Murad Kamalov research seminar talk “Is entrepreneurship an option for University Graduates?”

Last month, Tomek and I were hosting in Dunedin a researcher and entrepreneurial from Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT) and Aalto University, Murad Kamalov. Murad is Ngarua‘s collaborator and co-founder of doThinger. He has spent 4 weeks developing functionality and talking about startup life and entrepreneurship in a number of venues around Dunedin. One of the presentation he has done was during the monthly CodeCraft meeting, and another during the weekly research meeting of the New Zealand Distributed Information Systems group.

Murad has discussed the history of entrepreneurship activities in Aalto University and how a group of students started a movement that results now in initiatives that raise multi-million investments and engage over 400 participants in the launch events. He has discussed how StartupSauna and Garage48 work. Getting a successful startup off the ground requires more than just pure technological excellence. It requires the environment in which strong teams of complimentary skill sets can be established, it requires proper mentoring and support environment, experimentation and exploration.

We believe entrepreneurship and startups can be a valid option for university graduates, especially those with technical backgrounds and ability to develop proof-of-concept ideas rapidly using in-house skills. What do you think?