In the twinkling of an eye, we are now well into the third month of our entrepreneurship journey as we continue the path of commercializing our dreams. With the Yuletide season in full swing, we had a very eventful and exciting week in NTUitive as we rounded out 2020.
On Wednesday, we had our second and final NTUit.io investment game. During the previous run, DLT: Pratu claimed the top spot. Adriel sublimely summarises the game mechanics, “There are 2 main groups of people, namely the investors and the investees. The goal of the investors are to invest in a company as early as possible in order to achieve the highest valuation in their portfolio of investments. So for example, in the last iteration of the investment game, investment maven Fang Yi entrusted half of his investment portfolio into DLT: Pratu, costing almost $500,000 on a DLT: Pratu share priced at $11,000 per share.
The job as investees/business owners are to pitch their company to other investors so that they would buy shares and raise the market valuation of the company. At the end of the previous investment game iteration, DLT: Pratu closed with an investment value of approximately $5 million and a price per share of $36,000, earning Fang Yi $25,000 per share that he bought.”
When Boon Chow signaled the start of the investment game, it was a literal mad rush, as teams were shuttled into rooms immediately and investees started hustling their way into getting an investment. As investees starting pummeling investors with pitches, it soon became a frenzied and exhilarating fight for the investor’s hearts… and wallet.
A key noticeable difference noticed by many investors was the marked improvement in the quality of pitches given. Perhaps this was the direct fruition after attending Dr. Fred Then’s Masterclasses in effective presentation and persuasion skills a couple of weeks prior. Pitches were concise, impactful and bite-sized, tailored to what the investor needed to know.
After 3 grueling hours of pitches, persuasion and presentation, the new winner this time was Paratlas. Congratulations to Fadhil and How Min!
Elsewhere in the week, we once again joined the ideasinc veni candidates in yet another Masterclass, this time it was about Blockchain, conducted by our very own NTUitive interim CEO Dr. Alex Lin himself. Sadly, this would also be the final Masterclass of the ideasinc veni October 2020 cohort.
We first started out on the concept of Blockchain — “Block” and “Chain”. The understanding of the “Block” was illustrated as cubes of information which were being held together into a long “Chain”. Hence, a Blockchain is an accessible string of information cubes continually stringing up against each other into a a growing multitude of chained information blocks.
The next topic then moved to reputability. If any party puts new information onto a “Block”, they are also inadvertently putting new information onto the whole “Chain”. This begs the question of how to ensure that this information is immutable and not subject to constant changes. What then are the unique features of the “Blockchain” that help validate such addition of new information? The answer lies in the binding network that authenticates it. Smaller “in the network” computers help validate the transaction (i.e. the upload of new information). This authentication is like a mathematical formula which companies on the Chain compete to complete the authentication.
Why do companies race to complete the authentication? If a company successfully manages to use their own computers to complete validation, they will “earn” a new “Block”, and the corresponding value of the “Block”. The value of the “Block” then becomes the driving motivator of the company’s efforts. There is also a great deal of First Mover Advantage, as the first companies to complete the authentication will earn extra “coin”.
The robustness of 50–80% of computers on the Chain validating the new upload of information helps maintain the integrity of the new “Block” and hence the reputability of the entire Blockchain as well.
VB18 would like to wish all our readers, colleagues and loved ones a very Happy New Year! Until our next update, this is VB18 signing off. See you again in 2021!
