FemTech Event SUP46

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Today I finally met Lana (I hope it’s the right spellingJ) and she is very nice. Safia and I volunteered to help in an event we were going to: FemTech event.

We wanted to see how the events were planned at SUP46 since there were a lot of them recently. So we helped fixing food and with the registration. In fact, 170 people signed for this event and we had to check if they were registered to ensure them a sitting position.

What was this event about?

During the FemTech event we had the pleasure to hear 3 women working in tech with different backgrounds. Having different backgrounds gave us different perspectives of working in the tech business. In the panel we had:

  • Frida Emillson, Co-founder and CMO at worflavor
  • Victoria Bastide, CTO at Lifesum
  • Jane Walerud, Founder & Investor at Warelud Ventures.

In this event there were also engineers, start ups and students and it was a great opportunity to exchange with them about what they are doing, how they got there…

I like these kinds of event were you can go and talk with everyone. Usually you don’t have to go and talk to people; they came to to you and talk.

The particularity of the Femtech event is that there were just womens –except 2 boys :P-. Two women were talking to me and they told me that they were glad to be only between women because sometimes in mixed event men are sometimes unprofessional…I think it’s because they are pretty and when you look at them you don’t want to talk about “work” (joke :P).

It’s not the last event at SUP46, so if you never went there, go there J I am sure you will like it.

I helped a start-up while looking for a job

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Last week I was looking for a graduation internship, so I spent most of my time on some companies’ websites to find good opportunities, especially in consultancies. And I eventually got to speak about it with a friend, also trying to find an internship. It turns out that he’s been reached by a start-up for a 6 months job in Paris, plus 6 months in San Francisco about this web-customer data analysis. I think he’s been so lucky to receive such an amazing offer, even if I’ve not so much interest for that specific topic, and I start thinking “why not doing an internship in a start-up myself ?” It’s something I’d never really thought about before, but as I’m interested by the start-up world and because I think I would enjoy this peculiar and exiting kind of job, I start looking around for some opportunities. So I check out some career/job websites without finding any topic that I’d be really interested in, and I ask to myself what I would really be exited about in a job like that. In fact, I’m exited about creation, about giving birth to something, and thus I would be more interested by an early-stage start-up. Finally I remember I have a friend in a business school who’s told me once that many of her friends were planning to found a start-up at the end of their studies. I get back in touch with her and it turns out that she’s looking for a co-founder with technological knowledge to help her build her start-up. I personally have a profound technical background, and she’s planning to join a business incubator next January, when I’ll be back in France. She pitches me her idea and it seems quite cool (something about urban bicycles, roughly speaking), so it sounds like a perfect opportunity for me to experience the birth of a start-up. I eventually start doing the procedures with my school and the person in charge of internships reaches me to tell me that I won’t be authorized to do this because the company doesn’t exist yet so they can’t make any contract. Moreover it seems to risky for them because if the start-up fails I will have to do another 6 month internship in order to graduate, which I can understand. So I get back to my friend, a bit disappointed, and I remember that there is an entrepreneurship section back in my school, with people probably looking for this kind of projects for next year. So I propose to make an announcement about her project and her research for a co-founder on my school’s Facebook page, which she accepts. So far she’s been contacted by at least three people interested in her idea so I hope it will work !

creativity_technology

Eventually we’ve got to talk about pitches and I told her that I’ve been to some start-up events that were very interesting on the topic. Especially, what I’ve learned from STHLM Tech event is that you really need20161010_184106 to practice your pitch. And going to this kind of meet-ups can definitely help start-up founders because you can get some tips about what to say, how to be on the stage, etc. For instance, I found that the first pitcher reacted quite badly towards provocative invectives of the host. Of course the goal of this event was to criticize pitches so everybody can learn, and the host may seem a bit harsh but you shouldn’t take it personal in my opinion. The objective of this is to get a feedback on your pitch, even if it can make you feel dreadful, it is done on purpose to make you want to change what didn’t work in your speech. Well, in the end I hope she’ll manage to find a co-founder and I also strongly advised her to practice her pitch a lot, and get inspiration from this kind of events.

This little experience really taught me that sometimes network can be crucial. So if you want to build your own start-up, you should definitely talk about it around you because you don’t always know where help can come from. And obviously, going to specific start-up events for networking is an excellent way to start. For that matter I recommand to read Kevin’s article, if you’re still not convinced about that. And finally, the more you talk about your idea to people with different backgrounds, the more you’ll feel easy about it and I think it will help you to improve your pitch in the end.

Moving Forward

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As this course has (almost) come to an end, I feel like it’s time for me to look backwards and come up with a kind of “best of” of what I’ll be remembering from it, what it taught me, what I liked about it, what I disliked… A sort of personnal feedback about this Entrepreneurship course.

Like I’ve said in some of my previous blogposts, I wasn’t exactly thrilled by what I discovered about this course during the very first lecture. Back then, I remember thinking that it was not what I expected at all, that I would probably not gain anything from this course, that I didn’t have the right state of mind, in short, that I didn’t belong this class. Needless to say that when I learnt that I was going to sell coffee on the street (?!) almost alone, and that Nicolo and I were going to have to deal with a 6 person sized work, just the two of us for six weeks, it didn’t really get better!

However, I must admit that this course actually turned out to be something a bit different from the terrible picture I had in mind, and that’s because of three main points that I would like to highlight.

First, the simulation game. Like I said in one of my previous posts, I’ve been pretty surprised by the overall quality, interest, and, above all, usefulness of this serious game. I was worried that I wouldn’t get any real knowledge out of this course: well, that game proved me wrong! Making strategic decision, working with a team, compromising, analyzing data, studying customers reactions, learning from competitors, working on long term plans… If we add the fact that all these skills were perfectly in line with the two other courses I’m taking here, I must say that this game has been really profitable to my general knowledge and experience. I don’t know what will happen with this course in the coming years (based on what Serdar said during the last lecture…), but I strongly recommand to keep using it as much as possible (maybe add some extra quarters…)!

Second, the start up event experience. Once again, the perspective of going to that kind of events was not very attractive to me, but I did learn something extremely important out of it: networking is actually not something complicated! I always thought that, in order to create professional connections, you’d have to suit up and go to fancy hypocritical events: and sure enough, once again, I was wrong! There are actually a lot of nice people ready to help you, or at least hear you out. You just have to go out there and let the magic happen: it sounds weird and childish, but that’s actually what happened to several people in that class. Right now, I don’t think I really need that kind of network (maybe I’m wrong again…), but knowing that this kind of events exists is, somehow, comforting for the future: if I ever have a million dollar idea, now I know where to go and what to do!

Third, and probably the most important, the team experience. Even if, a few weeks ago, it looked like Nicolo and I were going ahead of an insanely huge amount of work all by ourseleves, it turned out that we were after all joined by Marcus first, and then Oscar. And I have to say that these three guys actually made this amount of work (still insanely huge however) pretty interesting to handle! Not only this has been useful to learn how to compromise, to discuss about our choices and to all work towards the same goal, but this actually made our meetings fun and enjoyable, and never boring or annoying!

So, in the end, I would say that this was a pretty good experience after all. I still think that I’m not the “perfect customer” for this kind of course, and I’m probably not launching any start up in the coming years, but at least I feel like I learnt useful skills for future and, most important, I actually had a good time!

So thank you all, Serdar, Impetus team and all of the class for these valuable moments! See you again  soon?