Eydis Lima
The week jumpstarted with our double booked Monday of Finance and Business Model Canvas (BMC), wherein we got our Finance mid-terms back and learned about idea iterations with Dustin during BMC class. As we acquire and strengthen more finance to apply to our thesis later on, we are also performing customer validations of our various group ideas. My team in particular, is called ShopEZ and we are focused on efficiency while shopping at superstores: be it finding items or during checkout. Terms like cost of customer acquisition (COCA), lifetime value (LTV), and minimum viable product (mvp) were learned and have been inscribed as tools that will not only be used while writing our final project but as we grow with our careers.
Thesis Tuesday consisted of reviewing the scope of work and how it is that we will outline and pursue our projects with specific deliverables and dates to meet goals by. Matt Leevy gave the class good tips on writing guidelines and Maria Gibbs shared with us how to build our stakeholder mapping and prepare for the 3-minute thesis (3MT). This part of class consisted of content and delivery with key pointers towards the structure to follow to be able to have an effective and convincing thesis pitch. While some of us were better than others at practicing the ABC’s for delivery pace and tone, only time will tell on the day of the 3MT who really learned the lesson correctly. The rest of the day for me consisted of working at the IDEA Center as one of the analysts there and afterwards classwork for Design Entrepreneurship and homework for Finance class. While on the side during a small break doing a handstand at the Greenhouse of Innovation Park for balance!
The following day was filled with more work AND some fun since after all, it was Wepa Wednesday! It began with Finance class, then work at the IDEA Center, and a one-on-one meeting with my thesis advisor. Towards the evening it was time to work on the ethnography video for Design Entrepreneurship class with my team mates: Isabella and Kuncy! Before getting busy and working on that project I managed to find 15 minutes to watch an episode of Sailing La Vagabonde, which are small You Tube videos posted by Riley and Elayna, an Australian couple documenting their journey traveling the world by sail despite no previous sailing experience.
The week ended wrapping up with a hectic Thursday morning full of meetings between the IDEA Center, my new lab – The Chang Lab, and customer validation interviews for BMC. During the afternoon, the ladies and I worked on the finishing touches to the ethnography project, which focused on anxiety amongst university students. At this time the Idea Pitch session was also going on, wherein I was able to pitch about NORA – “It’s personal”. A better way to deliver feminine hygiene products with privacy and frequency. The following day during Design Entrepreneurship we all sat to admire the hard-worked on videos. We also checked out the design shop to be able to work on the next project there – to build a unique functional product! In the afternoon, I got ready to travel back to Yale! During the weekend I was there giving talks about leadership, entrepreneurship, and my recent research work on ovarian cancer to students of the Yale Academy Program. It was a pretty packed week but paid off by relaying to our younger generation the spirit of science and entrepreneurship!