In our most recent blog post, one of our previous Careers Engagement Assistants – Alex – is sharing her experience of the #48hrStartUp challenge. Wonder why you should enter a competition like this? Read on…
The 48 hr Startup challenge is an unique two day competition in collaboration with King’s Business School. Your team will build a brand from scratch and present your idea to an audience when the countdown ends.
In short, this weekend taught me that executing on your ideas is paramount in everything, but especially in entrepreneurship; solving the right problem is sometimes more important than finding the right solution.
But the longer part of the story is even more exciting.
The event has started with an introduction into the lean start-up mindset and real-life examples of what you can build in a weekend – hearing about Ben Tossell building 10 MVPs in 24 hours just to prove that excuses mean nothing, and you can do something with no coding, on a budget and quickly. This made everybody question their procrastination habits and has set the mood for the next 48 hours.
The feeling of seeing your team’s work and creativity resulting in a Minimum Viable Product is both empowering and inspiring. Our collective efforts have resulted in the creation of ShAIR, a pollution tracking app for Londoners, with 81 followers on social media and 119 website views in just a few hours. But before coming to the end product, we’ve been through a few more steps, that have equipped us with invaluable skills: how to understand your customers and issues they might face, how to quickly test and learn about your ideas, how to handle branding related matters (think logo, typeface, colour palette) and, of course, growth marketing.
My absolute favourite part was idea pitching where we all got the chance to see the final result of our work and I must say that I was impressed with my peers’ quality of work. All four start-ups were presented originally, and you could sense the excitement behind the creation through product presentation. Working alongside these bright individuals has motivated me to further explore entrepreneurship and the world of start-ups.
Our amazing jury was the best supporters as well – Kate, Ed and Theo were on hand all the time to address any questions. I think I’m speaking for everyone when I say that we were very lucky to learn from them and to hear about their own entrepreneurial journeys.
Conclusion?
I would encourage each of you reading this to take part in this challenge (even if you don’t see yourself as entrepreneurial) – it really is a safe place, there are no bad ideas or stupid questions, and you’ll get lots of support.
You’ll get the chance to find people you might want to work with and start building your very own venture. And most importantly you will develop skills applicable in anything you do in the future. You never know when you’ll need to run a Facebook ads campaign, impress your supervisor with your design skills, or launch your own start-up in a weekend.