Rejection Activity

Hello all,

This week's post will cover my thoughts on the rejection activity we did in the last class, and why I felt it was valuable. I've heard of similar trading activities being assigned by Haas classes, and I think that it teaches an important lesson to entrepreneurs.

I specifically had 2 major takeaways from the activity. 1 - It doesn't matter how much a product is worth, it matters how much the customer thinks it's worth. When we were trying to trade away the box, we had to convince people that it was worth more than the $0.50 "list price." That was the only way we were able to trade up for more expensive items, ultimately ending up with a $20 Arduino display. We used different pitches to convince people of the box's value - telling them they could use it to store stuff, putting a love note in it, etc. But the main point was, we were only successful because we were able to convince people to trade items worth more than $0.50 for a $0.50 box. 2 - You can't take rejections personally. This is one of the hardest things, in my opinion, because no one likes getting rejected. However, it's inevitable that life will be full of rejections - internships, college applications, investor pitches, relationships, etc. If the first rejection from an investor phases you, your company is never getting off the ground. In our process, we had 5 people willing to trade, and a far larger number who said no. It was important to keep trying, since ultimately we had success. Another reason why I said it's important not to take rejections personally, is, because, sometimes it did seem very personal. We noticed that people who seemed friendlier, and seemed to like us more, were more willing to make trades. That made me realize that, to some extent, business decisions can be influenced by personal feelings, which is why presentation and first opinions can often be so important. To that end, I feel that it's definitely important to be personable and likable as it will definitely help your chances as an entrepreneur, but it's also important to recognize that not all people will like you, and sometimes that may result in rejections.

That's all for this week. Looking forward to the next class!

Hey everyone,

In this week's blog post, I'll be talking a little bit about the value proposition and how it is essential to a budding company/startup. The value proposition is essentially a summary of why customer's should buy your product - what value does it bring, and why is it better than the alternative products that may offer a similar value? Some crucial things to consider here are that your product must meet a need or solve a problem. Identifying a problem for consumers, then building a product that solves that problem will ensure that there is demand, and thus your solution is more likely to have customers willing to spend on it. An interesting article I read on Forbes also mentions that one of the keys to a value proposition is that you not only solve some problem, but that you do it better than all the competing products. That sounds obvious, but it's critical to ensuring that customers buy your product, and not a competing one. The last important thing, in my opinion, about a value proposition, is the way that you market it to your potential customers. It's almost more important for your customer to believe that your product will bring them value than it is for the product to actually do that. That's not to say that your product shouldn't work - it obviously should - but you could have the best product in the world, and if it isn't marketed well, customers won't buy it. I mention this a lot in my video, but building an ad and marketing campaign that shows customers that the product will bring them value is critical to its success and to bringing in revenue.

Hello All,

In this post I'll be talking a little bit about the Lego activity we did in the last class. Overall, I thought this was a great activity. Not only did we get a bit of a break to mess around with Legos and have some fun, it also covered some very important points, specifically in regard to planning on detail. One of the interesting concepts displayed was the potential disconnect between the plan and the reality. On paper, it's easy to draw a perfect solution with all the ideal parts, and exact descriptions. However, when it comes time to build, there are a lot of concessions that have to be made. Two huge ones that we experienced firsthand are time and resources. That means that you  have to recognize that your final product is most likely not going to be the same as what you put down on paper, and that seems to be a natural part of the entrepreneurial process. The other factor that was important was specificity in planning - making sure to include instructions like what was the device being built, which parts were needed, etc. All of that information was vital to making a good plan - even if the plan was compromised for the sake of practicality - having a specific plan gives more direction to the building process. Overall, I thought it was an enjoyable activity.

Hello all!

For this week's blog post, I'll be talking briefly about what excites me and the type of people I enjoy working with and what kinds of partners I'd want on my team for this semester.

I consider myself a pretty accommodating person, and I am open to working with a variety of different people. However, there are two traits that I really value in people when working in a team. First is the willingness to listen to others, as well as the willingness to make your voice heard. It's hard to find a balance between the two, but if either is neglected, the group will suffer for it. It's obviously bad to take over a discussion and not let anyone else speak, because you'll never know what potentially brilliant ideas have been shut down. It's equally bad to not voice your own concerns when working in a team, because an idea that you have could be extremely valuable to the group, and they won't know unless you share. Second is having an open mind. Simply put, I really value group members who are willing to drop preconceived notions and be open to new ideas that they hadn't considered or given credence to before.

As to what excites me in terms of projects, I really want to work on an idea that is somewhat technical in nature (e.g. engineering, biotech)and will have a widespread impact. That's why the idea of the Natural Disaster warning system that I discussed in my last post really caught my attention - it's simple, but has an impact that could affect millions, even billions, potentially. Projects like these will definitely be amongst my top choices when it comes to discussing ideas.