What My Design Students Taught Me About Building a Business (For First-Time Founders).
Updated: Oct 6
Besides being a designer and a business owner, I am an instructor at a nearby community college. It’s a very convenient “side hustle”, but it takes up a lot of my time, and I often wonder if it’s worth it. I truly enjoy teaching, but it pulls focus from my business. And when the students don’t care, it makes it incredibly hard for me to care. But then, there are the students who do care. Those are the ones who make me get up in the morning and head out the door instead of staying in my studio.
I officially started teaching in the fall of 2025. Today, I was working on delivering mid-term grades. As I sat there running the numbers, I started thinking about the wide variety of students I’ve had. No matter their raw talent or natural intelligence, a few specific characteristics always make the great ones stand out. There are a few traits I know will take them far in their design careers.
And then it hit me... These exact same traits are what make a person a great founder.
Design and entrepreneurship are two sides of the same coin. Most designers end up freelancing or, like me, creating their own studio. There are so many things the two paths have in common, but these three characteristics are what truly set the successful ones apart:
1. Accountability
Basically, if time is all you have right now, you better invest every second of it. As students, many of them only have time and student debt. As founders, we may have a few dollars, but many of us only get to invest time too.
What do I tell them? You we better keep up! It is easy to compare yourself with those who are doing better, but you do not realize they had more experience before. They had a class in high school or the opportunity to “play around” before. Do not give up!
I also tell them to show up prepared and to be proactive. And to try your best to “figure things out”. If you are working on an assignment and you do not understand a word, then google it! Don’t wait for me to tell you what it means. As a founder, don’t wait for someone else to hand you the answers. Go find them!
2. Make more. Keep making.
This one sets anyone apart! So many people do the bare minimum.
And if you want t stand out… at least in my class: Go way beyond the basic assignment.
Same goes for any founder out there. Whatever it is that you are working on: Go way beyond the expected solution or result. Show your passion and your messy thinking.
And make more! Quantity leads to quality. This is industrial design 101, but so many first-time founders are eager to build and they want to build the first thing that comes to their head. But you need to work on learning, researching, exploring, and making the ugly prototypes, breaking them, and then making it better. The more you make, the higher the quality of the thing you make.
3. Be honest with yourself.
Look at your own work and be honest. Do you actually like what you did? Does your work represent your vision, or did you settle? Can you make it better? Most importantly: Did you give it your best?
I take these things seriously, especially when it comes to business.
When I talk to my students about this, we are usually just talking about last minute assignment submissions. But when we take those exact same principles and apply them to business and product development? We are talking about absolute clarity in what we are doing and what we are building! We are talking about serious money or risks. And, we are talking about YOUR dream, that can either stay stuck in your head or become a real-life, physical product.
What do you think about that?
If you feel like you could benefit from some of that… then let me tell you… I work with first-time founders who are stuck in the idea phase. The founders with the vision, the technical knowledge, and even an audience. But who have absolutely no clue how to actually get it manufactured without making a massive mistake. Or who are doing their best but are overwhelmed and maybe losing their minds a little bit.
It starts with one door: a $450 strategy call. You book a time, and on that call, we dig into your idea and figure out exactly what is blocking you. From there, we lock in one of three tailored tracks:
Concept, audience, market: Is the concept right, for the right people, with a real market behind it?
Function, form, brand: Does the physical product actually align with your brand and market goals?
Vendor readiness: I review your files and generate the exact documents you need to hand off to a manufacturer.
Does it sound like something you need?
Ready to have what it takes to get your product made?