Sunday 9 December 2012

2 busy weeks at uni

Hi everyone, thanks for taking the time to read my post. A couple of my classmates read my first post and said to me that they they like my idea of this blog ^^ thank you!

I was going to write one post for week 10 but was too busy so decided to wait for this week to finish. I have been quite busy in the past two weeks. Yes I know I say that every week lol but I have been working extra hard as deadlines are coming up. 


We have a 30 minute presentation for Strategy on 11th December and then followed by a 5000+ word report on the presentation due on 17th. But one of the group member is going back on 15th so we are trying to finish before 15th. Then it's the business plan for E-challenge's second phase which we have submitted on Friday- we have to pitch our idea on Tuesday 11th. I'm so excited!!  As for Creativity, we had to do the paper clip task during week 10. We then need to write a 2500 word report on it which is due on 21st Dec but a group member is leaving on the 14th so need to complete it before. One word. Madness.


Monday 26th. 



Source: Mint.com

At Finance we learnt about the Due Diligence process. I really need to revise Itxaso's lecture notes because I always tend to drift off and I've forgotten what she spoke about. I only remember the 3 Ts; Technology, Traction and Team. Second hour of the lecture, we were given a task to do in our groups, we have to write a Due Diligence that we will need to carry out for a company. She gave us a choice of 5 companies. We chose Mint, an online service where users can manage personal finance.(See the image above) We were so indecisive, first we chose Mint, then we changed it to Square, then back to Mint again. lol. 


Source: Yplan.com
The last hour of lecture, was the guest speaker part. Rytis Vitkauskas the Founder of Yplan App came to tell us about his new app. Before becoming an entrepreneur he was a venture capitalist. This app is like Lastminute.com. It presents all the events(gig, theatre, etc) that is happening that night. For example, majority of the time, 30% of the seats at a musical are empty, so Yplan will show these on the app. A pretty cool app. I couldn't download it though because it requires iOS5 and I still have updated my phone since 2011. I can't be bothered lol. My phone contract ends in January anyway so new phone for me! *BIG SMILEY FACE*. After the lecture I had a 2 hour meeting with my strategy group regarding the presentation. It was a productive meeting, no chit chat just discussion about work.  




Tuesday 27th


A couple of days ago, a classmate posted on the TE Facebook group telling us all that he has confirmed with Chris (our Strategy lecturer) that there are no pre-reading for Strategy this week. I commented on it saying 'wicked!' and guess who liked my comment? Chris. Lol! 

I didn't go to E-challenge this week because it was just about how to write a business plan and we've learnt that already. So Roxy, Nele and I just had a brief meeting regarding the name of our business and the fashion event. 


Wednesday 28th 


I went to Fashion Startup and P&G Leadership workshop. Click here to read.



Thursday 29th. 


Got my assignment back from New Technology Ventures and first time in history I got 86! I seriously was shocked! YAY!! Thank you God. 


Source: The London Academy Dance School

Guest lecture this week was the best so far. Greg Gillespie (that's him in the picture above) is a ballroom dancer (recently won a prestigious national award) and an entrepreneur- I like dancing which is probably why I enjoyed this one. He is the founder and principal of The London Academy of Dance based at the Reebok Sports Club in Canary Wharf.  
The most memorable part is when he said that you should look at your competitors to know your unique selling point. And differentiate yourself according to quality, price ad speed. Cheap is not always good. The academy was founded in 2007 and it is now already one of UK's leading professional dance institutions. The main reason his dance school is so successful because he is using the Blue Ocean Strategy. (I learnt this from Strategy class! I have learnt something lol) He is targeting the casual dancers and people who does it for fun rather than competing with other dance institutions who targets professional dancers. 

 
Friday 30th 


Met up with Creativity group before the lecture to prepare and rehearse a 3 minute presentation. A girl in my group had already created the presentation using Prezi, it was amazing. I volunteered to present it as I like presenting. During this week, we had to do the paper clip task. Did I say what it was? I'll explain it again. All groups were given 5 paper clips and we had to create as much value as possible from those. Our idea was based on the pay forward principle, do something nice for someone and give them that paper clip. That person with the paper clip will now need to pass it on by doing something nice to another person and it carries on. The image above is the banner of our blog. 
Before we came up with this idea. I had a "creative" idea. I said attached the paperclip to your earlobe and will have good hearing like a dog. LOL! I got this idea from a video I found on youtube. These guys also had to create value from paperclips and their idea was a 'get-chick paper clip'. It's designed for men as you can tell by the name. If the paper clip is attached to a girl's top, within seconds the girl will move to the guy who attached it. Because of this video I thought why not go wild with my idea lol. But when I told everyone, they just went silent. I was embarrassed.



Monday 3rd

Finance: 2 guest speakers from Total Access and another 1 from Cisco. The speakers from Total Access were terrible, their presentation skills were terrible. 


Tuesday 4th

In the Strategy class Chris discussed about our "favourite" book Strategy Safari by Mintzberg. That is the most boring book ever! It reminds me of the criminology books I used to read for my bachelors. 

Wednesday 5th- Day off
Day off but worked my ass off on the business plan as deadline was Friday 7th.

Thursday 6th

I had 2 meetings in the morning. First Nele and I met with Dave (our lecturer) to discuss our business plan. He gave us lots of useful advice. One thing I learnt that financial projections in business plans are nonsense but they have to be realistic. After an hour meeting with him, I met with my strategy group. The aim of the meeting didn't go according to plan but we still managed to do some work and gave ourselves a MUST DO task over the weekend as the presentation is less than a week. 
Guest lecture this week was John Bradford. He is the CEO and Founder of Springboard. "He starts start-up accelerators and loves to help start-ups and their founders achieve their true potential.  Over the last 2 years, Jon has helped to start 12 multi-company accelerators from Montreal to Moscow. "- Springboard.com


Before it started Dave came up to me and told me to pitch to John about Share N Wear after the lecture. Lol put me on the spot. He told John to make sure I pitch to him or I am not allowed to leave lol.  So while I was sitting at the lecture I wrote out the keys points of the pitch. 

So how did it go? John said he don't understand the pain point. Its not a bad idea but we just pitched to the wrong person as he doesn't have any fashion sense. His wife sorts his clothes out for him. lol 

Sorry guys I know I promised to write a post about the fashion business idea I'm working with my girls. Will defo do it very very soon. 

Friday 7th

We didn't have proper lecture at Creativity. We had a guest lecturer who has a branding consultancy firm, called Message Multimedia. Mike Villiers, he taught us how to form external relationship using creativity. He gave us lots of examples of re-branding that he has done for various companies across the world. 

Got my finance coursework back-79!! Not bad since I thought I did bad. There were 2 parts in this coursework. I got 59/60 in section A and 20/40 in section B. So yes I didn't do too good on B lol 

Business plan submitted!! Pitch on Tuesday. Stayed tuned! 

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