It’s all about Pitching and Networking!
It felt just like yesterday when we had the kick-off for Startup Journey Accelerator 2021, and now we are accelerating to the grand Demo Day!
It is said that the journey sometimes brings you more meaningful experiences and life memories than the destination itself does. At Boost, we say to our aspiring entrepreneurial teams that, the process of undergoing vigorous training and hard work to build up your dream is indeed as important as achieving your goal. The effort you are throwing out today, the knowledge you are getting this week and question: “Does it help my business idea at all?”, the various exercises you are doing with your teams this month, they will all pay off in a long run.
Boost’s goal is to provide early- stage student startups skills and knowledge, and an opportunity to improve themselves under the guidance of experienced coaches in business and startup industries. Our teams came to us with their ideas and on-going business projects, and we are proud of the progress, no matter how little or huge, we created together during the last 4 weeks.
July is coming to an end, and here we are, approaching the second half of our Startup Journey Accelerator. Our 11 startups of this year (6 in in the Business Track and 5 in the Game Track) went through some ups and downs during the last 2 weeks, but their development and diligent work, though varied in teams, are seen, checked and recognized.
If the first 2 weeks were more like an intense warm-up, week 3-4 indeed leaded our young business founders to a deeper level of entrepreneurship training. We encompassed different major issues in Prototyping, MVP, Networking and Marketing. We welcomed coaches and mentors with various and multiple expertise. Our teams were more familiar with the workload and routines, so in general, we were gradually moving forwards. Let’s see some of the highlights:
1. Pitching training
Nobody needs good pitching skills than a startup. You are creating your business, you need to show it to the world in a persuasive way. Investors, no doubt, is your top-priority, but you should successfully present yourself in front of all group of audiences as well. That is why in our Journey, Pitching is practiced weekly. We already invited The Pitch Doctor Christoph Sollich ,the famous Mike Bradsaw and Pouria Kay, and our beloved Elias Savonlahti to our journey as Pitching coach and judges. Most of our pitching session were held in hybrid mode, with both online and on-site participants. Giving a good pitch in a limited time required is tough, so we are working on it. Check out more photos on our Instagram.
Hybrid Pitching Session with Judge Elias Savonlahti on screen
2. Network building
Networking is crucial. Period. One of the most difficult issue for startups at early stage is that they do not have a good network. They would not know where to turn to when encountering a problem, or when they need someone to collaborate. Creating real relationships is more than merely working together. It is important to meet in person, to have small talk none related to work, to get to know one another. It is true that good teams are built, not found, and they are built based on real human bonds, trust and respect. At Boost, though it was more complicated than having 100% online sessions, we still tried to organize as many hybrid sessions as possible. We also had many and oh so many meetings before the Journey to discuss about whether or not we could hold our traditional Afterworks. What’s special? We decided to hold weekly online Afterworks, when we did different things together, like playing online games, “have you ever”, or Yoga. Yes you heard it right, it’s Yoga!
We practiced Yoga together with one team member from the US
3. Accelerating for the Demo Day
There was a quick plunge in our teams’ spirit due to tiredness in week 3, but now we all realized that we are getting close to the Demo Day, which will be livestreamed from SparkUp, so we’d better speed up. Teams are having their logos and branding set up in order, and it’s getting real! We are very soon presenting to the world our newborn startups. We have beautiful business ideas. Let’s wait for them!
There might still be a long way for our teams to go even after our Journey, their businesses might be blooming or glooming, but their effort definitely will be worth it and make way for more beautiful things to come in their career. Even though we only work together for 8 weeks, any alumni Booster is forever welcome to connect to us once they need some advice.