In this week, we welcome Pamela and Benjamin to join us on our venture building journey as they join the second run of the ideasinc.veni programme.
[What is the ideasinc.veni Venture Building Programme?]
𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐜.𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐢 is NTU’s Venture Building programme under the enhanced Startup SG Founder programme.
Over the past year, the COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated digital transformation globally and shaped our lifestyles around it. While disruption caused by the virus has adversely impacted traditional businesses like restaurants, retail stores and hotels, it has also created many new opportunities on similar fronts, with food delivery, eCommerce, and hyper local activities such as city cycling tours.
The radical changes brought by economic disruptions and our sheer adaptability as human beings create many incredible opportunities for entrepreneurship.
Pamela’s medium weekly reflection which you can view in full here : Pamela
Pamela was amazed at how telecommunications technology has advanced over the years, as seminars usually conducted physically can be held online in an engaging and interactive fashion. What piqued her interest was the seminar “Inner Engineering”, as she felt that the seminar allowed her to apply other strategies to understand the people around her better, such as immersing in all five senses to hyper-empathise with others.
Benjamin on the other hand is still on a journey to ask meaningful questions to uncover what he has yet to understand.
Below is an excerpt from Benjamin’s medium weekly reflection which you can view in full here : Benjamin
Week one was a blur. No fancy speeches by the directors, no welcome programme and no facilitated networking sessions — we started the venture building programme hitting the ground running with a short introduction followed by classes from 9 to 6.
Credit where it is due though, it did stick to the spirit of entrepreneurship; that nobody owes us anything and if we wanted to succeed, we had to reach out and grab it.
Thankfully, there were allocated times for participants to share their ideas. It was eye-opening as a first-time entrepreneur seeing people of all ages and backgrounds in the same zoom, ranging from fresh grads like Pam and I to someone in his 70s starting a journey he had long-wanted to embark on.
While assessing all the ideas put forth though, I caught myself posing a question internally and repeatedly: why? Why is he entering the medical sector? Why is he pushing for integration in the gaming industry? Why is she so passionate about healthy bentos? Why are they here? More importantly, why am I here?
The question of why would later be asked throughout the week by my co-founder Pam. To me. Repeatedly. Despite working together for nearly half a year. As someone who is not inclined towards inquisitiveness, this soon got on my nerves a little. Besides, this was not the first time I had been barraged by these questions.
Yet even though the questions were the same, I found myself giving slightly different answers compared to when we first started working together.
You see, I realised that there is nothing wrong, heck, even necessary to constantly ask ourselves this question throughout the journey of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship, after all, is a journey of discovery.
Why is the customer willing to pay for our product? Why should investors put money into our startup? Why does my business exist? At every stage of development, asking myself why is key to unlocking the potential of the business not because it spurs innovation nor demand for products, but because it induces self awareness.
Simon Sinek, author of the bestselling book Start With Why, further outlines that the process of finding my why is a “process of discovery, not invention”; not a process of outward reflection or external creation, but from looking within.
And it is this self awareness which, when nurtured and grown, answers everything else.
It’s the end of week 1. I don’t have all the answers to the whys yet, but I’m hella excited to find out.
It is amazing how life is a never-ending journey in our search for answers!
Interested to find out more about the programme Benjamin and Pamela are attending?
[NTUitive’s Venture Building Programme ideasinc veni]
Do you have an interesting business idea, but never knew quite how to start? Want to understand what it takes to run a startup? NTUitive, the Innovation & Enterprise company of NTU, is running a 3-month Venture Building programme, ideasinc veni, open to all Singapore Citizens and PRs, who are:
- Unemployed Part-time Students
2. Unemployed Full-time Final Year Students
3. Unemployed Graduates of any degree or diploma
This programme is offered free of charge to the above qualifying candidates, who must also not be an existing shareholder of a startup. For participants in category (1 and 3), you will also be paid a stipend of $1,500 a month over the 3 months of the programme. NTUitive will also prepare you to apply for the Startup SG Founder “Start” track grant of $50,000 for your first startup, should you incorporate a company after graduation.
Interested? Sign up now at https://www.veni.ideasinc.sg. The next intake is on 1 June 2021 and all applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis. The final date to receive all applications is 16 May 2021.
Have more questions? Leave a note in the chat box at the ideasinc veni website, or email Joshua Lim at joshua.limcr (at) ntu.edu.sg, or Ko Zhihong at zhihong.ko (at) ntu.edu.sg.
In the following weeks, we will begin to share more about the projects we have been working on, so do keep a look out for that! :)
Signing off now, and see you again next week!
