Why you should start your own business at university - even if you'll probably fail No one particularly likes to fail but it happens. Fail early and fail fast at university and you'll have that safety cushion. The likelihood is that you won't have children or a mortgage, and you can just get on with your degree or even your next start-up. Support Support for young student entrepreneurs is abundant. If you're currently at university, you'll have a range of organisations to go to for help. It's likely your university will have its own enterprise society, as mine did in the form of Manchester Entrepreneurs. The National Association of College and University Entrepreneurs (NACUE) and Shell LiveWire also run numerous events to help give young student entrepreneurs invaluable skills and networking opportunities. And if you have aspirations to create a start-up immediately after university, graduate tech start-up accelerator Entrepreneur First offers an intensive programme of support and training for running your own technology business. My co-founded start-up ClickMechanic, a service connecting drivers to mobile mechanics, has gone down the Entrepreneur First path and we had paying customers within two months of joining. Gap in the market With an abundance of potential customers living right next door and friends with spare time to help, university offers the perfect environment for starting out in business. And you can be up and trading in no time. My own student business, PieBoy Clothing, spotted a gap in the market for fashionable university-branded clothing, and went on to supply several universities across the country. It's still trading today. Try before you apply Most graduates will automatically look for employment with a company immediately after graduation. This is entirely understandable, but a large proportion will dislike their jobs and begin to dream about starting their own business. How can you know whether you'd prefer the trials and tribulations of a start-up if you've never tried? It's well-known that an undergraduate Mark Zuckerberg founded Facebook in his Harvard dorm room. So who knows - just because the odds are stacked against you doesn't mean you won't create the next big thing. Andrew Jervis is a former student entrepreneur and founder of PieBoy Clothing and ClickMechanic. Visit our Student Life section for more tips and features on uni living