Jscott - Entrepreneurship Pathway

Week 1: July 15
Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  1. Revenue Streams
  2. Different pricing models, and how the markets influence price
  3. Business model canvas
  4. Validating the Revenue Stream Model

Tools:

  • Trello
  • Google Drive setup
  • Slack

Soft Skills:

  • Remote Collaboration
  • Team Bonding
  • Autonomous Agency

Meetings Attended:

  • Introduction Meeting - 7/15
  • Revenue Models Meeting - 7/16
  • Trello Meeting 7/18 -
  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 7/20
  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 7/21

Achievement Highlights:

  1. Successful Presentation of monetization plan that my team and I came up with for the StemAway platform.
  2. Scheduled sub team meetings
  3. Collaborate with sub team on limitations and potential opportunities with the business model plan for StemAway

Goals for the Upcoming Week

  • Complete revenue stream validation plan
  • Listen to the competitive analysis presentation
  • Complete a competitive analysis for StemAway’s competitors

Week 2: July 22
Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  1. Identifying competitors
  2. SWOT analysis
  3. Position map
  4. Learning about different analyses used for competitors (SWOT, Porters 5 Forces Mode, PEST, etc.
  5. Tools used for competitive analysis

Tools:

  • Trello
  • Google Sheets
  • Google Docs
  • Google Slides

Soft Skills:

  • Team Collaboration
  • Communication
  • Scheduling
  • Leadership

Meetings Attended:

  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 7/23
  • Revenue Stream Presentation - 7/23
  • Competitive Analysis Meeting - 7/25
  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 7/27

Achievement Highlights & Tasks Completed:

  1. Researched competitors of STEM Away and completed a competitive and SWOT analysis of the competitors and STEM Away.
  2. Made a presentation over STEM Away’s competitors and presented over one those competitors that I was responsible for researching.
  3. Looked into developing a personal understanding of the websites and tools used by industry experts to conduct a professional level competitive analysis

Goals for the Upcoming Week

  • Complete the present the findings for the competitive analysis
  • Prepare for upcoming marketing material

Week 3: July 29
Overview of Things Learned:

Technical Area:

  1. Product-market fit
  2. Market size, choosing audience to market to
  3. Go-to market strategy

Tools:

  • SCRUM
  • STEM Away
  • GSuite
  • GroupMe

Soft Skills:

  • Punctuality
  • Public Speaking
  • Attendance

Meetings Attended:

  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 7/31
  • Marketing Strategies Meeting - 8/02
  • Mentor Meeting with Katherine Elizabeth - 8/4
  • Sub Team 1 Meeting - 8/04

Achievements Highlighted & Tasks Completed:

  1. Conducted Meetings with Sub team to collaborate on marketing deliverables.
  2. Successfully discussed the teams doubts about our team products and reflected if we needed to pivot our focus of the project
  3. Discussed further the Q/A session with Vrinda
  4. Decided to focus on the Companies as a target market rather than the Interns in our BMC

Goals for Upcoming Week:

  1. Attend marketing mentor talk
  2. Develop month-long social media calendar with team
  3. Create a piece of marketing material for STEM-Away
  4. Present findings/work done with sub-team

Week 4: August 5th

Tools:

  • GSuite
  • GroupMe
  • Slack

Soft Skills:

  • Team Collaboration
  • Marketing Research

Meetings Attended

  • Marketing Continued Presentation, 8/7
  • Vrinda’s Office Hours, 8/9

Achievements and Tasks Completed:

  • Continued to develop marketing strategies, played around with different campaign ideas and creative ways to market in general, really helped to see through a marketing agent’s point of view
  • Marketing Presentation covering LinkedIn Marketing, Search Engine Optimization (SEO): On-site and Off-Site, only really scratched the surface, as I realized with hindsight of how deep SEO goes
  • Explored Ideas of Marketing to other platforms such as Quora and Reddit
  • Received clarification with Vrinda on the deliverables for the week, per the initial confusion on the weeks specifics for the presentation

Week 5: August 12th

Tools:

  • GSuite
  • Slack
  • Canva
  • Goolge Ads
  • Google Trends

Soft Skills:

  • Programming
  • Working across time zones
  • Presentation Skills

Meetings Attended:

  • Sub team 1 Meeting, 8/13
  • Marketing Meeting with Katherine Elizabeth, 8/13
  • Week 4 Presentations, 8/14
  • Meeting 7: Final Presentation, 8/15
  • Ideation Webinar, 8/18
  • Marketing Meeting with Katherine Elizabeth: Marketing Guru, 8/18
  • Sub team 1 Meeting, 8/18

Achievements and Tasks Completed:

