#ipeportugal

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Post-Entrepreneurship In Porto

Hello one last time friends.

It's time to give one last little reflection on my time abroad in Portugal. My flight was cancelled so I had one extra day to think about this post. To anyone considering whether or not they should apply for this program with European Innovation Academy: Do it. I cannot recommend this experience enough. It's uncomfortable. It's exciting. It's challenging. It's interesting. And the part I'm feeling right now, it's heartbreaking when you know you're about to leave it all behind and continue on. So with the newly acquired last hours in Porto after my canceled flight, I spent night with just me and watched the sunset and the lights of Ponte Luis Bridge as I happily photographed every inch of the city with camera. I love you Porto and I'm sad to you leave you behind. But I'll be back. Please enjoy these shots I got of the city. They make me smile as I sit here at the airport both the saddest and the happiest I've ever been. I'm excited to see my dogs and my guitar and my family. And I'm also excited to plan my next world trip to visit my new friends. And I'm excited about moving forward. If you read this far, again, you are an amazing human and I appreciate you. Goodbye everyone.

Joe Restivo

Chemical Engineering

Entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal

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Week 3: The Grand Finale

So this is it. The last week here in Porto has come and gone. It felt so far away when I arrived on the first day. But I really don't want to just lament that it's the end: I really want to talk about everything I did this week just like the past two weeks.

This week was really stressful for lots of teams. It was the culmination of the last two weeks: intellectual property and pitching. My team and I spent lots of time in mentor clinics, workshops, and customer validation checks to learn about intellectual property law and the art of pitching your business. Each team on Friday would have to pitch their team to investors. I was designated as the pitch person for my team. It took a little bit of practice and editing but eventually, we all agreed on the pitch and created the pitch deck. Finally, Friday arrived. We all dressed up in our Sunday best and prepared ourselves to blow the investors away. And the pitch went well! We were prepared and I think they liked our pitch. Even though we weren't one of the top ten teams, I could not be more proud of myself and my team for all the work we did. It was hard, it was fun, it was an experience that you simply cannot find in a classroom setting. I am eternally grateful to my team and it makes me very sad knowing that I won't be seeing them for a while. But it's not goodbye and it's nowhere near the end. This is just the beginning of some life-long connections.

And now there's the rest of the final week. There was nothing really planned out for the last week because everyone had different flights home so it was hard to coordinate any big group activities. However, my friends and I did finally make it to a Portuguese beach. We went to two of them actually: Matosinhos Beach and Praia do Molhe. They were just as incredible as I thought they would be. Fair warning though if you ever want to swim in Portugal -- the water up north near Porto is FREEZING. I mean it bone-chilling cold to the point where there's actually not a ton of people in the water like there are at some other beaches down near Lisbon. We saw some amazing sunsets and ate some yummy yummy fresh seafood.

Then I spent my final hours in Porto doing something less exciting but it also might've been my favorite part of the trip: sitting around outside near the pool in a couple chairs with some pizza, some melon, some snack and drinks, and hanging out with all of the wonderful and amazing and talented friends I made during my time here. And even after just three weeks, it's difficult to imagine my life without meeting all of these awesome people. I know this post is a little bit shorter but the truth is that I'm very very happy with my time here and wouldn't trade it for anything else in the world. I laughed and I cried and I swam and I drank and I learned and now I'm going to have a really hard time saying good-bye. But again, this is far from the end. I have a couch to stay on in at least 4 other countries now and I know my friends know they're always welcome with me. What a finale.

Joe Restivo

Chemical Engineering

Entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal

[umichenginabroad]

Week 2: Best Week Ever

Welcome Welcome Welcome back!

This week was intense. Educationally, emotionally, physically, and drinking-ly (drinking-wise?). The theme for the program this week was marketing and prototyping and let me tell you something: it can be very difficult to create a prototype of a product when you have very little money, resources, and expertise. And I suppose that is the point -- start-ups do not have a lot of money or resources so it is essential to be as efficient as possible with the resources you do have. At least I'm pretty sure that's what the point is: otherwise we're just spending money. However, I digress. Let's get into this week.

