Reverse: Under 23? Come learn how to create your startup!
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to participate in Reverse, a program for people under 23 who want to learn how to create a startup.
Originally published on Medium
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to participate in Reverse, a program for people under 23 who want to learn how to create a startup.
Each Saturday for 3 months, we first had an inspiring conference by Oussama Ammar, co-founder at The Family, and then ate lunch with an amazing entrepreneur, the chance to ask them all the questions we wanted about their experience. In the afternoon, we created projects: the goal was to develop muses, business that can generate income without being time-consuming. It’s a good way to learn before creating a more ambitious business — a real startup.
Week after week, the good vibes and the opportunities to create together were always there. That was the real game changer for all of us. Everyone had something new to talk about each week. Soon Oussama realized that we didn’t really need him to give courses every week, as we could do them ourselves! Everyone came on stage to give a talk about what they know best.
We were a little gang of entrepreneur students, and then we decided to go on holiday together to forge even stronger bonds.
In just a few weeks, Reverse became a program managed by its own students, who themselves became a true group of friends and partners. As this article by Maxime shows, it was an incredible experience.
Today, I’m employed at The Family and my mission is to take over the next sessions of this program. Applications are open, and yes, you definitely want to participate!
Why is Reverse the best program EVER?
That’s the question we asked together with The Family’s co-founders, Alice, Oussama and Nicolas, when we decided to continue this experience with new students.
First, there is the favorable environment.
The Family is a good name, because it is THE family for entrepreneurs all over Europe. It is a big community of entrepreneurs, students and investors, each one unique in their own way, and all participating in the creation of tomorrow’s world. There are so many good vibes in this place that everyone who walks in wants to become a doer.
Then there’s us at Reverse
Us is 15 individuals, all coming from different backgrounds but with one goal of having a big impact on the world. We’re artists, businesspeople, scientists, geeks. We don’t fit into boxes very well. And our differences bring us together. Curious, dreamers, gifted, crafty… we bring it all together on shared projects, which is an amazing feeling. We finally have the possibility of being truly ourselves, supported by open-minded people.
The Family created the opportunity for those of us who used to be bored in school to finally blossom in our creativity.
This really isn’t like school at all
School creates disciplines and makes students passively face academic content. Imagination and ambition aren’t encouraged. In short, it’s not a place that drives you to be entrepreneurial.
At Reverse, we learn how to learn entrepreneurship.
We’re inspired by the real-world experiences of dedicated entrepreneurs, their ways of solving problems and looking at the world. We talk, make jokes, throw around our craziest ideas. We’ll talk about our real needs and problems, and try to find solutions together. With our friends and the internet, we figure out how to create services or products, and we test them out. The aim of the game? For other people to find value in our solutions, willing to pay to get them.
The results have been mind-boggling!
We’ve been so happy with how things have gone over the past months. One of us has sold a few hundred euros worth of smartphone fans, another has sold nurses’ shoes. But the real benefit is that we’ve learned how to get things moving. We’ve learned how to use tools (Zapier, Shopify, Wix, Mailchimp) that will be useful for our next businesses. We’ve also discovered how hard it is to launch even a small project, and just how much motivation you need. We’ve learned how to work as a team, how to help each other, and also how to be autonomous.
Some of the post-Reverse results that have impressed me the most:
- Yago & Clément are launching Cryptonaldo, with the goal of becoming the marketplace of football players letting their fans to buy and sell stock in the players using cryptocurrency
- Sitraka wants to help students to find cheap homemade plates
- Yago is also developing an e-book to help entrepreneurs develop their communities on Instagram
- Awa is launching a media platform to talk about feminism
- Malo developed a platform which lets influencers facilitate negotiations on hotel room prices.
To find out more about the various projects that the first class is working on, they’re right here!
With all that, would have been impossible for The Family to not keep going with Reverse!
We’re convinced that lots of unique, ambitious, kind young people need a bit of help.
It’s your turn to join our band of pirates 🏴
If you’re under 23 and have unlimited ambition, if you’re bored with school and want to work on projects with others, if you’re ready to surpass what you thought you were capable of and to do it with interesting people…
Click here.
To learn more about Reverse: joinreverse.co
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Thanks Kyle for the feedback🔍