Weeks 16 & 17

Week 16 and 17 marked the transition between a groundbreaking and tremulous 2020, and into the hopeful 2021. VB18 would like to dedicate this post as a time of recollection and reminiscence of the past year, the challenges we faced and our renewed action plans moving forward.

VB18 Venture Builders Adriel, Vanessa and Sherman working hard through the festive period at NTUitive’s Lecture Theatre.

Hansen bid a fond farewell to the October 2020 cohort of ideasinc veni participants, and also shared on the logistical hiccups continually faced and overcome by any budding startup.

This week marks the last week and farewell for the 1st veni program. I wish them all the best in their future endeavors and I hope to cross path with them in the near future!

We (OMG Coating) have found a test site that we might be able to do some testing for the coating and follow closely with the performance. Though the greenlight was given by the management, we were unable to coat in time — lead time for materials is currently 1 month and the current monsoon season meant that they were urgent and were unable to wait. This issue of long lead time needs to be addressed or more opportunities will be missed.

Dickson contemplated the meaning of “truth” and how it related to the value of Bitcoin and Blockchain.

Thinking again, maybe Truth is just money. Whoever has the money to buy influence, will have the power to determine what is true. Right now, we are probably in a time where we get to observe how people with money are going to change the world’s feelings about Bitcoin. Soon, the world might feel that “Bitcoin is the next generation of Gold and we should all hold some Bitcoin to hedge against inflation.”

Peter brooded over the current economic landscape and what “the new norm” could mean for employers and employees alike.

In dynamic and rapidly changing economies of the future, graduates need to master career skills and develop career adaptable mindsets. These skills and mindsets encourage graduates to navigate alternative careers paths and to avoid the problems and lay-offs faced by many PMETs in transforming economies. Students need to learn how to take charge of and design their own careers, and feedback galvanizes them to start thinking about careers and career development.

VB18 Venture Builders! Foreground: Peter & Zhengjie.

Adriel shared about a new book he had taken to since the start of the New Year. It examined the fundamental differences between addiction and habits, and using habits to affect lifestyle (i.e. spending) choices of consumers.

This week in my venture building journey, we were introduced to the book Hooked by Nir Eyal where he explores the reasons behind why we gravitate to certain habits, from nail-biting to consuming content on Instagram, to playing extremely sticky games such as Candy Crush.

The Hook Model. Through an environmental trigger (or motivation), a consumer attains a reward and invests their resources (e.g. money) into creating the same positive trigger (or avoiding a negative trigger), to attain the same reward. Over time, this completes a pleasure-reward cycle that keeps the consumer investing resources to attain the reward (or successful avoidance).

On the programme side of things, a farewell lunch and graduation was held on 4th January to say goodbye to the graduating batch of ideasinc veni (October 2020 cohort) participants.

It was a joyous and bittersweet occasion as the cohort had a reunion of sorts with their instructors and mentors whom they had worked closely with in the past 3 months. A farewell presentation was hosted by the mentors, instructors and teaching staff of NTUitive, and the cohort was presented with their certificates.

We wish them all the best in their future endeavours. Until next week, this is VB18 signing off!