Author Archives: Valentinrossero

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?

Earlier this evening, just like a bunch of classmates, I decided to take the leap and go for the very first time to one of these Start Up events: the Start Up Bar, which probably rings a bell for many of you. This event took place at the Scandic Continental, in the heart of Stockholm, and hosted, in a rather fancy and classy rooftop bar, dozens of people with different jobs, backgrounds and exceptations. Here’s a short summary of my experience there.

To be completely honest, I was not that excited about it in the first place, but I have to admit that Kevin’s recent experience at a similar event had made me kind of curious about it though. I thus went there trying to keep my mind as opened as possible, willing to discover what this meeting really had to offer.

As soon as I got in there, I noticed a first thing: it was absolutely not a “suit up” event! Everyone looked pretty relaxed, and the general mood was actually nice. So I got right into the crowd, trying to bear in mind the different pieces of advice read on previous blogposts: “being present”, “dare to stand alone”… And that’s when a second important fact struck me: it was incredibly easy to meet new people in that place! Beyond the fact that I was given a sticker basically saying “please talk to me” in Swedish, I just couldn’t stay alone for more than 1 minute without seeing a new person coming to me to introduce himself/herself. This led to several interesting meetings, among which a young entrepreneur who had just launched his website, the co-founder of a business development firm and a former KTH student who was getting ready to launch his nanotechnology-based revolutionary top secret product!

During these talks, my main goal, rather than “making friends” or pitching an idea, was to get both their professional and personal feedback on their entrepreneur experience so far. The main thing I got out of it is actually surprisingly (or maybe not) close to what Serdar has kept saying for weeks now: the idea is only 5%, execution is what matters, it’s up to us to move and make things happen… The young entrepreneur I mentionned before even talked about lean start up, something that we were discussing in class just yesterday! I actually had decided to take Serdar’s advice and to doubt everything he said even if he was the teacher, but I have to admit that I heard tonight most of the things we’ve been told in class, from several different people (which were obviously not Serdar!).

I’d like to conclude by saying that all the people I had a chat with this evening also said the same thing about their entrepreneur life: it’s not easy at all, but they’re all totally enjoying themselves. It’s only a choice that you have to make for your life: stay on the easy comforting path and take the risk of getting eventually some regrets, or just go for it!

For a few weeks now, we’ve been using this Venture Strategy Simulation both inside and outside the class. As you know, this kind of software is usually called “Serious Game” and aims to give us knowledge and skills in an innovative and non traditionnal (at least in a college context) way: by playing.

This idea of “learning by playing” is not that recent, and seems to have already been used a few centuries ago, in a military context, in order to help officers studying war strategy. However, this new trend of informatic educative games is pretty recent (early 2000’s) but represents a really fast growing market. Nowadays, an astonishing number of areas are covered by these Serious Games: Health, Environment, Science, Politics, Economics…

Yet, and despite the numerous papers and studies about the great efficiency of this new kind of learning, I’ve always been a bit sceptical about it. Not that I don’t believe in the extrordinary potential of video games (it’s actually quite  the opposite), but I’ve already played one of those Serious Games in the past, and it didn’t convinced me at all. The whole point was actually pretty similar to the one we’re currently playing: we were to learn how to manage a company by making economic, logistic and marketing decisions, and competing with other groups. We had to manage a hostel by groups of 4, to choose the “rank” of the hostel (basically Mercedes or Workhorse), and to make it prosper during 6 quarters as well. In a nutshell, the purpose was the same, even though the actual software was pretty much simpler and less detail-oriented that this Marketplace.

In any case, I felt that this game was not really helpful: we didn’t have a real control over a few important things, such as advertisement, but in the other hand, we had so much data and numbers each quarter that it was pretty difficult to understand anything. As a result, most teams basically made their choices quite randomly, which led to pretty unusual outcomes (the team which had been leading for 5 first quarters actually ended up to be the last one in the end, and among the other teams, drastic and unlikely turnarounds happened each quarter). In the end, I don’t remember much of the concepts, and I don’t think I’ve learned a lot through this game.

