Reflections on MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp
March 26–31, 2017 | Brisbane, Australia
This year, I attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp as part of the Class 5 cohort. This program promised the highs and lows of a startup in one week and taught a framework for a disciplined approach to entrepreneurship.
If you’re thinking about attending this program or wondering what the experience is like, I’ve summarized my thoughts and reflections below. I also provide reasons to consider the program and alternatives to the program.
The Program
I first found out about the MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp (GEB) when I signed up for the Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) Entrepreneurship 101 and Entrepreneurship 102 offered on EdX.org back in 2015.
As I progressed through these courses, I learned more and more about entrepreneurship. Before I knew it, I was traveling down the path of entrepreneurship, and the more I learned about entrepreneurship, the more the challenge of entrepreneurship appealed to me.
When the bootcamp was first offered in 2015, I was interested, but not able to consider the program. The program offered an intense experience akin to “drinking from the firehose” that students at MIT experience. Mentorship would be available throughout your journey as you tackle the challenges startups face in the first 2–3 years of startup life. It would be a chance to meet entrepreneurs from all over the world and potentially find cofounders or business partners for your startup. It would change your life.
It sounded awesome, and as a budding entrepreneur, I felt it would provide a strong foundation for my path into entrepreneurship. In November 2016, I received another promotional email about this program. My circumstances had changed since I first heard about the program. I had started my journey and had more flexibility. The things that held me back in 2015 no longer applied.
On a whim, I applied, not really expecting I’d be qualified enough to get in. I had little to no experience in entrepreneurship. My background was in software development, and that had been my career.
It was advertised as a highly selective program, with an attendance/acceptance rate of under 10% over the past few classes (actual acceptance rate is unknown, though assumed to be not that much greater than the attendance rate) with applicants coming from over 30 countries on average.
The Application
Starting the application process was very easy — submitting your email address and sending in a Curriculum Vitae (CV)/resume. But the steps get increasingly more complicated, demanding more time and thought to complete. For example, a series of essays required you to consider what your motivations were for applying and where you saw yourself in the future. Later steps included a pitch deck and 1-minute video pitch.
As I got more involved in the application process, I inevitably became more committed to the program. In retrospect, it’s a great strategy to weed out less interested applicants. Every step requires a new level of investment in order to continue in the process. Only the most interested of applicants will remain with each step.
By the end of December, after submitting a pitch deck and 1-minute video pitch, I knew I was nearly done. I received an invitation for interview in January, which I assumed to be the final step. It was said that there was somewhere between 4–6 steps in the application process, depending on where the admissions team was in their admissions process. I later learned roughly only 25% of all applicants made it this far, either through selection or drop-off.
I was excited and nervous about the interview, as I didn’t know what to expect. The interview lasted about half an hour. It focused on the idea that I pitched and what steps I had completed to move beyond the idea stage. At the end of the interview, I was told I would be provided a decision soon.
That same day, I received an acceptance letter. I was relieved and excited about my acceptance. After going through all the steps, I had convinced myself to attend if I got accepted, in spite of the high costs of the program ($6000 USD for tuition/food, excludes travel and lodging costs) — I would figure that out later.
Pre-Bootcamp Journey and Expectations
After receiving my acceptance letter and submitting my decision to attend, I went through the online courses again in preparation and completed the newly released Entrepreneurship 103: Show me the Money available by MIT through EdX.org. This was a recommended prerequisite for attending the bootcamp.
The two months or so passed quickly as I had plenty of things running in parallel keeping me busy. I was starting my own journey in entrepreneurship, working on the tedious but necessary administrative aspects needed for my newly formed company, Scattered Horizons, as well as completing client work, primarily in software development.
In order to provide some context, I’d like to discuss some expectations I had about the program prior to my arrival in Brisbane. I attended two Startup Weekends (run by Techstars) in late 2016, prior to my MIT application, yet both experiences left me feeling unsatisfied. During Startup Weekend, participants come together to develop a prototype for an idea pitched at the beginning of the 54-hour program. I knew there was something missing, but I couldn’t figure out what. Based on reviewing schedules of past bootcamps and what I could find online, I gathered the MIT GEB program would be similar to Startup Weekend, but would provide a more thorough and robust foundation for bringing an idea to a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
My expectations:
- forming small teams based on a common idea that everyone would want to work on
- going through Primary Market Research (PMR)
- establishing a business plan
- developing a pitch
- collaboration from team members along all steps of the process
- more context through MIT lectures for each step of the process
- guidance from mentors
- little to no sleep as a result of long schedules (7am — midnight) and daily deliverables (due at 3am); they did warn us!
