With physical campuses closing across the LaunchPad entrepreneurial network, and the transition of typical in-person events and programming being shifted to virtual, some may wonder what a student entrepreneur can do to continue making progress on his or her startup? The answer: Lots! Below are seven ideas for how students can maintain momentum and continue making progress - even while working away from campus.

The good news is that with technology advances that ease connectivity, collaboration, and communication, schools and student entrepreneurs are better positioned than ever to continue moving their businesses forward even when working remotely. The bad news is, with a different environment, be that home, or even just their friend’s off-campus apartment, distractions are plentiful. Because of this, it is more important than ever for entrepreneurship campus directors to maintain frequent contact with their students and help them to remain focused. Seven actions for doing so include:

1. Creating Accountability - Simply knowing that a student entrepreneur has a regularly scheduled weekly or monthly check-in meeting with their campus director or mentor (who ideally has access to a progress-tracking document) may provide the motivation he or she needs to prioritize working on their next steps. As always, the line between support and enablement is thin, and campus directors and mentors should rely on the students to document activity, goals, and action items.
   
   Whether remote or not, without the typical structure of school and programs, students often can feel overwhelmed about “where to start”. Encourage them to break up big tasks into smaller milestones. Another idea is to create a virtual competition during this temporary reality: Which of your LaunchPad teams can complete the most of some activity (Ex: video or phone customer discovery interviews, accelerator/pitch competition applications, virtual mentor meetings, etc.) before summer or when they return to campus? A simple Google spreadsheet and graph, viewable to all teams, and updated weekly, is an easy way you can create a sense of urgency and competitive energy.
2. Providing Remote Technology Solutions - Many university entrepreneurship offices have conference call, video conference, and project management tools like Slack, Blue Jeans, Zoom, Skype, Google Hangouts, or Trello. Whether it is in support of meetings with mentors, advisors, or team members, these tools are invaluable to your students. As such, have you ever considered whether those tools could be used by students remotely? Working with your university’s IT department, you may find that these communication channels can be made available to your students even when not physically in your space.
3. Considering A New Perspective - How much customer discovery work have your student entrepreneurs done? And equally importantly, how varied and diverse would you describe these conversations? Students working on their business from a different location than normal may enable them to gather more input from different populations. If they are pitching a business idea that solves a need common to students on their home campus, perhaps in the next month or two they can aim to collect feedback from 10 potential student customers at a different school, located closer to home?
   
   Similarly, students who are working from new or different places than normal, may find a new pool of mentors and advisors to reach out to. Using John Hill’s Power of the Network presentation, this is the perfect time to encourage your students to use LinkedIn’s Alumni Tool to find one or two new, applicably-experienced alumni, living and working in that alternate location, who can connect with the student, hear their idea, and provide insightful feedback.
4. Connecting Student Founders Across the Network - Do you have a student with a good idea, but he or she could use a little peer support? Maybe none of your own program’s students are working on quite the same kind of startup idea? Now is a great time for LaunchPad campus directors to connect across the network and facilitate an intro. The #introductions channel on LaunchPad Slack can be used for just this purpose. Post a student startup idea, ask if any other campus directors know a team working on something similar, and create some connections!
5. Exploring Remote Talent - Operating under normal circumstances on campus student entrepreneurs may over-focus on their local, immediately known talent resources: that art major friend who does graphic design or their computer science roommate who has promised to help get a website up and running. However, the current reality may present an opportunity to push students to explore low-cost, talent networks to get their business goals accomplished. Online talent marketplaces like Upwork, TaskRabbit, 99designs, and Fiverr can connect your students to a global pool of digital service providers.
6. Building a Social Media Presence - Many LaunchPad global programs require or request that student startups have created social media accounts for their startups. (Promoting their business’s digital presence via Blackstone and Techstars channels is one of the most impactful ways, marketing-wise, we can help your students.) If they don’t already have their handles created on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc. now is a perfect opportunity to do so. (This exercise can also help students learn about the availability of their company’s name!) Once profiles are created, help them consider what value-added information they can creatively share as they grow their social media audiences and put together a calendar to plan that communication out over the coming weeks and months.
7. Promoting Mental Wellness - You may not realize it, but right now it’s more important than ever to support student entrepreneurs in maintaining their physical and mental health. Young people often thrive on structure and consistency and during situations where it may be unclear when they will return to campus (and their normal schedule) knowing that an advisor is concerned about their wellness may have more impact than you realize. Many student entrepreneurs may be feeling disappointed that competitions, events, etc. that they have been planning for and working towards are no longer happening. Consider using some of the time during check-ins with students to simply, but deliberately, ask, “How are you feeling today?” and communicate, “We’re looking forward to when you will return to campus.”

The COVID-19 health crisis has forced college and university entrepreneurship support strategies to shift. However, this adjustment in approach will undoubtedly help your students long term: More than 26 million Americans - about 16% of the total workforce - now work remotely at least part of the time, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).