This post is about the highlights of the last week of semester. I can say it was a busy and a lazy week. Busy because everyone was working hard on their group Strategy presentation and the business pitch for the E-challenge for some (will talk about that later). Lazy because majority didn't bother do any pre-reading for some classes or even turn up- only half of the class turned up on the last couple of days.
Oh! You know all those in-class Finance group assignments that we get every week. Well, Itaxso sent us an email saying that all those work counts towards our final mark. OMG!! You're telling us now! No disrespect but why didn't you tell us in the beginning, we would have put more effort into it. Luckily she is giving all of us a chance to improve them. And on top of that we have a group assignment to be completed over the holiday. Great! Not! But it's not hard I guess because it's basically repeating all those group assignment but for a different company. Itaxso has given a choice of 5 but we haven't decided which one yet. We want to enjoy Christmas so after that we will get back into that zone- hardworking zone. Lol
Tuesday was a hectic day; had a 30 minute group presentation in Strategy class and pitching Share N Wear to E-challenge judges. May not sound a lot but mentally it was exhausting.
There were 5 of us in a group for the Strategy presentation and we chose renewable energy industry as our topic. We had to include the following content; overview of the industry, 4 pre-profit start-ups in that industry, our idea for a start-up that we think could succeed and conclusion. For each startup including our idea one we had to discuss about the strategy they used and had to reference the book by Mintzberg. I presented the overview of the industry and start-up idea, the others each presented a pre-profit company.
We had some problem with preparing the presentation on the day we were suppose to present and we were all stressed out about it. Well, a group member texted us in the morning (I repeat, the day we were presenting) saying he has not completed his part of the presentation, he is stuck and needs help.....@*!XX!*^$fhj CDTH F$%&$&^o&*(!"£$% (I was angry lol)
We were suppose to meet at 1pm to put everything together and rehearse. We told him to just come in and we will help him finish it. He came about 2pm.
Fortunately our presentation time was at 4:30pm. Unfortunately we didn't have time rehearsing as a group and just about had the time to rehearse our own parts because we helped him finish his part. Having saying that can't blame everything on him because we haven't finished the start-up idea and conclusion before hand but of course we managed to finish everything.
The presentation went alright in the end. A group member went over time by 2 minutes with his part which meant others had very little time for their part and almost no time for conclusion. However it wasn't a bad thing in fact it saved us lol. Because I wasn't sure what to say for the strategy that our startup idea would be using. When Patrycja was half way through presenting her part (the last/4th pre-profit company), Chris, the lecturer, put his hand up and said we have 5 minutes left. It was getting very intense. I was thinking we weren't going to have time to present our startup idea and conclusion. So as soon as Patrycja finished her part, I just raced through my words talking about our startup idea and used one sentence to describe the strategy. Lol It took me about 30 seconds altogether. Then Patrycja quickly said the conclusion. I think she freestyled that as we didn't really prepare it before hand lol. Anyways we just made it on time.
After the presentation I had to rush to UCL advances for the E-Challenge which was at another building, our pitching time was at 5:30pm. I didn't really rehearse as I was focusing on the Strategy presentation more. Not that it wasn't important but Strategy work counts towards our mark and e-challenge doesn't. (The next post I will tell you about Share N Wear, promnise!) The pitching sessions were running late so Nele, Roxy and I used this opportunity to rehearse. The pitching went well and finally some judges could understand the pain point that we were pointing out; that girls take too long to get ready/ dressed.
The E-challenge results were announced on the same night. We waited in the Engineering building for about an hour, and finally Tim Barnes (the judge/director of UCL Advances) came. He said normally they would pick 4 winners;1 runner up and 1 winner for 2 undergraduates team and 2 postgraduates team. But they have increased it to 6 as the business ideas this year were very good. I thought 'ooh we might have a chance then.' Unfortunately, we didn't win but like Tim Barnes said, 'just because you didn't win doesn't mean its a bad idea.' Chris Rayner, fashion starutp advisor at UCL Advances, told Roxy that he likes our idea and told us to see him after the New Year so he can advise us on this business idea.
To be honest I didn't think we were going to win anyway because our idea isn't very innovative in terms of technology. The runners ups' and winners' ideas were all based on building new technologies and software and I think that's what UCL Advances like.
It was a long day, I was knackered when I got home. Anyways, thanks for reading and MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
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