The Bootcamp Experience
Pre-Bootcamp Arrival
I arrived in Brisbane, Australia on Thursday, March 23, 2017. This gave me a couple days to adjust to the timezone and explore the city to familiarize myself with this new place I would be calling my “home away from home” for the next week or so.
There were a few informal bootcamp gatherings prior to the official start on Saturday. These gatherings were great opportunities to meet other bootcampers who were already in Brisbane. I attended my first networking event on Friday evening following my arrival. I knew this would be important as we would need to form teams later, and if there’s anything I’ve learned in the years I’ve worked as a software engineering professional, it’s that the people you work with make all the difference. No matter how interesting the work is, if you don’t get along with the people you work with regularly, it could make or break the project and/or experience.
Welcome Party/Onboarding — Saturday
Bootcamp activities officially began on Saturday, March 25, 2017. This began with getting our Student ID cards to provide building access for the duration of the program. I picked up my ID card on the day I arrived to avoid the lines, so I didn’t have to worry about this step. The Welcome Party began around 4pm, with some networking over drinks. The formal welcome began around 6pm, with food and a welcome presentation.
We were advised to not sleep too late — things would begin bright and early at 7am the next morning! The party broke up around 8 or 9pm, and bootcampers eventually dispersed, either to continue networking or sleep early. I opted for the latter option, excited to begin the program fresh and well rested.
Day 1 — Team Formation — Sunday
On Day 1, we finally got a glimpse of the schedule that would dictate our lives for the next week. Here’s a snapshot.
This day was mostly a day of more networking and getting to know people. Although I met a lot of bootcampers in the pre-bootcamp event gatherings, there were still people I didn’t know, so I spent this day trying to get to know more people. At the end of the day, although I met a lot of great people, I still wasn’t sure who I’d want to spend my time with over the next week.
I decided I would allow the pitches to help me find my team, and see if there were any ideas I was interested in pursuing. By the end of the day, I found an idea and a team I felt was promising.
Day 2 — The Customer — Monday
The focus on Day 2 was on Primary Market Research (PMR) and understanding our customer. This would require interviewing real people and understanding their pain points. We had to take a deep dive on the problem and understand what we were trying to solve. Interviewing people in such a short time frame is never easy. I knew this going into the program, as we had about as much time as we did in Startup Weekend to try to “validate” an idea (i.e. a day at most). Through my experiences at Startup Weekend, I was convinced that any PMR done during this window of time would never really be the full extent of PMR done for a real startup idea. MIT re-iterated this point, reminding us that realistically, we’d want 50–100 interviews, if possible. We should shoot for 5 interviews per a person though, for a total of approximately 25 interviews per team during this week.
We ran into a series of team challenges that would inevitably impact our progress over the week. I personally think this resulted from different perspectives on the problem, and personal biases/preconceptions of the problem. I’ll admit to having a bias in believing the problem to be a problem without solid market research, based on personal experiences (unofficial market research?). Due to the initial geographic focus and lack of extensive contacts in this region, our problem was not easy to validate with PMR in such a short period of time. This ultimately led to disagreements on the best path forward.
Day 3 —The Product — Tuesday
We made little progress on our problem statement and solution definition. By the end of the day, the one thing we all could agree on was starting with a new problem. So that’s what we did the next day.
Day 4 — The Financials — Wednesday
We found a new problem, and we were ready to begin with a new solution. Yet we still had a mountain of work ahead of us, and MIT Lectures kept us occupied and busy. We powered through, refining our problem and defining our solution through brainstorming sessions, working late into the night. Who needs sleep anyway, they say.
Day 5 — Making the Pitch — Thursday
It’s almost game day, and we still had much to do. That morning, we scrambled to come up with a product, narrowing down our many possible solutions into a simple, single solution. We developed mockups to determine our user workflow and visualize our solution to better prepare our slides.
