About this Guide

Whether you are a budding entrepreneur or you would just like to enhance your employability by developing your creativity and innovation skills, this guide is for you! Our aim is to showcase the supports and resources available to you at UCD, plus a selection of the external supports and resources that are of most relevance to current students and recent graduates. We also feature inspirational stories of UCD students and graduates who have successfully taken the plunge and started their own businesses. This talented bunch are doing everything from software development to manufacturing tanning products, from recognising women's participation in sports to innovation consulting, and from producing personalised supplements to sustainable enterprises to equestrian industries. We have covered all of them.

We want this guide to be practical and suited to your needs, and maybe a source of inspiration and ideas. As always, we would love to hear your feedback as we strive to continually improve our service so if you have any feedback on this year’s guide or any suggestions for what we should include next year please drop us an email at: careers@ucd.ie

OK let's start!

Foreword

A warm welcome to the Careers Network’s Guide to Entrepreneurship!!!

Career progression from higher education is often associated with moving into a graduate programme with a large scale national or international recruiter and thousands of graduates follow this track to rewarding and engaging careers. At times, whether at university or later in life, for some it’s the draw of self -employment and being an entrepreneur, which provides motivation, drive, and satisfaction. There is no right or wrong decision in any of this, just being open to opportunities and possibilities.

Dr. David Foster

At Careers Network, we strive to enable students to chart their next steps into graduate study, graduate employment and into self-employment. While still a relatively small percentage of the overall graduate population enters selfemployment directly after college, Silicon Republic reported in 2022 that there were 269708 Small, Medium sized Enterprises in Ireland of which 2246153 were microbusinesses employment up to 9 staff. Entrepreneurs and the SME sector are critical to Ireland’s economic success and future innovations.

Students seeking to develop an entrepreneurial edge may avail of opportunities such as the Investors & Entrepreneurs Society which has a focus on business. The UCD Innovation Academy’s modules and programmes in areas including creativity, innovation and design thinking are excellent options for students to consider when exploring career development in the context of innovation and entrepreneurship. There are similar programmes and competitions run by UCD Nova as well for budding entrepreneurs. ‘UCD Nova Student Enterprise Competition’ offers fourweek mentorship, workshops and a cash prize of €5,000 for the winning team.

I hope that you find this new career resource helpful as your career plans develop and do engage with the UCD Careers Network during your time at UCD. Remember to check out the range of options that have been designed to appeal to those students interested in self- employment, innovation, and entrepreneurial education, many of which you will find featured in this guide.