updated 25/7/2022
Starting your own company is never easy. Most founders and entrepreneurs know that it is incredibly tough and there are no hard and fast rules in starting your own company. There are various ways you can learn when it comes to knowing how to manage your team and handle your company’s finances. These can be taught through the participation of various entrepreneurship courses, or even entrepreneurs organisation and networking groups.
Entrepreneurship Courses
If you feel like wanting to learn as much as possible within a short period of time, here are some of the popular (free and inexpensive) courses that you can find online:
- Creativity & Entrepreneurship from Berklee Online
- Financial Analysis for Decision Making from Babson Online
- Entrepreneurial Finance from MIT Open Courseware
- Startup School by Y Combinator
- Financial Engineering and Risk Management Part 1 from Columbia University
Or, if you are looking for something else, check out other online courses platforms such as:
Entrepreneurs Leadership Training and Development Programmes
The entrepreneurship courses are designed to develop entrepreneurial skills in people that would facilitate them. You may think that this is similar to entrepreneurship courses but the entrepreneurship program involves the collaboration of high growth entrepreneurs and experienced mentors. The main objective of such programs is to impart the necessary skills and knowledge to help entrepreneurs and founders in starting and running a successful business. We have listed down several programs that we think you could benefit from.
Malaysia Tech Entrepreneur Program (MTEP)
MTEP is a program initiated by MDEC and the Malaysian Government to attract entrepreneurs and founders from all over the world to set up their business in Malaysia and to expand their business across the ASEAN region. Through this programme, tech founders are able to apply for either a 1-year or 5-year stay in Malaysia to start and run their business.
The requirement for the entrepreneurs would be to provide a 3-month personal bank statement (minimum amount of RM50,000 but not limited to Malaysian banks). For an established entrepreneur, there is an additional requirement of supplementing the proof of your business performance.
CEDAR Entrepreneur Development Programs
Centre for Entrepreneur Development and Research (CEDAR) is a subsidiary company of SME Bank. The centre conducts research-based coaching, function-based facilitation, and entrepreneur-focused programs. Some of the Entrepreneur Development Programs that they are currently organising include Customized Grow! Coaching and SMEs Enrichment Workshops which varies from credit securing strategies to leadership skills for supervisors.
Entrepreneurs Programme
Here at NEXEA, we organise Entrepreneurs programme that is catered for CEOs of high-growth startups (potential to grow more than 100 million in market size). The Entrepreneurs Programme advocates founders and entrepreneurs to have a peer-to-peer growth mindset as they believe it allows CEOs to learn and relearn the things that they know as well as openly discuss with their peers about the challenges and failures that they face.
NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own and have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. The combination of experienced mentors, experts, and partners prove potent as the 35+ startups invested by NEXEA have grown 3 to 16 times per year.
Entrepreneurs Networking Organisation
As an entrepreneur, you must have attended numerous entrepreneurial events and joined thousands of different organisations. However, there are many out there that you don’t personally gain anything out of.
Regardless of whether you’re hoping to network, meet mentors, or increase your knowledge on the most recent industry patterns through entrepreneurship courses, joining and taking an interest in an entrepreneur networking group has a plenitude of advantages that can make you a more grounded and successful entrepreneur. Here are some entrepreneurial organisations that you should consider joining should you want to experience more success than failure.
By joining such CEO networking groups, here are some of the things that you can expect learning from participating in these network groups:
- You get mentorship from people that are experts in your industry. As harsh and rough the business world can be, it is important that as an entrepreneur or the founder of your business to be surrounded by mentors that you can run ideas by. This is because these people are experts in the industry that you are in and they are able to help you reach your long-term plans.
- You will be able to solve CEO level problems. By participating in CEO networking groups, you will be surrounded by peers who are also CEO or founders of their own business and they would most likely have experienced similar situations. Thus, you will be taught systematic ways of solving these issues together.
- You will be trained to have a growth mindset. Having a growth mindset means you are able to speak about your challenges and failures openly and how you have dealt with them. By doing so, you are establishing an environment that allows openness, transparency and risk-taking amongst your team members, allowing ‘thinking outside the box’ solutions to occur through open discussions. It also promotes development because at the end of the day, growing your company is a continuous learning process and it is important that through such programmes, the importance of independence (in thought and action), interdependence (the value of a win-win attitude among team members and leaders), as well as continuous development (commitment to continuously grow personally and professionally), is being heavily promoted.
If you are drawn towards the benefits mentioned above, you should check out NEXEA’s Entrepreneurs Programme where the program caters to CEO’s of high-growth startups (have the potential to grow more than 100 million in market size). NEXEA is known for its mentors who are successful ex-entrepreneurs, or C-levels who own and have sold (IPO, M&A) their businesses. The combination of experienced mentors, experts and partners prove potent as the 35+ startups invested by NEXEA have grown 3 to 16 times per year. Thus far, 30 CEOs of high-growth startups that have enrolled in the programme, where combined, they are worth more than US$50m.
Conclusion
Joining these entrepreneurship courses, programs and even the entrepreneurship networking organisation will give you the exposure that you need in order to stay or grow your company. Nevertheless, it is important to note that you should not exhaust all your time and energy participating in all of these entrepreneurship activities at once. You should know what you would like to focus on and start signing up to the right entrepreneurship activity at this current period.
Here’s a summary of the different types of entrepreneurship activity that is mentioned. Entrepreneurship courses are for you to learn and understand the fundamentals of starting and running your business. Entrepreneurship programs are for those who have already started their business and would like to grow their company even further. Lastly, entrepreneurs organisation is for everyone no matter what stage you are as an entrepreneur. It is basically a gathering of every entrepreneur to help and become more supportive of each other.
References
Understanding The Benefits of Joining Entrepreneurs Programme