Another busy yet great week this week is. Can’t believe how many things I had done. It reminded me again the great words from Mr. Lu Xun: “Time is like water in the sponge. It’s always there if you squeeze.”
With my mentor’s help, I finally heard from the Babson alumnus who is working for a local VC firm. What I really learned (needs further improvement) is to write email to strangers such as this alumni. The revised email from my mentor made that happen. I’d talked with this alumnus in phone for about 20 minutes and I am quite thrilled. Pro-activeness really makes difference. I am happy I always believe nothing is impossible. While on the other hand, my follow up Thank-you email didn’t get his reply. Maybe…? Anyway, I’d decided to make an appointment with the writing resource center next week (originally schedule this week but…) to learn more about how to write COLD email.
The other big thing is the Rocket Pitch.
I had attended two Rocket Pitch practices before this Friday and the result was very good. My partner and I had learned from the feedback that our initial scope, the one described in the summary I'd sent to you, was too broad and too general. It's hard for the audience to clearly imagine what we are doing. So we significantly refined our biz model with a much smaller scope yet much more clear and clever business model, an online shopping place that organize sellers to provide best offer to meet your need instead of letting you spent hours to search at Amazon or EBAY to get the best deal. We are revising the executive summary now.
The Pitch is a blast. This year totally 108 teams had signed up. Personal skill wise, my public speaking skill was significantly improved. Your 6Ps were proved to be correct again. I also learned how to concisely and clearly pitch my idea in public. So instead of speaking for 3 minutes (the Pitch limits any pitch to 3 minutes with 3 slides) with an unclear impression left to the audience, I finished my pitch in 2 minutes and everyone in the room got my points. However, the only pity is that the organizer put us in a place with lots other traditional business such as dog walking or wasted vegetable oil recycling businesses. So our initial plan to receive enough attention and feedback from various potential investors was not succeed as most of them like VCs were in the other room.
Anyway, overall the preparation and actual pitch significantly improved my confidence and skills in public and I know I will benefit from them in a long run.
I also signed up for the annual Babson Coach program that organizing Babson MBA students and alumni to offer one-on-one coaching for Babson undergraduate. This year is the 10th year and the first time non-Babson people are allowed to register as a coach. I want to be helpful for undergraduate just like how helpful my mentor did for me. And since I am not a bar person, I also enjoy this kind of light social events. Every group includes 5-6 coaches and 5-6 undergraduates. I had coached an undergraduate, Scott Fletcher, who has strong interest of start-up and is currently working for a start-up, http://www.dormitem.com/, founded by another undergraduate. I am very happy to share my past experience with him.
Overall, another very valuable week this week is and I looking forward to meeting my mentor in Nov.
Other things? BCAP (Babson Consulting Alliance Program) finally officially started. I mean, we now had real work needs to be completed. We need to apply what we had learned from various courses in MOD II so far such as CSCA and MODA. It’d be a very valuable process to apply those theoretical frameworks such as Michael Porter’s five forces, the 5Cs of marketing opportunity analysis and others such as S.T.E.P, S.W.O.T and value chain. And it’s also a good opportunity to practice those frameworks. I really enjoyed to immediately apply those framework to my R project in the class though taking the risk to miss something in the class. But I enjoyed the freedom of my mind.
That’s almost everything. Raining outside and tomorrow could have a wonderful sleep.
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