This week, in addition to prototyping your product, the team was also tasked with formulating a marketing strategy. So we decided our best bet was social media: everyone is on it all of the time and our target audience is college students and young adults. That being said, please follow @theloungepopup on Instagram! The bio has a link to our website so please check out if you're interested!

We also continued experimenting with mocktails this week and we had a breakthrough! Our favorite recipe so far according to our team and everyone who has tested it: the gorgeous mocktail "Mama Knows Best". It's amazing what some college students can create with orange juice, orange syrup, sprite, mint, pomegranate juice, and black currant syrup. Behold:

We debuted this drink at the business expo on Friday where all the teams had the chance to walk around and see other teams projects and practice pitching their start-ups to friends and staff members at EIA! Our team had a great day and everyone loved our mocktail. So it was amazing week for business but it doesn't come close to the fun we had outside of business this week.

This weekend we spent exactly 24 hours in the city of Lisbon, Portugal which is about a 3 hour bus ride from Porto. Lisbon was a massive city and had a very different energy from Porto. We arrived at 10:30 pm Friday night and proceeded to head out to Bairro Alto: a half-mile square block of streets filled with bars and nightclubs and is well-known as Lisbon's nightlife district. Unfortunately I didn't take a lot of pictures in Bairro Alto, only lots of drunken videos that are over a minute long so I want to spare everyone reading here but trust me it was one of the best nights out I've ever had.

Then we spent the rest of Saturday in the beautiful town of Sintra which is about a 40-minute train ride from Lisbon. We really enjoyed the gorgeous little town and then explored the castles that Sintra is famous for!

Finally, we arrive at my favorite part of the Porto trip so far. On Sunday, my friends and traveled with a tour guide to Peneda-Geres National Park. I cannot say enough how this tour was one of the best experiences of my life and I've never seen or done anything quite like it. We hiked and then swam in the azure blue and green lagoons of the park before having the most delicious traditional Portuguese lunch at restaurant with scenic views of the mountains. I could talk for hours about how amazing this place was but instead I think I'll just drop a bunch of pictures and let them speak for themselves. That's all of the updates I have for this week so if you actually read this far, I appreciate you and hope you're doing well. Hopefully these pictures are motivation enough to make you want to visit Porto and Portugal! See ya next week!

Joe Restivo

Chemical Engineering

Entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal

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Week 1: The Lounge

What. a. week. The first of three weeks is now over and it went by in the blink of an eye. This week was a couple of things: more touristy exploration, the first week of actual "classes", and the week I've had the least amount of sleep in recent memory. BUT this loss of sleep was of course not because I was up late doing homework or studying. Here in Portugal, the night really is young pretty much all night. Anyway, let me start at the beginning of the week.

Sunday July 16 was day 0 of the European Innovation Academy's program here in Porto and it was crazy, fun, slightly (maybe very) stressful couple of hours. After some introductory speeches from the program leaders in the morning, it was time to start forming teams. Anyone who had an idea for a product or a service or some business was able to write it all out on a poster board and try to recruit 4 other people to their team (so 5 people total on each team. So if you didn't have an idea, like I did, then you had to around to lots of different poster boards and try to get yourself on a team! I got pretty lucky... I found an idea I really liked pretty early on in the day and I also loved all the people on the team.

So allow me to present our business: The Lounge. The business, as envisioned by our CEO Taylor, is a non-alcoholic cocktail pop-up and drink service. The idea is that the non-alcoholic options offered at most events and venues are very boring and bland like soda or water and so it's very easy for college students to feel pressured to drink when they go out or they may not go out at all because of the presence of alcohol. And that's the problem we're setting out to solve! If instead, people had the option of having a beautiful, colorful, delicious "mocktail" then everyone will feel more included.

Our pitch of course is a little more involved than this but that's the foundational idea behind what we're trying to do! So the five of us worked hard all week. We had keynote presentations from 10-12 and then independent work from 2-5 and sometimes even later. The pace is fast but I think we're keeping up pretty well so we'll see what we're able to create in these three weeks. Already this week, we started experimenting with some mocktail recipes! Nothing has been an absolute hit yet but we're close.

