A Pivotal Program

Welcome to my blog! My name is John, and I post about my experiences with NYC GenerationTech, a program for teaching entrepreneurship and coding!

[john-d-h]

The Last Five Mentoring Sessions

The last five mentoring sessions with NYC GenTech were packed with experiences, both nerve-wracking and helpful.

At Warby Parker, Intersum and its mentors continued to push forward in order to make progress. This was when I had finally begun working with the app's code, and not its business plan. I had the chance to design the app by picking its colors and layout. This was very exciting as I like graphic design and had a lot of sources to help me make a proper, modern, and vibrant app.

After Warby Parker came Microsoft. The highlight of Microsoft's sessions was our extremely nerve-wracking practice presentation. Although it was only in front of our mentors, my team and I were so nervous to perform our script for the first time. I wouldn't call it a disaster, but we definitely made some enormous improvements. However, we still have a strong skit that will draw the audience's attention and help our presentation.

For the last of the two sessions we conclude with a big-bang at Google. Tuesday's session was mainly a struggle with anxiety for two hours. As before, my team and I were so nervous to present again, but this time, in front of others. We were afraid we would fail, but we actually did good! We gained valuable feedback and can only improve from there. Now we just have to prepare for the next Google session, where we do a mock-presentation in front of a panel of judges who actually grade us! 

[john-d-h]

The First Six Mentoring Sessions

The first six mentoring sessions with NYC GenTech were exhilarating. Intersum was introduced to its amazing mentors, and we had the chance to see what it was like to work in offices big and small.

Our first two sessions were at Deloitte, a large firm. It was here the fun and hard work began. After a video of the long and fascinating history of Deloitte, we split up into our groups and finally met our mentors. Amazingly helpful and insightful, Intersum's mentors became a welcomed and vital addition to the team. At this point, we began to really think of how our app could be applied to an actual market and where to begin coding it.

The next two sessions were at LivePerson, a successful startup company. The workspace was smaller than that of Deloitte's, but much more communal. Here we delved deeper into what it would take to actually run a business and code our idea. With the help of our mentors, flow charts were drawn, and market research was done.

AlleyNYC hosted the fifth and sixth sessions. AlleyNYC is also a successful startup, and has a very communal space as well. These two sessions marked some serious improvement where we had a business plan that was halfway done and a lot of code done for the actual app. We understood the general direction we were heading in with our business, even though we had no idea how challenging (but educational) it could be.

These first six mentoring sessions were filled with amazing experiences. I learned so much about the real working environment over the course of six two-hour sessions, more than I ever could have in school!

[john-d-h]

Intersum

Revolutionizing the way school club leaders run their club/team by making their job easier to manage...

Hey everyone! Please check out Intersum, the group I'm in with my fellow GenTech students!

[john-d-h]

A Pivotal Bootcamp

NYC GenTech's bootcamp has ended, and it was an amazing experience! I've learned so much more about entrepreneurship in the past two weeks than I thought I would. From hands-on activities and projects, I've gained valuable skills that will aid me in the real world after college.

There is, however, one skill that I found to be the most important, and that's finding the right people. Surrounding yourself with the right people can make a world of difference. My group for this program, "Intersum," taught me this. Although we are five different people with varying opinions, we get along with each other. We respect each other and can express our thoughts, and offer help when needed. Most importantly, we have fun doing our work. Even though at times we can get a little too distracted, we still work efficiently to meet our goals. This makes work feel more enjoyable and interesting. Even more important could be the fact that we are willing to sacrifice the time and energy to meet these goals. Each member believes in our app idea, and is serious about making it. One night the five of us stayed until nine just to prepare for our pitch the next day. Seeing my fellow students put in all that effort was inspiring, and helped me to keep going and push harder to make a good pitch for our app idea. We are a group of people that love working with each other, and are excited to face new problems together.

It's not over yet though! We still have six more weeks of mentoring sessions and at-home workdays. This means that we get to meet professionals, from big and small companies around the city, who will offer their advice on our app idea and developing it. I've learned so much already, but there's so much more to experience! 

