Speed Dating.

Last week in the Ad Discovery and Creative Lab, we practiced two methodologies which will help us with startup projects. Speed dating for startups and World Cafe methodology. I have never heard of it before and I didn’t know if it will be work. But in the end, we didn’t expect how useful it is for our startups.

We had the opportunity to pitch, ask questions, give feedback and observe to different teams. Our first speed dating was a little bit embarrassed. That’s was because we had little time to understand the main idea of startup of each person. We had three roles at each fast-dating. Pitcher or dater, the questioner and the observer.

First, the dater gave informations about his startup and the questioner asked for more details about it. The observer just heard the conversation and then he gave feedback to both persons. The interaction was obvious between the persons.

As dater, I presented my startup company to other persons. The main idea of my startup company (PhiloxeniAthens) is a guided tour which is alternative and inexpensive. I mean that PhiloxeniAthens have five girls for guider which one is expert for each category such us entertainment, nightlife, food or culture. We try to make a daily program for tourist who wants to see Athens in a different way.

The whole process was very useful at the end. Firstly, I heard about different startup companies and I believe that they are very clever ideas because I don’t think that they are exist at real time and it’s a good idea to have some of it. As dater, I learn how to present and explain my startup idea to other people and persuaded them to try our services. Also, I understand mistakes and lacks about our company from what questioner and observer said. Moreover, being questioner, I learn about others companies and make critical questions which will helped them with their ideas. The role of questioner is like customer, because he want to know everything about a service. Finally, as observer, I had the opportunity to watch the conversation between dater and questioner and make notes while paying attention to the speakers. In my opinion the most important thing of being observer is that I learn to gave helpful feedback and advices to the speakers about their companies.