Now when I wasn't working I was either a) eating b)drinking c)drinking and eating d)exploring downtown e)taking a wine tour through the Douro Valley. Okay, that last one is really a one-time thing but I'm going to focus on it anyway. The Douro Valley is breathtaking and not only did we get to taste some amazing port wines and tour the vineyards but we got to take a relaxing and scenic boat ride down the Douro River.

One of my favorite things that I did often this week was find new restaurants and new places to watch the sunset. It is still just mind-blowing every time I watch it. Then afterward my friends and I would go look for a new gelato place or go get pastel de nata (the best thing in the world). This is pretty much the entire update for week 1 so I'm going to dump so cool pictures here and get excited for week two! Ciao Ciao!

Joe Restivo

Chemical Engineering

Entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal

[umichenginabroad]

Week 0: Pre-Entrepreneurship In Porto

Hi everyone!

My name is Joe Restivo and I'm a senior studying chemical engineering and mathematics. Then after the next three weeks, I'll know a lot more about entrepreneurship too! A little bit more about myself -- I love music and I play drums, guitar, a little little bit of piano, and I sing; I have two dogs, a pug and a beagle, who I will miss more than anything; and, I took this past semester off to go work at an engineering firm in Cleveland!

I arrived in Porto, Portugal yesterday Friday 7/14 and now I should get used to writing the date the way most of Europe does: 14/07/23. The program doesn't officially begin until this Sunday, so we had some time today to go out and explore the city! There were so many things I was excited about before we went out. Porto is known for its incredible diversity of restaurants and unique architecture that makes for some very pretty pictures (I also love photography!). Also like I implied, I didn't explore the city alone! In some of the pictures below are a few more Michigan students here with me: Brooke, Emilia, Alex, Logan, and Abby. But we also found some new friends: Annalise, Tedra, Calli, and Blazej.

We had an amazing day exploring each and every little street! One of the program participants also decided to host a networking/mixer event at a very cool bar venue downtown. We all had a great time and met so many new friends from all over the world including countries like the UK, Brazil, Spain, Finland, France, and Ecuador.

Finally, we finished off an amazing day by watching the sunset from the top of the Luis I Bridge. My jaw dropped when I made it to the bridge and took just one look out over the city with the blazing orange ball of fire slowly sinking below the clouds and horizon making for the perfect ending to a perfect day.

I am already deeply in love with the city and I've barely even tried the food yet! However, everything will be different starting tomorrow because the program actually begins tomorrow and we have to form our teams. I'll be posting an update after week 1 to talk all about the start of the program and I'll introduce the team that I'll be working with for the next three weeks! Até Breve!

Joe Restivo

Chemical Engineering

Entrepreneurship in Porto, Portugal

[umichenginabroad]

One Week Later

So, it has been about a week and a half since I got back from Portugal, and now that I’m here, it’s so strange to think that I was in Portugal for 3 weeks. Almost like it’s some ALTERNATE reality.

I, for some reason, have the ability to never have jet lag no matter how long the time difference is, so the five hour time difference wasn’t really that much of a hassle. On the way back, my plane went from Lisbon to Washington D.C and then, finally, to Columbus! When I got to DC, I only had an hour and fifteen minutes to get through customs and get to my plane. HOWEVER, somehow magically, my plane from Columbus got delayed, so I had time to grab a bite to eat at Smashburger (smash fries anyone???) and then board my plane.

The couple of weeks before I left, I was running around to make sure I had everything ready, so when I was home after spring term, I didn’t have much relaxation going around. I have to admit, reverse-culture shock IS a thing. I woke up on my first day back, and I wasn’t in my hotel room, didn’t have to get up and see my teammates, which was really weird.

An artsy picture of my boarding pass to Washington D.C and passport

I don’t really think I experienced that much reverse-culture shock because it’s something I feel like I’ve gotten used to especially when I travel back and forth from campus to home. I’m so used to my environments and cultures changing that it doesn’t affect me AS MUCH, but I still miss Portugal.

