Speed Dating for Startups and World Cafe Experience

Our last station on the journey of our startup completion was to experience the methodologies of ‘Speed Dating for Startups’ and ‘World Cafe’.

In one of our last meetings at the AD Discovery and Creativity Lab we came in contact with the rest of our co-students’ startup teams by getting in team pairs and presenting our startup to receive feedback and advice from the other team for a specific amount of time and vice versa according to the ‘Speed Dating for Startups’ method. This was a repetitive process as we switched tables on each round in order to communicate with as many startup teams as possible, creating that way a ‘World Cafe’ environment. During this procedure we were switching between the roles of the “pitcher”, the “questioner” and the “observer”.

This process as stressful as it may sound, was actually a very pleasant and educative experience that helped us a lot in many different aspects.

Besides receiving very helpful advice and feedback on how to improve and grow our startup even more, we learned first-hand how to be better at communication scenarios and get our idea across as efficiently as possible, as well as be prepared to understand and respond to any questions or doubts our startup would raise.

Most of the other startup groups agreed with the professionals we had consulted in our previous steps by suggesting to inform our clients about the origin of every fabric and also to attract fashion design students that need small pieces of fabric.

We were finally happy to say that we were sure about the success of our brand new startup!