LESSONS LEARNED BLOG POST: The Creative Founder

Before I take Creative Founder, I never thought about it is going to be a so meaningful class to me. In the beginning, I thought Creative Founder will be the class that helps us be more creative, it actually does. But moreover, I learned so many things I never thought I’d learn.

First of all, this is the first time I work in a team with a formal project, I was so excited before I know my teammates. After our team was first formed, I was so nervous because I have always wondered if I can help the team. In the first few group discussion, I was always quiet because it was difficult to follow the conversations my group mates had. At the beginning of the class, I thought I’m a quiet thinker. But as I got to know my teammates better, I felt more confident to speak out my ideas, they also kept encouraging me to speak. Until I stat write this post that I realized I had not been paying attention to speck out in the group for a long time.

Look back on the process we work through, I’m feeling so fulfilled. Even I think the process is torture, but I still love this class. It’s given me the experience I have never had before. We start at zero and finally have our Weclub, look back through the longe way we had walked, I’m so proud of myself and our team. This felt like I was really in a company and building a product with lots of people. And as we worked on it, we kept changing our ideas. One of the most exciting things for me was that we completely changed our product concept when we only have 2 weeks for the final pitch. I still remember we “fighting over” whether or not to make a change. In that meantime, we talked with lots of people and ask for ideas and suggestions. My favorite answer is people told me “give up the concept people don’t like, that’s how the companies work.” I was against changing the concept at first, but this sentence made me want to give it a try. After we made this decision, I even began to think that this may be made things more interesting and challenging. Fortunately, this decision had pushed us to move forward. Now it is my favorite part of our works.

In my group, I am the CFO, which is the person who works with money in the team. To learn how to predict markets and money, and as a designer, that’s something I never thought I’d learn in college. In order to understand the market as much as possible and find the exact figures, I read some books about business. And I also asked my friend who is studying economics and called my CEO Daddy. It’s the first time in my like we talk about his work, it was so fun and novel for me. And that’s what I didn’t expect from this class.

In the final pitch, we got a lot of advice and “tough” questions. I appreciate that we can have so many guests and their feedback. After the final pitch, there was one guest find us and said our product has the possibility to exist! I could not have been more thrilled when I heard that. This guest also gave me advice on how to do research and how to do the statistic. We still have lots of things need to work on, but based on the feedback, we could keep improving our product effectively.

I think Creative Founder has given me a very real experience of work in society. Although I know that real society will be much more severe than this class. In class, I have ample opportunities to make mistakes and correct myself. When I go out into the world, I’ll be more confident about myself and I’ll speak out my idea and join the design team. I am very grateful to this class to bring me the surprise, and also thank my teammates for the patience and care.

And finally, thanks for all the guests, founders and Kate! See you guys in 2020~