Good luck to you and your friend! Take your shots while you are young :) The advice I have for you is two fold 1) continue to try and network while you are working with your friend. Keep your ears open for people hiring or starting projects you are interested in. Get involved with meet-ups in your areas of interest. 2) while working on projects try to be increasing your skill set or experience. Offer to help in a way that you are also learning. Like maybe pick up a new programming language or gain some real world experience in something you have only academic knowledge in.
Thank you for your advice and good wishes. I'll definitely take it into account. Regarding working on my skills, I will be definitely learning. I will be learning more about Natural Language Processing.