Cyclone Debbie chose this moment to add some random chaos into the mix this day, as we received a downpour of rain, which forced the university to close. The MIT Bootcamp team did a great job in quickly securing a new venue for us to continue working. Inevitably, our workflow was interrupted as we had to change locations, and the scheduled lectures were pushed back. But no excuses, right?
So we powered through. We started working on our slide templates and populating the slides with content. The night was long, with some members volunteering to continue through the night until the presentation was ready.
Day 6 — Demo Day — Friday
The day we all had been preparing for finally arrived. We had done our best — that was all we could hope for at the end of it all. We had a presentation for the investors. We did it.
Post-Bootcamp Reflections
The MIT Global Entrepreneurship Bootcamp experience was certainly intense, and I met many awesome people through our cohort. Reviewing my expectations, it met most expectations, but fell short in some areas. I’ve omitted the expectations that were met, leaving only the expectations that left me wishing for more.
- forming small teams based on a common idea that everyone would want to work on
- collaboration from team members along all steps of the process
- guidance from mentors
With regards to what follows, I would like to emphasize that these are strictly my opinions. Other participants may disagree with my opinions, but I have done my best to be as objective as I can for a rather subjective piece.
Mentors were always available to help with the workload, but addressing and resolving team challenges was perhaps where we would have benefited from a more hands-on approach. More often than not, I felt team challenges interrupted our workflow, preventing us from making significant progress. Occasionally we were smart enough to seek the advice of a mentor, but more often than not, we just simply forgot, or were distracted by other things, such as mood, stress, work, etc. I’m not placing blame; it is perhaps our fault for not seeking mentor guidance more often; unfortunately this just wasn’t what happened. I’m also sure there were teams that functioned quite well and would not have needed additional guidance from mentors. Identifying these teams is not easy, and we may not recognize or admit that we would benefit from that kind of help…adding to the challenge.
Collaboration on a common idea — this failure is no direct fault of the program, merely a fact of life. Related to the above, teams throughout the bootcamp ran into many challenges. These occur in the workplace all the same, but are magnified in this experience due to the time pressures and stressful demands of the program.
We all sought different things from the program, and had a different level of willingness to compromise over suggestions for paths forward. In certain cases, it was hard to reach a uniform agreement that appeased all members of the team, which ultimately impacted team morale and progress on our deliverables.
At the end of the day, I saw it as an academic exercise. I wanted to go through the steps and get a sense of what the process would be, as taught in the book Disciplined Entrepreneurship, the curriculum we were following. I was ready to compromise; things didn’t have to be 100%. Maybe I should have compromised on my expectations instead.
Should I Attend?
The GEB program can definitely be a rewarding program for the right candidate. It’s not for everyone, however, and here’s a few questions I’d pose for you to consider if you’re thinking of attending:
- What do you hope to gain from this bootcamp? Are there other ways to achieve these goals?
- How well do you work on teams? Are you a leader, or a follower? If you’re a leader, are you willing to follow? If you’re a follower, are you comfortable leading? Both are expected in this program.
- How do you handle disagreements with others? Can you compromise on your personal goals/objectives for your team?
- Are you willing to take a hit in nightly sleep for your team’s success?
- Are you willing to continue to help your team when everything falls apart and several are ready to walk away?
- Are you willing to forgive your teammates, in order to accomplish team goals? Can you do it in a short span of time (you only have a week, forgive quickly!)?
Reflect on these questions.
I highly recommend attending the lower cost Startup Weekend first if it’s available in your city or a city nearby. It provides a similar experience and a similar challenge. After attending a Startup Weekend, if you feel you need something more — read the book Disciplined Entrepreneurship and go through the Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook first. Network within your city — seek out the entrepreneurship communities and find a team to work with to go through the steps of the Disciplined Entrepreneurship framework. You don’t need to do it alone.
If, after all this, you want to meet the great MIT Faculty behind this, and get connected with the mentors and a global community of entrepreneurs, then I would recommend this program. Go for the friends you make that will last you a lifetime. Go for the opportunities that may come from the network you join.
Go for the adventure that follows:
But don’t go for the experience you could also get through other means.
Rachel currently owns Scattered Horizons, where she provides software development services and product management support to small companies and early stage startups. She is also an Entrepreneurship Lead in Women Who Code DC, where she develops entrepreneurship resources and events for the community.
