Living Entrepreneurship Blog / Babson Entrepreneurs

Week 5: SF Summer Venture Program

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We’re halfway into Summer Venture Program and our teams are collaborating and reaching milestones! In terms of programming, we had a talk from two Babson alums, Ben Narasin, partner @ Canvas Ventures and Ian Thiel, Head of Product @ Optimizely, we had another *Hot Seat,* and we volunteered with NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship). We were also fortunate to have Mary Gale, faculty director of SVP join us for the week.

One of our speakers, FullSiffzeRenderBen, gave feedback on the team’s one sentence pitch and discussed the most important quality of an entrepreneur: the lack of ability to lose a.k.a. tenacity. Ben ended his presentation by saying venture is not for everyone: “Venture is to fund phenomenal companies that are killing it”.

We then learned about “Sales Hacking” tactics from Ian. He recommended several books for everyone to read including “The Flinch” by Julien Smith and discussed common mistakes that newbies make in the sales hustle such as speaking their language and not the client’s.

img_3672After, we brainstormed a new company name for Jonathan Kong‘s business (DayPop), a platform that recommends events tailored to the individual’s needs and interests. Some of the more memorable suggestions were “Much ado” and “Flock.”

Our next *Hot Seat* was with Ashwin Mysore (Brown Bag), who is creating a mobile app that makes it easy for people within a company to have lunch together. Coordinating is made quick and simple.

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Later, we had an opportunity to volunteer with NFTE (Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship), a non-profit organization that brings entrepreneurial training to high school students, especially those from low-income communities. Our SVP teams provided coaching and assisted with their business plan for their final competition.
img_3582Lastly, Mary provided open office hours, led a pitch workshop, and talked about the timeline leading up to showcase. It was so awesome to have Mary in San Francisco, and also celebrate her birthday 🙂

Special shout out to Sebastian Gomez, SVP ’14 and co-founder of Cafe X (a robotic cafe that serves premium local coffee within seconds) and Benji Cohen, SF Ugrad ’15 and co-founder of Space Jam Data (a real estate data analytics company): thanks for stopping by our campus and speaking to our entrepreneurs!

Stay tuned for more updates! Save-the-date: SF Summer Venture Showcase- Thur. August 4th