like chilling
around. I do think that. The benefits of just
like the synergies of just putting people together
in one room is a lot. Like we could do absolutely
nothing and just have the founders and by the
end of it, they will have had like five customers
from just talking to each other. Absolutely like
revamp their deck by just giving each other feedback
and have made like. a lot more progress on let's
say their SaaS or like, you know, exchange tech
stacks, which is pretty exciting. Other than
that, we have, you know, the usual things of
like, you know, we sponsor event invites, or
we get them like credits to a lot of softwares,
like hundreds of thousands of pounds, essentially
worth of stuff. Or we, you know, make intros
to like, any one and all that. What would you
change in the system? You change anything? I
think the biggest thing that I would change is
being the number of female founders, I do think
that Despite there being a lot of female leadership
in the team, we've tried very hard to make sure
that we're able to come to at least 40, 60, if
not 50, 50 cohort representation. But this is
extremely hard because application numbers are
skewed and it's very hard to find that talent.
So definitely change that. I do think something
else that I would change in the system. is being
able to interact with a lot more angels on a
regular basis is something that we're working
on. It's not exactly a systemic issue. But yeah,
that's kind of next in our plans to get a lot
more angels involved. It just has a lot more
like quicker deployment of liquidity than BC.
Why do you think there's less female power? I
mean, just because I get it after a certain age,
I get there's different family commitments and
also society pressures. But in uni, it's pretty
much supply core. I think, and this is something
we were talking about to a lot of the female
speakers as well that came about, which is that
what is perhaps the biggest barrier? And I think
it comes from just the sense of the fact that
when you're a first -time founder, since you
don't have the logos to back you, you kind of
need yourself. to if you need to have the confidence
to realize that if you have expertise in a certain
domain, you're going to be able to build a startup
which competes against let's say industry giants
who have been in the industry for like 10 to
thousands of years and entirely turn it upside
down. I do think with female founders, we've
seen some incredible talent, but they do need
more of a push to actually realize that they're
capable of doing that. In fact, when we look
at like application quality, like I do think
There's not exactly a difference in quality from
female founders and male founders, but it's simply
the number of applications that is much less
from female founders. So something that we're
working on is just reaching out to them more
often and saying that you can do this. A lot
of being a founder involves putting your face
on, let's say, brands and building a personal
brand and all of that, which stems from confidence.
And yeah, I think that would probably be the
biggest one. Beyond that, I do think that VC,
investments are quite highly skewed, like female
founders, even if they do join a program, the
likelihood of them getting investment as compared
to a male founder is dramatically lower, like
2 % of all VC funding goes to women, which is
quite insane. We're trying to change that by
getting a lot more female angels involved. But
yeah, I do think that the investment ecosystem
needs to change for us to actually be able to
retain the female founders that do go through
our program. That seems to be a problem that
everyone's facing. They don't have enough support,
and when they do have enough support, it's really
hard to articulate to a male VC. This is actually
building, and that makes you believe in them,
which is kind of ludicrous in this day and age,
but yeah, I guess it still happens, which is
obviously very wrong. Exactly. That's something
that we all need to change, I guess. And what
do you do to keep yourself motivated? I mean,
because obviously I'm assuming you work quite
a lot of hours, so... How do you balance everything?
I genuinely don't have an answer to this. I do
love it. I think I said this recently, we hosted
a summit the other day at Google headquarters
when you were there for the entire day with a
lot of VCs and a lot of student founders. And
Kickstarter has genuinely given me all of my
friends, all of my mentors, all the advice that
I get. People who I hang out with on a day -to
-day, even when I'm not working, are Kickstarter
founders. And it is genuinely the community that
I was seeking when I was at LSE, when I was not
able to find it. So I think that the purpose
of kickstart which is to find like a home for
student founders is genuinely what it gave me
and i think that is very easy to stay motivated
like that i also think that when you speak with
founders who've done it before you every single
week and when you hear from all these master
class speakers i think it makes you realize they're
normal people They've done this before. They
also had humble beginnings and they've also kind
of like begun from really small things. And I
also think that with the success stories that
you see at Kickstart, so they've been friends
of mine who I've seen come in with just an idea.
And a year later, they've like raised money and
moved to a different country because IVCs were
from that, right? And I think when you see those
kinds of success stories, it's just very hard
to believe that. A, that what we're doing is
not impactful because it really is, it genuinely
matters. So it's very easy to get up in the morning
and have this be the first thought in your head.
But also I think that it makes you realize that
a lot of things are possible if you just do them.
So if you have an idea, if you think you want
to make something happen, we have live examples
around us of you can do things that you set your
minds to. So it's very easy to follow through.
