OECD study places Brazil among the countries with a large proportion of startups created by students or recent graduates
A report prepared by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows that entrepreneurship practiced by university students or recent graduates is prominent in countries such as Canada, Australia, India and Brazil. In these nations, the proportion of students who found technology-based companies, startups, is more than 10% of the total number of entrepreneurs – a higher rate than in countries such as the United States, Israel, the United Kingdom and France.
The OECD evaluated the profile of startups registered in the Crunchbase database, which brings together information from approximately 447 innovative companies in 199 countries. In the case of Brazil, there were only 290 startups, but 12% of them had been founded by undergraduate students or recent graduates. Although they have a significant mortality rate, these companies serve as a thermometer of the importance of innovation among young people and attract the attention of large companies interested in new business models.
It was observed that, in the countries analyzed, the gaming, transport, education and online commerce segments have a higher incidence of student entrepreneurship. Not coincidentally, these are areas whose innovations are generally linked to software and applications, and do not require a large investment to start activities. In sectors such as biotechnology, health, energy and food, startups are generally created by more experienced people, who have completed or completed postgraduate studies.
Rafael Ribeiro, director of the Brazilian Startup Association (ABStartups), sees a combination of factors to explain the interest of students or recent graduates.
“Young people tend to be more tolerant of risk and this means that possible failures motivate them to move forward”, he assesses. “Added to this, the economic crisis scenario makes entrepreneurship an attractive option and a promise of financial independence.”
According to the OECD document, student entrepreneurship also attracts interest thanks to the success of companies that have become world leaders, such as Facebook, Microsoft and Apple. Although considered exceptional cases, they were started when their founders – Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, respectively – were still in graduate school, which was not completed by any of them.
Computer scientist João Machini, 29, has three companies on his CV that he helped found at the end of his undergraduate studies at the Institute of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of São Paulo (IME-USP). The most recent, created four years ago, is WorldPackers, a startup that offers volunteer work opportunities around the world. “It is a collaborative system of hostels, inns and NGOs [non-governmental organizations] in which travelers exchange daily rates for temporary services,” he explains.
The platform has more than 1 million users, who pay an annual fee of US$49 to use the service. The son of university professors, Machini considered pursuing an academic career, but gave up when he was still studying science. “Entrepreneurship is very dynamic. For a new idea to be validated, it is necessary to be close to consumers, and startups do this better than large firms, which have more bureaucratic internal processes.”
A trend that has gained momentum is the emergence of programs created by companies such as Microsoft, Google, Telefônica and Bradesco to accelerate the development of technologies in startups. “Large companies are interested in learning about and absorbing new business models created in nascent companies. Many of them, such as Uber, Airbnb and Nubank, to name a Brazilian, grew quickly to the point of threatening traditional markets”, explains Jaercio Barbosa, coordinator of the Escola Superior de Empreendedorismo (ESE) of the Brazilian Service of Support for Micro and Small Companies in São Paulo. Paulo (Sebrae-SP). “Acceleration programs encourage young people to create companies”, observes Barbosa.
The availability of business incubators at universities also plays an important role. “Students find institutional support and guidance in these environments to apply knowledge in the form of technology consultancy, administration and commercial formatting”, explains Guilherme Ary Plonski, scientific coordinator of the Center for Technological Policy and Management at USP.
Creating a startup during graduation, however, can prove to be an early and hasty decision, says Mariana Zanatta Inglez, manager of Unicamp's Business Incubator. “There are cases of students who are unable to balance their studies with their life as an entrepreneur,” she says. “This can harm the student’s training, as they are not yet mature enough to lead a company.”
Alex Matioli, 27, is studying business administration at Unicamp and divides his time between classes, a job at a luderia – a bar specializing in board games – and Rubian, a startup he founded in 2015. “The objective is to develop bioactive extracts for application in cosmetics and nutraceuticals, a type of food supplement.” The company carries out research with annatto and passion fruit in partnership with Unicamp, with support from PIPE program, from FAPESP.
For the student, an obstacle he had to overcome was the lack of resources to get the company off the ground. “I didn’t want to rely solely on financial help from my parents, so I started working in a bar and saving money. The help of a business mentor, who became Rubian’s partner and investor, was also essential.”
A survey released last year by Sebrae reveals that only 28,4% of students studied a subject related to entrepreneurship at university and, among those that offer such subjects, just over half deal more with reflections on “being inspired” than they present. practical knowledge. “Brazil has few schools with the mission of training entrepreneurs”, highlights Jaercio Barbosa, from ESE Sebrae-SP.
Another study carried out in 2016 by the universities of Bern and St. Gallen, Switzerland, administered a questionnaire to more than 122 thousand students from a thousand universities in 50 countries. It was observed that 80,3% of students intended to work as employees immediately after completing their degree. Only 8,8% demonstrated a desire to found their own company when they finished their studies. However, 38,2% said they would open a business after five years of graduating – enough time to complete a postgraduate degree or gain experience in the job market.
Maturity
Vinícius Freitas, a business administration student at the Institute of Education and Research (Insper), completed a two-year internship in the financial market before founding a company. “I worked with more experienced people and this accelerated my learning. If I had started without going through the internship, the chances of my business failing would be greater.” At 24 years old, Freitas is one of the partners at LiveHere, a startup based in Campinas that mediates between property owners and students. “We have a platform that simplifies contracting rentals, without students needing to present a guarantor or deposit check to rent a property”, he explains.
The OECD survey shows that in more developed countries, such as Switzerland, Denmark, Germany and the United States, the proportion of startups created by people with doctorates is much higher than in Brazil. In the United States, companies founded by individuals in their 40s tend to be more successful than those created by students in their 20s, according to a study published in April by researchers at MIT and Northwestern University in the repository of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER).
“More mature entrepreneurs generally have a more specialized perspective, which is fundamental to developing more robust innovations”, observes Lucimar Dantas, manager of the Business Incubator at the Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Postgraduate Studies and Engineering Research at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (Coppe-UFRJ).
In Brazil, most student entrepreneurs have not yet completed or only have a bachelor's degree, as shown by the OECD. “This negatively influences the company's technological innovation content”, explains Fabio Kon, professor of digital entrepreneurship at IME-USP and member of the Deputy Coordination of Research for Innovation at FAPESP. For him, it is not a case of discouraging younger students from creating startups. But he argues that it is necessary to openly discuss the limitations of the student entrepreneurship model because the mortality rate of these companies is usually higher and can hinder the student's academic performance.
Rafael Ribeiro, from ABStartups, observes that the path for very young entrepreneurs is arduous. “Many tend to fail when they don’t have adequate mentoring and help,” says Ribeiro. “Every student must learn to interact with the startup community to shorten their learning curve and be able to validate their product or service in the consumer market.”
