Start Up Days

A few week-ends ago I participated in the EIT Alumni Start-Up Days, which was a week-end in order to work on their business ideas, focusing on sustainable development. Even if most of the participants were EIT students so our background was not that diverse, I believe that I have learnt a lot from this week-end.

What happened in the event?

• Friday evening: Meeting with the other participants, mingling and it was the start! We first listened to speeches from Entrepreneurs or people working in incubators. Then participants who already had ideas to work on presented it. I thought it was more interesting to start from scratch and go through the whole ideation process in just a week-end. In this way, we teamed up with another EIT Digital student (actually, Olga) and two students from EIT KIC Energy. Our idea at that time was to create a plug in order to save energy by avoiding electronic devices from staying on stand-by as it consumes more than what we think. This idea was very broad and not well-defined but I still thought it was interesting as it really dealt with sustainability.
• Saturday: Work on the idea – Develop the idea by looking at the problem. From an initial view was to create a plug to “Unplug your energy” for private individuals but after looking at the possible customer segments, we decided to go for companies who have more to gain in terms of energy but also financially. Research needed to be done to see what already existed in the market to find how we could differentiate ourselves. Most of the ideas already existed and we got confronted with technological problems that could not be solved, for example a smart plug would consume more than a computer in stand-by mode. We completely changed our idea to a service agency calculating the consumption of energy of companies to then tell them which actions they should take. Thanks to the mentors and more work on the subject, we had a clear idea concerning our service and our customer segment at the end of the day.
• Sunday: Last day to work on the idea – using the Business Model Canvas. With the help of mentors, we focused on several points and then worked on the pitch. After lunch, the pitch presentations were done in front of a jury composed of a business coach, an entrepreneur and a product manager fond of innovation. Even if we did not win, it was a great experience that I would happily live it again.

What did I get from it?

There were many moments that were interesting, from which I increased my knowledge about entrepreneurship, open and user innovation but also, more generally, I was able to network. First of all, I think the insights from the Entrepreneur were very good, as it was the co-founder of Banana Charge and his start-up is brand new. In this way, it was interesting to see how he dealt with the launch and what were the very first issues they had as other entrepreneurs tend to forget them when they speak about their start-up.

Moreover I believe the mentors were of great help – not only did they give us help but they also shared their experience with entrepreneurship and gave us hints as to what works, what investors want to hear during a pitch, etc. As it is often said, it is very good to have more points of view regarding an idea and mentors are the “best” points of view: they have already got to know the customer segment, most of the time and they know what they do not need.

At the end of the each pitch, it was very nice to get questions from the jury but also from our peers. In this way, we could have an insight from expert people but also other people “like us”. Even though the jury was the only one to pick the winners, it made the result of the competition less controversial and it also gave a lot of credit to the whole event, from my point of view.

What can be concluded from this experience?

Try it yourself, you will like it and you will want to do it again. And last, a competition is all about collaboration so don’t scare yourself, everything is going to be fine!