The pre-Demo Day was one of the most enjoyable days during this 6-week-course, we were so excited of the venue we will be pitching - cameras, light, the ambience at MAGIC. We practiced our pitch a couple of times just to get ourselves used to the environment, tested our MVP a hundred thousand of times, just to make sure it will be functioning well. What I find it interesting and funny is, we were able to memorize, to some extent, of other's group pitches because we have probably heard it too many times!
The Demo Day itself was a eye-opener. It was cool but challenging, at some point. The Demo Day was cool because you can finally have your MVP ready to pitch to your audience, telling them how your product is going to help people solve their problem. It was challenging at the same time because you need to be ready to answer questions, really challenging from the investors!
Getting up on stage and speak was my highlight of the day. All theses while I have only done presentations in front of my lecturers and friends, but pitching in front investors, ministers from the Ministry of Education, executives from MDEC definitely raised some pressure. Fortunately, with the practice and guidance from our instructors, things happened smoothly.
It is not about who is winning or who is losing in the end of the Demo Day. At least, we were a big step better than who we are before. We were all happy at the end of the day, everyone was congratulating each other, chilling and exchanging thoughts. It's also when the environment get emotional since the program has finally came to an end, which means, all of us will be moving on our separate ways.
It was really a pleasure meeting the instructors from MIT - Perihan, Anmar and Daniel. Besides gaining knowledge from both entrepreneur and technical field, they thought me something more valuable, that is to leave your comfort zone and sees challenges as a chance to learn and grow! They were patient, courteous and professional when helping to solve our problem. They get all of the people involved in discussion and provided a safe environment, where, we are allowed to make mistakes. More importantly, they taught us to learn from the mistakes we made.
That team-building day serves as a good example to see how you work with new people. Are you going to trust them? How are you going to communicate with them? How are you going to work with them? It's a great thing to see all these questions answered in the end of the day with some well-planned team building activities.
I have never been properly introduced to startups prior to this. MVP? ARPU? COCA? Django? Flaskr? Like Perihan, Anmar and Daniel always like to ask, 'Is it make sense?' Yes, definitely this time!
I would sincerely thank everyone in making MITGSL-2015 a big success. Regards,
Yew Jie