[john-d-h]

My First Week with NYC Generation Tech

My first week was filled with amazing experiences. I learned so much in such a short amount of time. I was taken out of my comfort zone and brought to a new place where I could learn to be an entrepreneur. We also had several guest speakers come in to talk about entrepreneurship. Listening to their story and learning from their advice allowed us to grasp a better concept of what being an entrepreneur is really like. The Lean Startup by Eris Ries taught me how to create minimum viable products to adapt my business model. We expanded upon this in class, and learned that Starbucks originally provided coffee supplies for other businesses. Starbucks then made a customer segment pivot (or a drastic change) and decided to provide coffee for consumers, leading to their popularity. I found this particularly interesting since Starbucks is such a successful business today.

On Thursday we began coding through online tutorials. I was eager to finally start writing walls of text and seeing how that translates into a functional website! On Friday we got down to business. Each student gave their own 30-second pitch on their app idea. The goal was to create an engaging and informative pitch that would persuade others with similar app ideas to join your group and work with you on that idea. Many students, including myself, were extremely nervous to get up in front of more than fifty people. Public speaking isn’t easy for me, but pitching my app idea was a great way to practice! During lunch we conversed with our fellow students on our apps ideas. In less than an hour we were all formed into groups and discussing our app’s name and mission statement. My group and I decided to create an app that dealt with connecting people through events that they could create or join. This would be based on what types of events they are interested in. We decided to call it “Intersum,” as it sounds like the words “interest” and “sum” mixed together, which, in a way, describes our app idea. Although, we still have much more work to do, in terms of coding and our business model. By the end of next week our ideas could change drastically.

I look forward to what comes next with GenTech. I’m especially excited about the mentoring sessions that start in two weeks. These sessions are located at various tech companies around the city, and professionals there give us advice on our app idea and business model. 

[john-d-h]

My First Experiences with NYC Generation Tech

Today was my first day with NYC Generation Tech. Before the program started I was psyched to finally start coding and building programs to solve problems. I have very little experience with coding, and although this is intimidating for me as I'll be making my own apps with Gen Tech, I'm eager to put in the work.

To my surprise, the learning was centered around entrepreneurship. We learned about the technology industry in NYC and how it gained so much momentum amongst the various traditional industries found here. Going deeper, we were able to see how investors and people interested in tech or new to the field worked with tech events, incubators, and accelerators to establish new businesses and lead to products being finalized. As the day continued we talked about blogs and the importance of connecting with your customers. It's vital to communicate with your targeted customers to understand their values. We then went on to question what an entrepreneur really is, and what characteristics define one. This lead into a discussion about startups versus established businesses, and how the key difference between the two is risk. During lunch we had a guest speaker talk more about this, and he provided some valuable insight from his own experiences of starting his own business.  

One thing we learned that particularly sparked my interest was A/B testing. I've heard of this randomized experiment before and was intrigued to learn how it was actually used for Obama's campaign website to gain more donations. After this we split into groups and made our own prototypes of an idea we had out of construction paper, a paper bag, some sticks, clay, straws, cups, glue, and tape. My group and I brainstormed ideas for a bit and came up with an automatic, solar powered lawnmower for the lazy homeowner which included its own sensors and could be programmable by GPS. It was a great way to meet other students and learn how to brainstorm and build ideas. After presentations of our prototypes, we talked about how to act, speak, and look professional and how to network, which was very informative. We went on to practice this, hands-on, with other students from a different program. Given time to talk to various students, we could introduce ourselves and our interests, and build a conversation upon that. This was an exciting close to the day as I prefer to talk one-on-one to get to know someone, before meeting them in a large group or setting.

Overall my first experiences with Generation Tech were great. I didn't expect it to be so centered on teaching entrepreneurship, but this knowledge is useful as one of my goals is to possibly create my own business one day. I'm thrilled to continue further with this program and all it has to offer!