Business student mentors startups in Gaza

In June of 2015, international business major Tara Demren decided on a whim to participate in StartUp Weekend Miami. She and her team came in third. The competition ignited a passion for entrepreneurship that has propelled Demren, now a senior at FIU, to the top of the startup world – first as strategy manager for the No. 3 Startup of the Year in the United States, and most recently as a mentor to budding entrepreneurs in the Middle East. All in one year. In the article below – originally published in Summa Cum Laude, the Honors College magazine – Demren shares her meteoric journey.

By Tara Demren

I was one of those students who didn’t really have a particular career in mind. Facing college somewhat blankly, I did what anyone would do—I came up with a plan that sounded respectable.

I had always been interested in business. In high school, I headed the largest business organization – my team and I competed in developing business plans; for three consecutive years we were state finalists. So I decided to be a business woman.

I’d work in exports and imports between China and Turkey. I even took a year of Mandarin! But I knew from the start I was far from “following my bliss.”

Once I got to FIU, I had my freshman year to dabble in my core classes and explore random topics. I loved my business courses but my Honors courses became my space to cultivate creativity. Gradually, I became a well-rounded student – a well-rounded student who still did not know what she wanted to do.

Then I heard of Startup Weekend, a competition where you and a team have 54 hours to create a company concept and pitch it to a panel of judges. Voila! Something I could put my heart and soul into – creating a new thing from scratch and seeing it through. That sounded blissful!

The best kind of exhaustion

Startup Weekend redefines time, pushes your limits and tests your appetite for competition. It’s 54 hours in one room, like sardines 80 participants work to create, sell, and realize an entrepreneurial idea. Got a great idea? Can you get a team to help you put it together? No?  Maybe you want to join someone else’s team. Hurry up. Only 45 hours left!

With my friend and fellow Honors student Demetrius Villa, I threw myself into this melee. After a particularly vicious round of extreme rock-paper-scissors (I took  strange pride in being the runner-up in this random, skill-less exercise), my group developed its 10-minute corporate idea: “Fierce Werewolves” would send the family of a really bad bully a werewolf costume to scare their kid into better behavior. Well, that was just a warm-up. Once the ideas became serious, I found I had to switch groups because mine wasn’t gaining traction.

The next day, with almost no sleep, I hustled up both body and mind: Go big or go home! It took half a day, but by Saturday afternoon we finally began living out the weekend’s slogan, “No talk, all action!” Saturday felt more like a week than a day, but by the end, we thought we had a fighting chance to win.

Sunday was a heart-pounding, nerve-wracking experience. We devised the business plan, the app interface, the monetization strategies, the targeted market, and the presentation collectively all within the final few hours.

In the end, our group of non-tech business people placed third! Maybe even more worthwhile was an all-around feeling of the best kind of exhaustion – exhaustion from accomplishment.

From entrepreneurial dreams to real startup success

That event last June proved to be the tipping point in my view of the future. The sheer adrenalin and pressure to deliver under tight deadlines hooked me. Add to that unlimited access to participating mentors, learning from other participants, and that exhilarating sense of being part of the creative process, and I knew entrepreneurship was for me. After that, I felt ready to take on the world. Of course, this did not happen. At least not right away.

I started attending local tech and startup events. I met a lot of entrepreneurs and other inspirational people and made sure to keep in touch with them. Then, out of nowhere, I got an job offer at a startup company called LiveAnswer, for which I was referred by my Startup Weekend mentor.

LiveAnswer, a tech platform providing on-demand phone support, was a strange industry for me to enter, but I seized the moment to throw myself into this exploration of working at a startup, even as a low-level content writer.

I resolved I would not tackle this opportunity just to write or to make money, but to maximize what I could learn and contribute. My new boss made sure of this. I am grateful he taught me how to wear every one of his various hats as an entrepreneur. I didn’t feel much like a content writer—more like a CEO-shadow. Seeing the highs and lows first-hand, I gained an insight into entrepreneurship that I probably couldn’t have found anywhere else.

Tara Demren strategizes with her colleagues at LiveAnswer, voted the No. 3 Startup of the Year.

By my third month with LiveAnswer, I had become the strategy manager and we had been voted Tech. Co’s No. 1 Startup in Miami. Off we went to Las Vegas to compete nationally, working non-stop to prepare and refine our pitch. Out of more than 1,000 national applicants, we were voted the No. 3 Startup of the Year!

Mentoring startups in the Middle East

And that made possible my participation in Geeks on a Plane (GOAP) – a program focused on exploring emerging tech and startup ecosystems in the Middle East and opening doors to international connections with selected entrepreneurs, executives and investors.

I felt like I was riding a rocket ship and barely registered how quickly I was moving. Billy Joel’s song Vienna was my earworm (“Where’s the fire, what’s the hurry about? You’d better cool it off before you burn it out. You’ve got so much to do and only so many hours in a day…”). I got to see cities from Amman to Cairo to Dubai and to meet with local entrepreneurs and ambitious students. I participated in panel discussions, mentor sessions and startup pitching competitions, and gained enormous insight into the region’s people and their ideas.

I was surprised to see the same entrepreneurial spirit I see in the United States, though with a different end goal. The people in this newly developing region have limited knowledge and resources and must take great risks, so their efforts were largely focused on community problems, no matter how difficult. For instance, in Jordan, I was fortunate to have the chance to mentor startups from Gaza focused on addressing key issues, such as 6-hour electricity restrictions. This became the most intense and humbling experience of the trip for most of us.

GOAP gave me incredible insight into a region I would have otherwise overlooked. Even though the program left me physically and mentally exhausted, I was overflowing with newfound understanding and motivation. Spending each waking hour with influential geeks gave me a bevy of global connections, a new outlook on opportunities, and friendships I will cherish forever.

Building from the bottom up

The key traits associated with being an entrepreneur are resilience, a strong sense of self, flexibility, vision and passion. I believe that every Honors class I have taken fostered these traits in me: resilience in completing challenging assignments; a strong sense of self in defending my viewpoints and in writing argumentative papers; flexibility in learning about subjects I disliked; and finally both vision and passion from professors urging us to explore what we want from life. This environment allowed me to take risks while still developing myself.

I am also proud to see my university taking the initiative to elevate the student startup community. The entrepreneurial drive for global reach and impact starts with education and support. My peers have vast entrepreneurial potential and FIU can and must foster it.

And what of the girl who couldn’t imagine the future? I have found that I would much rather take a blind leap of faith for a new idea time after time, despite the chance of failure, than regret never trying and live my life with a big “what if” always hanging above my head. I have found my bliss and I’m enjoying every minute of following it.