I like that. It's a little bit of M &M there,
but yeah, I like it. I like it. But you know,
what's the structure like? I would say it's very
organized. We're just a bunch of students. So
we have directors. We do have two new directors
who are Vile and Naila, who will be kind of taking
forward the legacy with Kickstart. And the rest
of it's just students. So we have students from
LSE, VORIG, BART, Oxford, Cambridge, UCL, Imperial,
and they all have different roles. Of course,
again, we operate very much like a startup as
well. It's very ad hoc based on the kind of events
that we're showing. We have a team of 20 and
they're all full -time students doing this alongside.
We're trying now to potentially onboard some
people full -time who are willing to take a break
from the university, to work on this, to expand
the program, but that's in progress. What do
you think universities should start doing differently?
Because obviously, you can try and do some management.
Do you think universities first stage should
actually start doing something different too?
I think universities right now don't do a very
good job of even exposing people to the fact
that this is a possible career. I think entrepreneurship
is always like categorized as like, oh, the flashy
thing that like you do if nothing else works
out. Or it's the only thing, the thing that only
let's say someone who's deeply technical and
who's again been in a different career for 10
years can do. I think there's very few examples
of like say alumni who just graduated and within
the next two years are raising money. Secondly,
I do think personally, even like university content
is very old. There's a lot of revamping that
needs to be done in order to genuinely equip
students to build companies. So for example,
if there's classes on AI, perhaps we should be
talking more on like hands -on. tools that are
being used, which like CRM softwares and stuff
like that, that can be employed as opposed to
learning about the history of AI. This is a personal
strong opinion that I have, which I know there's
lots of opinions on, but I do think that in general,
while learning fundamentals is great, I do think
the curriculum needs to be updated to actually
match the pace of the world, which is definitely
way faster than what they're teaching at. I would
imagine that being from one of the UK best universities,
they would actually have up -to -date curriculum
and all that. But it's interesting actually getting
the feedback and realizing that might not be
the case. So I guess it does come down to the
individual. I think it's perhaps also degree
to degree. I do think technical degrees are far
better equipped in students to do that than management.
I also think that my degree is perhaps more suited
to other careers. Let's say if someone were to
pursue like. consulting or banking. I do think
LSE gives you all the skills that you need up
to date on pursuing those, but perhaps not in
your company. Now my experience on one thing,
which is what's the last book you read? How impactful
has that book been? Of course, if it's just a
bad book, please don't recommend it, but I like
the best book you've read in the last year. Right,
the best book I've read. I will have to think
deeply about this. I'm not sure about book. I
follow a lot of people online who I kind of read
into. I do think Paul Graham, who is the partner
of ICI, has some brilliant essays. There's one,
I think, about the anatomy of determinism or
the anatomy of ambition, one of those. Absolutely
incredible. There's Case Kenny on Instagram,
which I think has pretty great content. To be
very honest, yeah, I think I prefer more podcasts.
Diary of a CEO is a great one for any business
related content. and things like that. I do think
recently all of my knowledge has been coming
from meeting people in person from master classes,
so books have kind of been put on the shelf,
but I will get back to you whenever I read books
if I have any recommendations. Interesting answer.
And I know for all the young learners listening
in, what do you advise them to do when they're
having a bad day? When you're having a bad day,
when you're having one of those days that nothing
seems to work out. What do you do and what do
you advise them to do? Right, I think Most problems
are smaller than you think. If you have a rethink,
I think the advantage that we have as young founders,
let's say, or young entrepreneurs is that with
the student label, you can kind of mess up and
you still have a backup. And I think this is
the coolest thing because you're able to kind
of really experiment and the risk of failure
for us is a lot less than let's say, if you were
like 10 years from now, because you can mess
up really badly and go back the next day and
just start something fresh or completely revamp
what you were doing. and like no one's going
to buy it up alive because you're a student and
it's completely fine. I think this is the biggest
thing that I have right now. It's just the brand
of the student. It gets you lots of free stuff.
Go to like any software and you will essentially
get a lot of things. We have most of our, so
our spend is like very close to zero because
most softwares that we use, most of our tech
stack comes for free. And then we have workspace
again sponsored. We have events also sponsored
by people because we're student run. I do think
for, again, student founders, risk is just low.
restart again. You're a student, you're young.
We've got a lot of time to make mistakes, but
then we can also amend them. So that's that.
I love that. Prakriti, if people want to reach
out to you and find out more about the work you
do, how can they do so? Feel free to search me
up on LinkedIn at Prakriti Gurk or email me at
prakriti at kickstartglobal .com. I'm usually
very responsive on my email. We also have a lovely
team who will reply to you, if not me. We have
a lot more exciting projects coming up for the
year, not just for the summer or later. If you're
a student, investor, a startup founder who wants
to help, a mentor who wants to get involved,
just reach out. We usually have, you know, there
can never be enough support. So if you think
you can help in any way, reach out. We think
we can definitely help you in many ways if you're
a founder or an investor. So I would not miss
out on an opportunity and check with our decision
very carefully. Thank you so much. It was lovely
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