However, this year, I’ve been completely astonished by this Marketplace experience. All the data provided is clear and useful, we have control (sometimes limited though) over almost everything, we have this feeling that every decision we make is really taken into account, and above all, there is this”I don’t know what” which makes me really involved in the game, which makes me want to try my best to make this business work! In addition, I really feel like I’m learning things, probably through this “learning by doing” paradigm: thinking long term, understanding the market, the customer needs, the financial parts of a company, trying to anticipate competitors’ moves and of course, teamwork! Hearing everyone’s ideas, evaluating them, trying to combine them: it’s indeed a really great social experience! And finally, this game is actually perfectly in line with the two other courses I’m having, especially Management and Strategy, which gives me some tools I can apply to this Venture Simulation, in order to see their results, to evaluate them, and to experience some new strategies myself based on these tools.

In the end, not only I believe that I’m actually learning a lot, but I also have a lot of fun preparing each quarter with the team, and that’s probably the important part, especially since this is supposed to be a game! Plus, the fact that we’re learning through a new and innovative way is pretty in line with the whole theme of this class! So, after all, I guess Serious Games are indeed pretty efficient, and in my opinion, this one manages to concile the values of “learning” AND “playing” perfectly well.

So I guess the only thing left to say is: Let the best team win!

I’m going to start this post by being completely honest with you : after the first Entrepreneurship class we had three weeks ago, I wasn’t really excited about it… To be even more honest, I was a bit disappointed. I took this course because I wanted to gain some actual knowledge and know-hows about venture creation: who exactly should I talk to to get money, what are the legal specifications I should be aware of, which exact steps should I follow to get my company on track? I had this feeling that none of these questions would be answered, and that I was going to waste my time trying to connect with people I don’t even know on LinkedIn, faking to care about start up events and preparing presentations on how I sold coffee on the street…

But then came Joakim Fohlman’s speech.

To keep on being honest, at first, I thought this was a pretty naive speech, explaining how we were all great minds in the room, with great ideas and a great future… But, as the speech was going on, I realized that I was actually directly touched by some of his words, and that all of this was deeply meaningful to me, especially the part about believing in ourselves and daring to take the “weird”, unusual and though path to build a future that really fits us.

To fully understand what this means to me, we have to go back a few years ago, during my graduation year in high school. This might sound childish, weird or even lame to some of you, but I had always been deeply passionate by video games. I’m not going to explain in details what I love about this media here (that would take hours to write and read), but this passion is so intense that I actually wanted to turn it into my job, and study game design. However, for several reasons, my parents didn’t exactly approve this choice, and I ended up in an engineering formation, which I thought was ok after all (many video games fan work in totally different areas, and their lifes are probably great anyway). However, a school long lasting project last year, and an intership as Project Manager in a company indirectly related to the video game area both led me to believe that I could still make my old dream come true, and go use my Industrial and Management skills in the video game industry.

Unfortunately, this path is not easy at all. First, my profile (industrial engineer) is definitely not what the recruiters are looking for. In addition, what I would really love to do is not project management, but to be part of the creative process (game design, scenario…), which makes it even harder given my formation. And finally, even if I make it, the salaries are much lower that in the companies I could work for as an industrial engineer.

Which takes me back directly to Joakim’s speech.

He reminded me of what was really important: doing the things we love and living a life we won’t regret. And the funny thing is that this actually refers to what Serdar said at the very end of the first class, after showing us the video of the guy dancing alone: “you may look crazy to other people, but at least you will enjoy the music”.

Now, I think I understand better the purpose of this class. This not about telling what to do, this is about giving us faith in our own projects and in ourselves, so we can figure out what to do ourselves. And suddenly, all the things mentionned above, that I thought useless, can actually really make sense depending on what you are looking for! I think we’ll all get different things from this class, depending on how much we invest in it, our goals and dreams, and, above all, what we actually want it to give us.

In any case, let’s just “enjoy the music” the way we like it!