From a different perspective : The Creative Destruction Lab
Being a girl interested in business, entrepreneurship, technology, innovation, there is always a big gender gap. The Creative Destruction Lab wants to fix that.
On October 24th, The Creative Destruction Lab hosted their first sets of meetings, where angel investors meet with different startups to give advice and guidance from a business perspective.
Throughout the day, I shadowed Karin Klein through her meetings with Lauren Epstein and the start ups. Karin Klein is a founder of Bloomberg Beta prior to that she was leading initiatives for Bloomberg LP. Before Karin started working for Bloomberg she worked with Softbank to review investments in companies such as Buzzfeed. During the meetings, I observed the ways these investors thought , asked question and such.
Although in the afternoon, we got the opportunity to listen to more than 15 angel investors talk about different startups they got to meet earlier in the day. From there they asked questions to the startups and went over their 2 month objectives. To then figure out if the angel investors would like to help startups for at least 4 hours before the next meeting.
Key Takeaways
This whole experience made me inspired and taught me the inner workings of a the business side of tech companies. But in the end there were three main things that resonated with me.
1. Work backwards
Constantly people get carried away with their startup and end up not catering to what their consumers really needs. It’s really important to constantly be viewing your company from the consumer's perspective and to work backwards. Ask yourself why you are building this product or service? Is this a need or a want?
2. What makes your startup unique
A start up must be able to differentiate themselves from other businesses, a constant question was what make your company better than others. In addition you need to stand out to be a successful company. All these companies need to keep up with the exponential growth in our world, so they have to be a disruptor.
3. Set objectives and talk about struggles
Setting goals and objectives are key to growing companies and people in general. Setting goals and objectives with due dates are ways you learn to be accountable and manage your time. Additionally, talking about a company's struggles should be done more frequently because the more you talk about them, the more advice received to better yourself or company.
All in all this experience taught me the business perspective of a startup, I hope to use this knowledge in the next couple of years to one day create my own startup.
