Catalyst Programme Week 2
The Catalyst Programme is a six-week training hosted by The Shortcut to prepare Finnish immigrants for starting or joining startups. This blog follows the October 2018 participants to show what the program is about, what they are learning, and who they are. In Week 2, participants were asked: can entrepreneurship be learned?
Week 2 began by visiting several of Helsinki’s startup hubs, including Startup Sauna, Microsoft Flux, Maria 01, and the Design Factory at Aalto to hear the history and future of startups in Helsinki. We learned that the communal culture of startups here is the result of a student-led movement by Aaltoes determined to make startups a viable career path. Their success is evident in the growth of events like the startup conference Slush, which has grown from a 300 attendees in 2008 to 20,000 last year.
After these sessions, Rahul gathered us and issued a challenge: you have 36 hours, do something entrepreneurial!
We split into four teams and frantically started developing ideas, except my team did not have any. The openness of the task left us paralyzed and grasping at straws, so we concluded the first day with only a skeletal vision of how we’d answer the challenge.
The morning after, with less than 24 hours remaining, my team kicked into hyper-drive. We ran with an idea to host an analog platform that would create networks over the sharing of recipe suggestions for expiring ingredients. An early challenge presented itself in picking a location for the board, as the restaurant at Maria 01, our first pick, was closed for a private event. Amandine, a vivacious problem solver, leveraged her contacts at Aalto University and seized upon a tenuous go-ahead to use the student center. Our team split, Amandine’s vanguard sent to secure the space at Aalto, while the rest focused on refining the idea.
It was clear in our discussions that, although we had coalesced around the same basic thought (some combination of physical board + food theme), our interpretations of our purpose were different. Some said we should be getting the most and best recipes relevant to the expiring ingredients posted; others thought the topic of food sustainability should be represented more broadly in order to stimulate as much connection and participation; and still others worried only about the lessons we’d learn — a “journey not the destination” approach. While we discussed and re-discussed, time marched on, and soon we only had the afternoon remaining to execute. The pressure forced us to act rather than think, so, when our vanguard group gave the green light on presenting at Aalto, we had visual aids, board schematics, and even free candy to entice participation, but still lacked clear purpose.
When the first pack of curious students wandered over to our “Take a Candy” sign wondering what they have to do for a licorice treat, the lack of understanding among us showed. We each answered their questions differently, resulting in confused though admirably willing participants who only “got it,” and left us our first inputs, after much hand holding. Circumstance having played our hand, we left the large white board platform to stand alone in the student center for the rest of the afternoon, making slight alterations to the layout for clarity, but ultimately settling on a laissez-faire approach to see whether passersby could and would participate from the minimal visual instructions we shared and the suggestions from previous participants.
We concluded the project that evening and prepared our lessons learned presentation. Here are a few of the observations we shared with our colleagues:
- Clear direction or purpose is key. Free candy drew a lot of engagement; however, confusion over how to participate meant that many who were drawn by the candy did not stay to “play the game.”
- Heavy handed instructions are a deterrent as well. When we tried to handhold users through the process of using our board, their engagement dissipated quickly and we limited the creativity of their participation. Continually calibrating the balance between a product’s ease-of-use and user autonomy/individuality is key (and difficult).
- One way to help is to know internally what exactly your desired outcome is. Helpful questions could be: What is everyone’s vision of the product? How does it vary? If there are divergent visions, then people are pulling in different directions. The easiest way to align is executive decision, “this is the direction we are going!” However, the work to integrate differences of opinion and create an idea meritocracy may be worth in the creation of a better product.
While each team chose to approach their project differently, the perspectives gained on entrepreneurship — from the pressure to the rush — were the main takeaways from the challenge. Week 3’s agenda, a condensed Y Combinator course, should provide knowledge to couple with our experience-based perspectives! Stay tuned, and check out Week 1’s post if you haven’t already!
Catalyst of the Week: Amandine
This week’s Catalyst of the Week is Amandine. She’d add speaking all the languages of the world as a “B-list” super power to her PhD specialized in Physics. Her age on a scale of 1–10 is 3, but, the determination she showed negotiating with Aalto University, even calling her professor in Japan, shows that her guile matches her spirit. She lives by the creed, “ when fearing the worst will happen, one provokes it. If expecting the best, one will contribute to it.” Thank you for bringing your passion to our group, Amandine!
