This Internship Will Kickstart The Entrepreneur In You

Cansbridge Fellow Interns exploring the streets of YangshouThere are many paths to becoming an entrepreneur . Very few of them are straightforward. Chances are you won’t know where to start. This lack of clarity is because there is no set path and you need to create one tailored to you. There are, however, a number of groups that can help. University incubators. Student groups. Hackathons and various accelerators can give you a taste. At the Cansbridge Fellowship we do something different. we don’t just kickstart your company. We don’t kickstart your idea. We don’t kickstart your product. We kickstart you. How? We believe the key is through a unique set of challenging but rewarding experiences. Experiences which make you stronger, more resilient, and more excited to take on the unknown. We do this through an independently driven 3 to 4 month internship in Asia. We’ve discovered something unique through our years of running this program. We’ve found that immersing yourself in a foreign environment can better prepare you for a role as a future founder. As a founder you are diving into an unfamiliar environment, and the only way out is to adapt and concentrate on the bigger picture as walls constantly rise up around you. An internship in Asia where you don’t speak the language, and don’t know the “norm” simulates this mentality. We’ve found that after our fellows have completed their internship in Asia, they build resilience ( the ability to get back up after being knocked down — mentally). This isn’t something that you can be taught to do through online videos or lectures, you need to experience it first hand. One of our fellows took on the Asia Internship program in 2013. He had entrepreneurial drive — but had never started a company. He wasn’t on the dean’s list, or in the top 50% of his class. Chris Labelle, is the COO and co-founder of Mosaic manufacturing and has since grown a company from 3 to 16 people, raised over $1M in funding, taken part in the country’s top accelerator program, Founder Fuel, and on top of that is working with a team that will change the 3D printing industry all. Hes accomplished all this before the age of 24. Another one of our fellows, Angelina Fomina (Co-founder and COO of Parsehub) is building a data mining company. She took this company from a basement to straddling seven figure profits to an 11 person team and customers from the top of the Fortune 500 list. She did this purely organically without the aid of venture capital. Asia inspired me to jump into entrepreneurship because it took me away from the conventional environment and made me think for myself…about my own goals. — Angelina Fomina (Co-founder of Parsehub, Queen’s University 2013) Many of our other fellows have come back with an urge to hit the ground running and even if they don’t start a business they will do something entrepreneurial in nature. Many fellows decide to start companies and join incubators right after their internship. For example, Ali Ogston and Susie Pan both went on to be a part of the Next36. Nikita and Elena are starting companies through the Queen’s Innovation Connector’s accelerator. Unknowingly, your entrepreneurial adventure doesn’t need to start with the founding of a business, but with the founding of yourself. We give you that kick in the butt that you need to get off your ass and just do it. So what exactly can an internship in Asia do for an aspiring entrepreneur? Why not just pursue an internship in Silicon valley , Boston, or New York? why fly 10,000 km across the world to pursue an internship? Here’s a snapshot of the Asia internship — once accepted to the Cansbridge Fellowship you must find and secure an internship in Asia along with your accommodations, flights, and visas. This is but the first of your entrepreneurial tasks. Can you use the resources available to find the information and connections you need to lead you to a firm that will hire you in Asia. You thought finding an internship in North America was hard? Try a place where they don’t speak your language or share the same culture. So you finally, find that internship, phew, but now the few days between when your exams ended and your flight leaves you rush to learn Mandarin using Rosetta Stone. You panic to learn what you need to know to be able to make it from the airport to a taxi cab, and then dauntingly to your place of stay. You finally land in this foreign place, and instantly all the preparation goes out the window, you start frantically trying to speak in english and make ridiculous hand gestures hoping someone will come to your aid. How do I ask people where the washroom is? How do I ask for directions? The adventure goes on and on with hurdles left right and center, with no parental lifeline to help you, and no call a friend aids, and at some point you might feel helpless. So what do you do? What can you do? You can’t just get back on the plane and head back home, what will people think of you? how would you even communicate that if you don’t speak the language? you’re left with no choice but to use your instincts, and figure it out. When you finally get to your apartment there will be a sigh of relief. but this sigh of relief will be short lived until you have to now open a bank account in another language with 3000 alphabetic characters, get a SIM card, let alone figure out how to tell the person at the counter that that is what you are looking to do. Ultimately, you will be uncomfortable. After maybe 4 weeks of embarrassing yourself with hand gestures, you’ll adapt, and figure out ways to achieve minimal conversational tasks, and develop a network that will be your resource for each problem. Be it an adventure buddy, a mandarin teacher, the fluent in mandarin German friend, or your new found friend at the noodle shop that knows you aren’t from here and seems to know what you want when you walk in. One of the things you learn to become comfortable with while in Asia is reaching out and creating relationships that will help you in your time as a foreigner in Asia. Eventually, you’ll be able to get from point A to point B as a new expat, and 3 months later, you’ll just be telling all your friends back home thinking about visiting the place you now live in what they need to know to get by, but you still wont be an expert by any means. Sounds similar to being a first time founder doesn’t it? What we’ve learned at the Cansbridge Fellowship, is that doing a 3 month internship in Asia as a foreigner who doesn’t speak the language, you will come out with a greater tolerance and confidence for risk. When you’ve been in the worst situations where potentially your safety or comfort is at risk because you are lost and don’t know where you are and don’t have the appropriate tools to get out, you have no choice but to swim, improvise, and be creative. At the end of the day, when you step into that future founder role, although you still won’t be ready for all the problems that come your way, you’ll have a natural intuition to figure it out, understand problems from the bigger picture, and understand what must be done when you don’t have the resources you need to get the job done. Because you’ll feel as though you have done this before. So next time you are looking to kickstart or refresh your entrepreneurial drive, think about an internship in a place where you know you will be pushed outside of your comfort zone. If this sounds like you, I encourage you to check out the Cansbridge Fellowship, it might just be exactly what you need to get your start. I’ve had the pleasure of running this program, and have been fortunate to see how our fellows have evolved from student to entrepreneurs over the course of a summer. Read through our blogs, and you’ll find the same trend, each of our fellows build a more open minded resilient character from their experience with us. We’re always glad to chat with young hungry entrepreneurs looking to be great entrepreneurs one day. Please apply and feel free to drop my team a line at [email protected]/* */ if you have any questions!