Jolkona’s Project Catalyst takes eight young entrepreneurs to meet some world class enterprises
By Debojit Saha
One fine morning as I was going through the pile of emails I saw one email which read: Congratulations you have been selected as one of the Catalyst from Bangladesh, we are looking forward to seeing you in Seattle, US. I was ecstatic. Around a month ago, I applied for an accelerator program, Jolkona Catalyst 2015 which was funded by the US State Department. The program called for application in early January, 2015 and after two round of screening process they selected 8 social entrepreneurs from Bangladesh who were scheduled to go to the US in April to attend their three week long program. The entrepreneurs were from a diverse set of backgrounds both in terms of age, education and experience. The projects were a mixture of for-profit as well as not-for-profit but the overall goal of every project was to make a positive difference in the society.
In the next few weeks we were on our toes to wrap up things so as to ensure that day-to-day operation of our organizations are not hampered due to our absence for three weeks and also we had to make our own preparation. On 16 April 2015 8 entrepreneurs from Bangladesh set out on a journey to US.
At Seattle we were welcomed by Katie Rendon, program coordinator of Jolkona Catalyst 2015 and she took us to our office space where we were briefed on how to commute in Seattle, what are the things we can expect over the next three weeks and then we were taken to our host families so that we can take some rest and combat jet lag. The organizers of the program were wise in keeping a day in hand so that we could get over jet lag and have no trouble in attending the program. On our first week at the program we met numerous coach and consultants who guided us on different aspects of our projects, some of them include brainstorming regarding mission and vision of our organisations, setting financial and operational milestones, dispute/conflict resolution, pitch coaching etc. Office hours were long and coaches were highly demanding but what kept us going was the strong motivation and guidance from our mentors. One of the best things the program did was to attach one mentor to each entrepreneur. The mentors helped us in understanding the context of the lectures given by the coaches and also assisted us in apply their advices from in our project.
The second week was one of the most exciting parts of the tour. We had a number of visits to different corporate houses, factories and non-profit organizations. Some of the places we visited include Google, Microsoft, Boeing, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Code.org. The philosophy behind visiting these organizations was to interact with personnel from these extremely successful organizations and to share our ideas and also to briefly discuss about the projects we are running. I found these engagements particularly helpful because the brief one to one session helped us to think certain avenues of our project which we were overlooking. Also these sessions were a form of encouragement and appreciation towards the hardship we face in our daily life because we found out that in initial days of these companies, they too had such struggle which in a way was a bit comforting.
The last week was all about getting ready for the demo day. Demo day was the day of the final presentation where all of the eight entrepreneurs presented their ideas to a wide group of audience from Seattle. The audience consisted of people from different US enterprises, Bangladeshi community and entrepreneurs. The audience was awed to hear all the eight ideas from Bangladesh and the projects were appreciated whole heartedly. Even though there were only two awards: Judges Choice Award which was bagged by Fiona Khandaker for her project Trained BD and Audience Choice Award which was bagged by me for Shurokkha. but all of us felt like winners when a senior citizen from the Bangladeshi community said “You guys made me feel proud of being a Bangladeshi”. After the final presentation, there were lots of handshakes and commitments to stay in touch and work together. The next two days the entrepreneurs spent in catching up with the people they have met on the demo day and explored different ways of working together to support their initiatives.
Apart from the scheduled meet ups which were arranged by the program there were numerous meet ups which the entrepreneurs themselves scheduled on their own. For instance I met some NGOs and business houses who are working on products in the same line as my project Shurokkha. Moreover, I had a wonderful time discussing my project with my host parents Heidi Felton and Mathew. They were my in-house mentors. Also I explored some wonderful places with them, namely Chihuly Museum, Pike Place Market, Space Needle, The Pompeii etc. Also all 8 of us scheduled a tour to Boeing Factory which was an amazing factory. We got to see the aircrafts being built right in front of our eyes and learned a lot about different spacecrafts like Boeing 777, which was once flown from Hong Kong to London along the wrong route so that they could make a record of flying for 22 hours at a stretch. We were awed to see that vision of one entrepreneur around 100 years back has led this company to a height matched only by matched by very few companies in the world. The visit gave us the inspiration to think big and the audacity to continue in our efforts.
But I believe the real benefit of the program is the relations we have built with the people in Seattle, for example in my case I am working with a US based organization called PATH and Spreeha to spread the benefit of my project to a even wider group of people. And as far as I know almost everyone of the 8 entrepreneurs are working with someone whom they have met in US through this program. All in all it was a very rewarding experience and I believe it will help me in shaping the course of my project and has made me better equipped to meet the real life challenges.
Five takeaways from the experience:
– Customer development always comes before product development. Learn about your customers first and then develop product.
– Start small and see if you can find 100 customers to pay for your product/service, learn from the experience and then scale unto 1000 customers.
– Learn from your failures; look at them as learning opportunities.
– It’s okay to be doubtful at times but always remember that every great idea sounds lame at the initial stage.
– Be shameless: don’t waste time thinking about what others will think about you approaching clients/investors.