  • Covered Search Engine Optimization (SEO) with Katie and learned more about the technology and how SEO reports are the key to knowing how to improve your ranking
  • Successfully delivered our deliverables from the previous week, that included using google trends and google ads to research key words used in search queries
  • Had multiple meetings with my sub team to work on our deliverables for week 4 and 5
    • Discussed on page and off page SEO
    • Deliberated about which key words to use for our specific “hypothetical” SEO campaign using google ads information
  • Started preparing for the final week and the final presentation. Some of the deliverables for our final presentation includes (as per the meeting on 8/15):
    • Pitch Deck
    • Customer Surveys
    • Elevator Pitch

Week 5 continued: 8/19

Tools:

  • Gsuite
  • Slack

Soft Skills:

  • Industry Development
  • Skills Development
  • Communication
  • Team work
  • Conflict Resolution
  • Presentation Skills
  • Performance under pressure

Meetings Attended:

  • Starting a Start-Up Webinar with Vrinda, 8/19
  • Talk with Stephanie, LinkedIn Guru, 8/19
  • Sub team 1 Meeting, 8/19
  • Sub team 1 Meeting, 8/20
  • Sub team 1 Meeting, 8/23
  • Week 5 Presentations, 8/23

Achievements and Tasks Completed:

  • As this was the final week, we didn’t have a topic of learning for the week, so the team leads supplemented this gap with webinars on topics that were agreed to be of interest by the team over various start-up subjects, which I attended almost all of them
  • It was these webinars were more specific questions about the start-up process came through
  • During this week, the deliverables were a lot more demanding as the presentations were supposed to mimic a pitch competition and summarize all of our deliverables across the internship
  • I gave our team’s elevator pitch for our monetization plan
  • Helped deliver a successful pitch deck presentation
  • Held multiple sub team meetings
  • Received instruction from Stephanie about LinkedIn, which provided great feedback to my profile on LinkedIn, she encouraged us to be more active with creating content, and that even if we believe we have nothing to say, that there is always value when you add content to someone out there in the world

Final Entry: Reflection

First and foremost, I would like to thank Debaleena and Stephanie for giving me yet another opportunity to learn, collaborate, dream, and aspire with like minded individuals that are passionate about the same things as I. I can not overstate the depth and resourcefulness of the STEM-Away family and community, I have nothing but good things to say about the summer 2020 cohort. While this is the first, and likely only entrepreneurship cohort, I can proudly say that this internship went dramatically better than my or any other’s expectations prior to the start. I really didn’t know what to expect since there weren’t really any hard skills to work on throughout like in other STEM topics, but it was more of how to think and approach problems. This was something that Vrinda and the other team leads not only said, but demonstrated. @Vrinda_Jain deserves a shoutout and praise for her ability to program and organize this pathway, without her structure this experience would have been nothing but a less of an experience. The amount of effort Vrinda put into her work was noticeable and appreciated. I was also blessed with the opportunity to work with @celestelili @Bbwood6 & @Chhavi_Munjal. Each of my teammates excelled at bringing their best qualities and experiences to each meeting and deliverables that we worked on. One area of difficulty that we faced as a team was different time zones as we worked across 11 time zones between each other at times, but we worked past this and performed successfully with each weekly presentation as this only helped our fortitude. Furthermore, I want to acknowledge my team for the friendship and memories made during this time as well.

Some things I took away and learned from this internship:

  • Friendships
  • How to start a marketing campaign
  • How to start a SEO campaign
  • Source content covering revenue streams
  • How to deliver an elevator pitch and a pitch deck
  • Increased skill in public speaking and presenting

Most importantly, I took away an a further understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur to me personally. Entrepreneurship isn’t just a word that no one knows how to spell, but it is so much more. In many ways to the meaning of entrepreneurship, whenever you finish the sentence “I am ______”, one word doesn’t come to mind, thousands of words come to mind. Likewise, when I think of the phrase “Entrepreneurship is _______”, many things come to mind. Entrepreneurship is a mindset. Entrepreneurship is a lifestyle. Entrepreneurship is a way to solve your problems. Entrepreneurship is the inspiration and excitement of an untold success story. Entrepreneurship is what I aspire to live through. Entrepreneurship is a seed of hope not yet fertilized. Entrepreneurship is the motivation of a better world. Entrepreneurship is a commitment. Entrepreneurship is the exciting anxiety of my dreams not yet materialized. Entrepreneurship is something that will always be evolving to my experiences. This is what this internship has helped me realize.

Lastly, I want to acknowledge the legendary @Stephanie again for being the glue that keeps STEM-Away alive and healthy with Debaleena. Getting to know you more through the entrepreneurship pathway was a blessing in disguise, thank you for your vision and guidance. I commend and admire you for achieving your dreams of advancing STEM in a large way. I can’t wait to see where this company goes with Debaleena and Stephanie at the helm.

All of the best, signing off,
Jeremy Osborne (Jscott)