"I should take all the advice given to me and run with it as fast and as focused as I possibly can."

Aaron Deditch '21 | Software Engineering Major | Computer Engineering Minor | Entrepreneurship

Hometown | East Hanover, NJ

I consider myself to be an entrepreneur at heart. I do not think of myself as an entrepreneur quite yet, as I have never started a company. Yet, I have always carried on an extremely entrepreneurial spirit for my entire life. I have indulged myself in the entrepreneurial mindset with such tenacity that I could never separate myself from that core fiber of my being.

Truly, I have always been exposed to the Entrepreneurial mindset. Ever since first listening to the Sherman Brothers’ “There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow,” I considered the fruition of dreams into reality to be a calling. At that young age, I would watch infomercials early in the morning and see what some of the most interesting As-Seen-On-TV Entrepreneurs were offering a seemingly eager public. My Grandfather and Uncle are Entrepreneurs. My Father has always applied a relentlessly creative and Entrepreneurial mindset to everything that he does. When I was in grade school I would begin thinking about how to solve problems and make products in my mind, and I aimed heavily for the highest degree of realism that my young mind could conceive. Inventors were the giants of history for me. Suddenly, I became fascinated with tech companies from the 80s, and just for fun I would learn about what was gained, what was lost, and what difficult to decipher marks had been put on the world of today by all the works of yesteryear.

It feels underwhelming to me that the only organization that I’ve started was the Engineering Club in High School. Nevertheless, it had some good moments, and my participation in the first year of the experimental STEM (more like a “Maker”) class at my high school felt very Entrepreneurial. At the first opportunity in Freshman year of Lehigh I was apart of a Lehigh startup, even though my involvement never ran deep. My involvement with the wonderful Baker Institute has been even longer than my Lehigh career, as I had participated in Lehigh’s Pennsylvania School of Global Entrepreneurship before my senior year of high school. I have done 2 Lehigh courses focused on Entrepreneurship already, and I’ve cherished every lesson.

So, I do feel that I am an Entrepreneur in my heart, in my blood, in my soul, and most certainly in my mindset. LehighSiliconValley has strengthened that. There was never any doubt to me that the path to Entrepreneurship is daunting and difficult, and no Entrepreneur at LehighSiliconValley attempted to dance around that fact. Rather, this experience was the exact sort of realistic, yet still extremely enjoyable, window into the previously distant world of Silicon Valley.

Though my background may be Computer Engineering, I have seen no end to the usefulness of technical skills in technical industries. That is not to say that an entrepreneur must have a technical background. Far from it, we’ve undoubtably met with highly varied personalities of diverse backgrounds that bring their skills to the table as well. Nevertheless, that does not mean a technical background could ever hurt.

In some ways, it felt validating to be able to see this world, that I have only ever read about, with my own eyes. To be able to engage with the people working for their goals under such stressful conditions is a truly unique form of deep inspiration, that I now fully realize could have only been felt in person. LSV has made me feel as though I should take all the advice given to me and run with it as fast and as focused as I possibly can.