Startup Academy

In this blog, I will try to explain the complete journey of taking business development lab 2016 course.

It was a beautiful experience and a great opportunity to take this course and learn about entrepreneurship and business through practical activities.

The first adventure was to participate in brainstorming session to get a good idea out of our brains. It was a lot of fun. During this phase, my mind was completely occupied by getting some good idea. I was used to think about ideas even watching some movies and during rides on bus. This actually helped me to observe my surrounding and get an insight on how things around me were working. There is term " Lack of Insight" which means that you know the thing from its appearance or heard about but do not know how it works. This experiment has freed me a little bit from the chain of lack of insight phenomenon.

The second adventure was to conduct interviews with real people and get their feedback on our finalized idea.It was a great experience as well. I had no way how to start conversation with strangers on bus stands or train stations. People were so friendly in Stockholm and they gave us honest feedback. This has helped me to overcome my fears of talking to complete strangers and gain confidence. I think after this experiment, I feel I am a different person now with more self-esteem and self-confidence.

Now let me tell you about most interesting experience for me given by this course. It was Android Development. I have never done programming in android for making applications. However, I know about Java Programming a little bit.It was a good learning time to get the tits and bits of Android. I read tutorials, saw video lectures and finally able to do programming in Android. I think I am a beginner in this development process but I can write one more interesting thing to know in CV :). 

For the fourth adventure, I gave credit to VideoScribe by Sparkol. I learned how to develop videos on it. It was easy to use. I have also tried other software likes PowToon, Moovly , Go Animate etc. Through all this activity, I was able to use a lot of available online free video making software and to compare them with each in their features. Next time, when somebody asks me what to use, I can give opinion about these based on their features and limitations.

Last but not the least, we were blessed to have Mark Smith as our Mentor. I have learned so many things about startups building process. He has a charismatic personality and I was really impressed by his energy and motivation. This has provided me motivation and passion to continue working on our idea and improve upon it. I think the whole credit goes to Terrance, Serdar and Andreas who have developed this course. The design of the course is very good and provides opportunities to learn a lot of things about business and entrepreneurship. The idea of journal writing was first seemed to be boring, but in the end, when I self monitored myself after reading all the posts, It gave me pleasure and satisfaction.

Thanks to all who have worked with me and to all mentors and advisers and teachers who have made this possible

Amna

Albert Einstein once said:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

It seems to be a very simple quote but it has very deep meaning. In our life, we want to see everything simple and easy. It is our nature to ease our life and of our loved ones. Everyone dreams of having a simple life with no worries at all. But if that is the case in real life, then what is the purpose of our being in this world. Why are we send into this world by God? What is the purpose of our life? What are we doing here? 

Hence "simple" is not a purpose of our existence in this world. We should have some goals and objectives to meet to get happiness and some movement in our life.

The same formula applies to business world. In business, if there is no challenge, no risk and no problem of customers, there is no meaning in ceating a business. So we rewrite the quote of Einstein as 

" Everything in Business should be made as risky as possible, but not riskier"

Start ups are all about risks and challenges. But we should not go to take extreme risks if we feel there would be no going back or undoing the results. Taking challenges and risks make us ambitious and energetic. We never lose motivation and urge to keep up the good work and reach the milestones. Setting some goals and taking risks to achieve them is one way to keep ourselves passionate and motivated about our work.

The Business world is very wide and lots of concepts and ideologies can be related to it. Now lets rewrite the same quote and see if it applies to business in the same manner or not:

" Everything is startups should be made as small as possible, but not smaller"

In the above quote, it says that startups should focus on small markets in the beginning. They should target niche customer segments. Once they settled in, they should adopt for larger markets and diversify their products to reach other customer segments. But it should not focus on very small market such that there are only two or three customers for their products. Because startups spend their time, efforts and resources and they are expecting to get revenue from their products, it is not reasonable to target those customers which are too small in number or they are decreasing with the time.

In short, Business world is large and complex. There are so many concepts which need to be understood before diving into the deep waters of this world. One should take advise from the experienced ones before embarking upon the adventurous journey into this business world.

Best Regards

Amna

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