Columbia University Pre-College Program
Monday to Friday/July 21 – August 1, 2025
My Passion for Entrepreneurship
My passion for entrepreneurship drove me to search for opportunities to learn how to help people by taking direct action myself. In July 2025, I participated in the Columbia University Pre-College program. Through this course I had the distinct opportunity to study business with instructor Sarah Beston, founder and CEO of a meditation and yoga practice based in LA. We studied all parts of the new venture creation process– from identifying core problems, empathising with your customer base, to carrying out a successful launch.
This course required active participation including attending daily lectures and engaging directly with case studies. We worked with a small group to develop and pitch a new venture, learning directly from an entrepreneur with experience creating a successful business that caters to her target audience.
We worked step by step through the entire new venture planning process including business model development, customer discovery, product-market validation, in-depth industry and market analysis, product or service innovation, brand development and go-to-market strategies, team selection and management, profit models, financing, and legal considerations.
Course Overview
Three Lessons from the Program
Start with the problem, not the solution
Where does innovation come from? I used to think that new ventures began with a new idea. But through this course I learned the importance of starting by focusing on understanding the problem before trying to come up with a way to solve it. By falling in love with your problem, and not your first idea, you are free to iterate to determine how to have the most direct impact for your customer.
Our new venture team identified a common problem faced by young people: the complexity of scheduling hangouts.
Target customer: Teenagers and young adults (aged 16-22) like to schedule group hang outs.
Core problem: Managing many different schedules is complex and makes organization difficult. Often, all it takes is one group member to have a conflict for the plan to fall apart.
Initial Opportunity Statement: This opportunity helps busy students aged 16-22 when they are scheduling plans with their friend groups by facilitating simplified planning and payment.
Empathise with your customer
Your customer is the center of your new venture. In order to create a successful startup, it is important to empathise closely with a specific customer base. By empathising with the customer the problem you are solving becomes more clear. The company can develop a deep understanding of customer wants and needs which is the most important aspect of running a business, because this allows you to create a more specific solution that the customer will actually want to buy.
Know your super power
In crowded markets, many players may be attempting to solve the same problem. As entrepreneurs, our job is to recognize what element of our business sets our venture apart from the pack.
Conclusion
I want to express my sincere gratitude to instructor Sarah Benson for giving such a wonderful lesson, and providing me with the opportunity to grow both as a business student and as a future entrepreneur.