This weekend, since it was my brother’s last weekend before school started (Ohio schools start MEGA early), my parents decided to take us on an impromptu vacation to Myrtle Beach, so not even after being back home for four days, I hopped on another plane to go to South Carolina. It was a relaxing trip, and it was good to see the beach again since I saw one everyday for three weeks.

Another artsy picture of Myrtle Beach

A wall in the Hard Rock Cafe at Myrtle Beach. The message is so simple, yet powerful. Also, I HIGHLY recommend their Cauliflower Wings (same crunch, same buffalo taste, HALF the calories)

I learned a lot from studying abroad from Portugal, and I’m so grateful to have come home with a suitcase full of memories. This was a once in a lifetime opportunity that I am so privileged to have experienced. 

As we come towards the end of summer, after spring term, travel, it’s safe to say that I’ll be enjoying these last few days at home binge-watching the Flash before I have to be back on campus again!

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My Final Words

I can’t believe I leave Portugal tomorrow morning. It seems like just yesterday that I flew into Lisbon and lugged my two roller bags across the entire airport. Pitch day was such an amazing experience, and I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to participate. My CEO was the one to pitch, and it was a general consensus that he would pitch because we could all tell that he REALLY wanted to do it.

We didn’t make it to the top ten, but it didn’t really affect me. To even have this experience was enough for me. However, while I didn’t make the top ten, one of the other Michigan students did, and I may or may not be biased, but his was definitely the best pitch. Some of the ideas were absolutely brilliant, and it was no surprise that they made it.

Afterwards, EIA had a final cocktail party where we had a chance to say goodbye to our teammates and the other friends we made that we don’t go to school with. It was a bittersweet feeling. Saying goodbye to my new Portuguese friends made me a little sad, knowing there’s a chance I may never see them in person, but I felt satisfied, leaving with a boatload of memories that I will never forget.

A final pic with my team! 

When I returned back to my hotel, it was time to say goodbye to some of the Michigan group. Even though we’ll be back on campus and will see each other, it was still EMOTIONAL seeing everyone leave after we spent the past three weeks together.

I leave on Sunday, so I have all day today to do whatever. I decided to take a walk along the beach from my hotel and go to Cascais for the day. There, I went to the shopping center and went to a store called Bershka. I ALSO bought my first pair of Birks, and I have to say, no WONDER my friend has six pairs. They are WORTH every penny.

For lunch, I went to a restaurant that specialized in Piri-Piri chicken, which is basically roasted chicken with a special oil poured on it, made from the piri-piri chilli. IT was SO good. And for DESSERT, I went to Santini, which is a super famous Portuguese ice cream store. I got mango and coconut, and it was the most amazing thing I’ve eaten. The mango was sweet unlike the tangy mango sorbets you get in store, and the coconut had real coconut in it, so mixed together, it was HEAVEN. Blank Slate who???

A picture of literally the best ice cream I’ve EVER had

A picture with all of the Michigan kids!

As I pack my bags, I realized what an amazing time I had in Cascais. I’ll be honest, the idea of going to a foreign country with six other strangers was incredibly intimidating, and it could have gone either way. I was a little scared before leaving because I didn’t want to spend three weeks alone, but it was nothing like that. Aylin, Emily, Maggie, Nick, Varun, and Thiago were all such genuine, kind, talented people that I am so grateful that I got the chance to know them, and will continue to know them as we hang out more on Campus. I’m glad only seven of us went to Portugal because I got to know each person so well, and we really bonded. Saying goodbye and watching them pack their bags was a little sad, but I know I’ll see them soon!

None of this would have been possible had the University of Michigan not given us the opportunity to participate in the European Innovation Academy. I am extremely grateful to be able to go to such a prestigious university that gives me the chance to challenge myself and push me out of my comfort zone while exploring the world. I would also like to thank the International Programs in Engineering office for giving me the chance to blog about this amazing experience.

