Team Talks: Behind the scenes of the IDEA Management Team

People often ask, what exactly is it that the management team of IDEA does?

The answer is, a little bit of everything.

IDEA’s management team is made up of a diverse group of undergraduate students at Northeastern. Nearly half of our team is from colleges outside of the D’AmoreMcKim School of Business. Our team includes engineers, computer scientists, designers, and more all working towards one common mission, to educate entrepreneurs and launch successful businesses. As you may imagine, in order to accomplish this mission there are a lot of different things that need to get done on a day to day basis. As People Ops Coordinator for IDEA, I’ve had the chance to work closely with these teams and better understand how they each contribute in their own way to help our ventures succeed.

Marketing

It all starts with Marketing. In order for us to educate entrepreneurs and launch successful businesses, we first need to make IDEA visible to people who are thinking about starting their own business. The marketing team does just this, raising awareness for the IDEA brand by showcasing all of the awesome stuff that goes on within the program. The marketing team manages our social media accounts (Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook), develops content for our blog, composes our email newsletter, and hosts impressive events like NEXPO and Pitch-A-Thon.

All of these activities come together to effectively promote the IDEA brand across Northeastern’s campus, and the startup community in Boston overall, bringing more entrepreneurs into our program.

Venture

The venture team is the lifeblood of the IDEA program. The venture team works within each stage of our stage-gate process and ensures that our ventures are getting the right education and resources at this stage of their business development. The venture team makes sure the gears keep turning in the IDEA program by creating and hosting educational programming for ventures, ensuring that ventures can effectively access the resources that are available to them as part of the IDEA program, and reviewing applications for IDEA’s Gap Fund and Prototype Fund grants.

The venture team is an integral part of making sure our ventures get the education and resources they need to build successful businesses.

Community

Community is one of the most important aspects of any organization. At IDEA, we wanted to put a distinct focus on Community, and how we could best ensure that our many different communities (Ventures, Management Team, Alumni, Coaches, etc.) all have the resources they need to be successful. The community team does just this, focusing on these distinct communities, and improving the experience for everyone involved. From ensuring the IDEA lab is an inclusive space for everyone to spend time to creating easier access to resources for ventures, the community team is there to come up with creative ways to make sure the entire organization is connected and functioning well.

The community team ensures that we are always looking after the different communities that are involved with IDEA, and keeping our programming and resources aligned with what they need to be successful.

Tech

To wrap it all up we have the tech team. This is arguably the most important piece of the IDEA management team, as the tech team makes sure that the rest of the management team can effectively do their job while providing the data and analysis for us to make informed decisions about how we tackle problems. The tech team works closely with all of the other teams to keep our Salesforce data updated, develop new workflows to automate day to day tasks, maintain our website to effectively communicate what we do, and track activity from our ventures so that we know where there are gaps in our program that we need to fill.

If the venture team is the lifeblood of the IDEA program, the tech team is the heart that keeps that blood pumping from semester to semester so that we can effectively serve our ventures.

While each team has their specific function within the program, the real success of the team comes from working cross functionally in order to make sure we provide the best opportunities for our ventures. While the four teams spend time working independently, it’s not uncommon to see two teams collaborating on an important initiative in order to get it done effectively.

Applications to join IDEA’s Management Team open on a semesterly basis. Sign up for our newsletter here to be notified when applications open next.