Found your own startup

Haris Adu is the founder of a tech startup called PinU,  an app that helps you message your friends when they are nearby. They worked closely with UCL Careers to help recruit technical talent for PinU,  and also with UCL Advances as part of UCL Digital Labs to test the app with students, in addition to securing a summer intern.

 

How did you get into your role?

After I graduated from University I was still unsure what the most suitable role for me was. I knew that I wanted to work in a smaller organisation where my creativity would be valued thus I applied to a few startups for an internship role and managed to secure a marketing and user experience role at a statistical search engine startup. I enjoyed working there for the short time that I was there and learnt a lot about working in a startup. I then wanted to pursue my own startup by solving problems that were important to me, which led me to found my own startup PinU with my co founder Ricardo who had just finished his physics masters at UCL.

What are the best things about working in your role?

There are a lot of great things about my role, but what I love in particular are working in a talented team and really believing in what I get to work on everyday. It is really amazing that I have the ability to think of an idea, design it, have it coded and then release it to the public. To see people actually use it in public is a priceless feeling.

Biggest success in your role?

Launching was a great feeling but getting our first few users that were not in our immediate circle was a great sign of validation because it was at that point we knew that people wanted to use our product, not out of loyalty but rather because they could relate to the problem that we were solving.

This was a great personal milestone and we have since grown PinU in London.

What are the biggest challenges you face in your work?

There are a lot of challenges that we face as a startup, but by far our greatest challenge is deciding what features to leave out from our product development process. We are very fortunate to have the ability to add a number of features to PinU that would enhance the product in a meaningful way but before we are able to do this we have to ask ourselves two important questions. 1) Does this feature add significant value to the product? 2) Does this feature help us achieve our mission? The reason why we must ask ourselves these questions before proceeding to add potential features to the product is because, without this framework we would end up with a lot of features that did not do anything outstanding or useful.

What top tips would you pass on to a student interested in this type of work?

I would encourage any student that is interested in working in a startup to network both online and offline. London tech startups jobs Facebook group is a great place to start looking as startups are constantly looking for new employees and interns. Even if you do not see any jobs that directly correlate to your skills, you can explain who you are, and what you are looking for and then post your CV. London students who love startups is a meetup group and a great place to get inspired by successful startup founders and connect with startups that are hiring.

Another great method of finding a startup internship is the UCL Advances Summer Internship Programme, which any current UCL student is eligible for. There is a careers fair for startups and small businesses usually held in March/April with a range of different startups attending. This 8 week internship is paid by the university and is a great opportunity to gain some experience.

UCL Talent Bank also promotes a range of paid opportunities within SME’s.  PinU actually have a summer internship role on there at the moment- Take a look at http://bit.ly/1WO1U2Z