As my third visit to Europe comes to an end, I realize that it takes a certain privilege to travel the world, and I am so incredibly grateful that I have this privilege. Finally, I would like to thank my parents for instilling in me the importance to travel and encouraging me to see the world and learn about other cultures.

I don’t mean to sound like every single cliché college student who studies abroad, but these three weeks DEFINITELY changed my life.

Reeya Desai: College of Engineering - European Innovation Academy (Cascais, Portugal)

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The Moment I Fell For Portugal

This week was SUCH A blur! I can’t believe that I only have one more day of EIA. These three weeks really flew by!

Over the past weekend, we went to Lagos, Portugal. It’s 3 hours away from Cascais, so we woke up at 6 AM to go to Lisbon, and take the bus there. I slept the WHOLE way there. When we got there, we decided to stop and have lunch before we went kayaking, so we would have some STRENGTH, which I clearly needed.

After lunch, we walked around a bit and then met the kayaking tour company’s desk, and got on our kayak’s. I’ve only been kayaking once and that was in a RIVER, so I guess you could say it was my first time doing REAL kayaking. The last time I went White Water Rafting in the Smokey Mountains, I fell off the raft, so falling off boats is a TREND I have. Now would also be the time to mention that I am only mediocre at swimming because I’m allergic to chlorine, SO I could never completely finish my swim lessons. HOWEVER, good news, the life jacket makes sure you don’t really need to know how to swim. Just make sure to be COMFORTABLE falling into the water. I somehow managed to FALL OFF the kayak three times, but to be honest, I’m going to say that was the best part.

HOW MANY OF YOU CAN SAY YOU FELL OFF A KAYAK 3 TIMES IN LAGOS, PORTUGAL?

This is where we had our kayaking excursion. The water was Caribbean blue, and the coves were absolutely BEAUTIFUL. 

Afterwards, we had a couple hours before our bus back to Lisbon, so we walked around Lagos a bit. We went to the Official Portugal store, and I got my dad and brother customized jerseys (they were only 35 euros including the personalization).

On the bus ride back, I got the extreme front seat, so it basically was like I DROVE the bus.

Sunday was a more chill day because we were all so exhausted from Saturday’s water activities and travel. My roommate and I went to Cascais and had fresh juice from this organic cafe, and I immediately felt 300 times healthier.

In the evening, all of us (as in the Michigan kids) went to a sushi restaurant in Cascais, and it was absolutely AMAZING. The seafood in Portugal tastes so good because of how fresh and natural it is. If I’m not mistaken, the European Union’s food laws are way more strict than the FDA’s, so food in Europe tends to be less chemical intensive. I had two sushi rolls, one had fried crab and the other one had fried shrimp and avocado, and it was SO good. My bill was 22 euros, but it was WORTH it.

Pictures of the sushi that dented my wallet. The one on top was fried soft-shell crab and avocado. The one on the bottom was fried shrimp, avocado, and salmon on top. 

On Monday, we went back to work. When we got the list of teams who made it into the Product Sprint, initially, our team was not on it, so our team was a bit disappointed and confused because we had turned everything in two days before the deadline. Once we talked to the advisors, we were able to prove that we got everything in time, so we made it into the product sprint!

I was a little nervous because this week was all about coding, but after talking to my software mentor for the past few days, he said that they don’t expect you to have a perfect app if you only have three days to code something, so I didn’t really have to stress about it that much.

Also, our app got an article feature in a Portuguese news website called the Jornal Económico! You can read it at: http://www.jornaleconomico.sapo.pt/noticias/cinco-jovens-desenvolvem-a-togather-a-aplicacao-para-por-turistas-a-visitar-locais-frequentados-por-residentes-340177. 

A tip: it’s in Portuguese, so open it in Google Chrome, and it will automatically translate the page for you!

Today, we meet with one on one with investors and work on our pitch for tomorrow. I can’t believe tomorrow is my last day at EIA!

STAY TUNED as I reflect about my time here in Cascais, Portugal!

Reeya Desai: College of Engineering - European Innovation Academy (Cascais, Portugal)