Undergraduate Blog / Defining Your Babson

Week 1: SF Summer Venture Program

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On Monday May 23, we kicked off the 2016 Summer Venture Program in San Francisco! SF SVP Director, IdaRose Sylvester welcomed our 11 teams to the Bay Area and introduced the Silicon Valley mindset and entrepreneurial ecosystem. Afterward, we solved a team building puzzle and went bowling, which was a great opportunity to connect with each other and start to build a community. It was an entertaining evening filled with laughter, clever nicknames, and friendly competition.

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We are excited to have 3 amazing advisors @ Babson-SF:

Elliott Adams– Professor @ Hult Buisness School and Director of Startup Next SF

Michelle Messina– CEO @ Explora International and Co-Author of Decoding Silicon Valley

Ian Thiel– Head of New Products @ Optimizely and Babson alum M’12

The advisors bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in startups, business acceleration, and market readiness. Each team was then matched with an advisor that they will be working with for the duration of the program.

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The next day, we had our first talk from two Russian Venture Capitalists from the Internet Initiatives Development Fund (IIDF) and they listened to four pitches. In the evening, we attended a Growths Hack talk @ Yelp where we learned about guerrilla strategy for startup marketing, SEO-boosting tips, and a step-by-step approach to rapidly grow social media communities.

We also had our first *Hot Seat* where Joe McHugh (Earth Loans) pitched his idea and received candid, constructive feedback from the group. Subsequently, Joe worked closely with SVP Faculty Director Mary Gale, IdaRose, Elliott, and participants Jonathan Kong (DayPop) and Michael Corkrum (Kiwi International) to rebuild his presentation. After a few hours, Joe re-pitched his business and was very grateful for everyone’s valuable insights, questions, and critiques.

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Lastly, our entrepreneurs set up their co-working space within an open, communal classroom! Gustavo Diaz (Tectonics World) is already utilizing Think Board, thanks to Hanson Grant (SVP Wellesley).

It’s been an awesome first week of SVP @ Babson San Francisco- stay tuned for more updates!

Save-the-date:

Venture Showcase | Thursday August 4th