Blog 4: Final goodbyes to SSF :(
Looking back to the day I landed in San Francisco, I still remember being full of energy and excitement. I was finally in the home and the birthplace of thousands of successful startups — Silicon Valley. While growing up, I always heard stories about how a shower thought turned into a million-dollar company in the valley. Throughout this semester, I received the great opportunity to learn from the professional experiences of my professors, guest speakers, and our mentors. Their expertise of our professors who worked in/with/for multimillion-dollar companies really gave me an insight into the functioning of a real business; created a great impression on my mind. The guest speakers brought in their experience of building a start-up and the challenges they faced during their journey. It was interesting to learn from the experiences of Zahra (Sahar) Tashakorinia, a guest speaker. After listening to Zahra’s story about how she launched her school project — Tidytilt — at Kickstarter and got acquired by Logitech, I was really inspired. It gave me hope that I, an undergrad sophomore, can also have the ability to develop a start-up that could reach to such greater heights.
During this entrepreneurial start-ups class, we were expected to form groups and come up with a business idea that would be applicable in the real business world where people would want to invest in. My group was very passionate about this assignment as we not only came up with an idea that wanted to tackle carbon emissions, called Green Flame, but also with The Orb. This idea aimed at reducing loneliness and stress from being separated from our loved ones during this quarantine. My team and I were so enthusiastic about The Orb that we were willing to give up on our sleep and strive to make The Orb perfect.
However, just a night before the submission of gate 2, my group members and I decided to pivot completely and came up with Careibou. I was very hesitant to pursue our new idea and continuously thought about our idea of getting rejected by our professors and mentors. I just could not do it. But one thing I learned after going skydiving this semester, is that I need to stop being controlled by fear and just go with the flow! Right after I jumped out of the plane, I let go of my fear. It was the most blissful moment of my life. I felt accomplished. I felt empowered.
I recognized that it is not going to be that often where I will get to test a business idea and be assessed by serial entrepreneurs. Hence, I took inspiration from my skydiving experience and decided to go with Careibou. Slowly and steadily, we were able to carve Careibou into something beautiful. This project allowed me to delve into our target market to truly understand the problems they face daily.
And the pitch day where the teams were supposed to present to angel investors and VC was something else. I think my words do not do any justice to what my team member and I were experiencing.
Lucas was super hyped up to present and was venting this energy by doing weird actions. Tom was stressed and was doing jumping jacks while I just sat there calmly watching them. I believe that my group members and I perfectly synced up with each other in terms of the direction we wanted to take Careibou in, our work ethic aligned properly and all of them equally contributed to the advancement of the project. In short, the finest team I could ever ask for. In my opinion, the team project and skydiving were definitely the highlights of my semester.
Nonetheless, the quizzes and reading documents that were about 80 pages long were definitely the downsides of this class. I prefer watching videos and listening to podcasts over reading such lengthy documents over the weekend.
All in all, this semester has been full of new experiences. I received the wonderful opportunity to turn my ambitious ideas into a realistic business plan that has the potential to scale in the marketplace. I have always had a dream to start my own business since childhood and I believe that this class in SF has honed my entrepreneurial mindset by allowing me to work on my startup idea. Thus, preparing me for the real-world and to walk the entrepreneurial path.
