She eats, she travels

Tomorrow is the day I pitch! The first round of elimination officially begins. The entire auditorium was filled with a nervous air of ppt scrambles and pitch practicing. Unfortunately I stuttered on stage like a mad woman again, but now I know I'm one of those that needs 30 practice rounds before going up on stage.

We had a breakthrough in team communication today. After discussing the future of Cito and where we want to see this go post competition, everyone realized we all were passionate about the idea. Communication had always been the problem, mostly due to time and pressure. We are all working together towards the same goal today: getting our slide deck beautiful, polished, and me pitch ready.

We have a great team and a great product. I'm looking forward to how we evolve in our relationship once we go our separate ways in geography, but hopefully a lot closer in communication. I think we can do it. Just got to prove it tomorrow.

Great line from Ken Singer after hearing my not so sexy elevator pitch. This was actually the highlight of the day, the rest of which was kind of sad to be honest.

Weepy woman. Yes, it happened. I knew it would happen to someone but no way did I expect that someone to be me. I cried. Frustrated to the point of tears. But you know what, it might not be a bad thing. After realizing what was going on, it occurred to me that I would not be sitting here so upset about a project if I didn't. If anything, I was relieved to know I finally hit rock bottom and there was only uphill to come. So after a quick recharge and a self pep talk, I was back on track.

I had another great weekend of travels and am again adjusting to Tallinn life, now considered home. Started the day with some pho which we scoped out somewhere in Old Town and now I’m doing laundry to keep awake until my working social later. Being on a cruise ship overnight, over 16 hours of travel, I didn't expect it to be so comfortable. The cabin fit four in a tiny room with bunk beds and barely enough room to stand, but this kind of opportunity doesn’t come to often, squished in a room with your summer school friends. I enjoyed the whole boat experience, dancing at club Disco, shopping Duty Free, drinking Absolut Pear, learning poker, watching the sunset, and running up and down 9 flights of stairs at a time. Compared to last week, the commute was much better to Stockholm than to Helsinki.

Mainland, Stockholm > Helsinki in every aspect. We had a bus tour to set the trip and map out the entire city. This is the way to start a one-day trip to a foreign country. Not like Helsinki when it took half the day to walk to our first destination. So everyone was in a much more agreeable mood entering Stockholm. The city itself was beautiful with so much history in its architecture. It almost felt like a bigger version of Amsterdam at first since there were many lakes within the city, at least coming from someone who’s been to each city only in 5 hour pockets. Natia and I were so efficient, hitting all the stops she wanted to see and eating ice cream (all I wanted in a trip, really) while squeezing in some shopping before we left. H&M is Swedish afterall, and so we stopped by three stores to check out what they had to offer. I don’t know if I could tell there was more variety since the stores were spread out geographically, but I bought a blazer nonetheless. I saw the Nobel Museum, Royal Palace, King Street, and Queen Street, plus a whole lot more passing which I probably could not point out from a picture still. That is why I must return again and spend a good week or so. The whole time I was feeling sorry that I can’t bring my sister here this time on our backpacking around Europe, but I’m sure we’ll have a chance again. What a great trip!

After another eventful weekend, I am ready to work. I hope I can get some slides prepared for the pitch coming up this Wednesday so I can sleep sound at night. And now my laundry is waiting for me.

Signing off, 

The weekend is finally here! Today was a blur of a nerve-wracking day for me. The morning started off with me haggling my team to push the new messaging out on our Facebook and landing pages. We decided to steer clear of buzz words in our position messaging as we finalized our brand and USP yesterday. Our USP: 90% of our revenue source actually goes to charity. So book a meeting, get advised by pros, pay it forward.

Pitching – practice makes perfect. I’m not going to pretend like I prepared for the pitch as I was occupied with content creating up until I had to get on stage. But it was definitely something I do regret not preparing for. Having the opportunity to pitch in front of Mike Reiner and Chris Burry to be critiqued does not come again. Had I taken the practice more seriously, it would have benefited my team tremendously. So much of a sale depends on the pitch and I may have just cost our team something great. But now I know I have to work 10 times more than everyone else who came prepared. I will not let my team down again. 

The most fulfilling learning for me today was actually not from the lecture or pitch practice, but from within my team. Given my poor performance and the onslaught of negative feedback from several mentors, Atilio, Arezu, and I for the first time defended our position, brand, and work from beginning to end. We are confident that we have been working extremely hard to make Cito work. We are passionate about the project, some about winning, some about the idea, and some (me) about getting something working built. I feel so much better after defining our idea and putting it up on the web. It’s official, Cito is counting down the days til launch and our awesome team is ready to create. 

For the meantime, creative thinking on a cruise to Stockholm will do us some good.

Signing off, 

The entire team is finally on board and we had the most successful day today. Nobody doubted the project and we're really defining our product. We were able to determine an MVP, USP, and position in order to start marketing. In layman's terms, we determined what we will realistically build by next wednesday, what our differentiating factor in the business is, and a two-line summary of what we offer to solve a problem.

Here it is: Individuals seek professional advice to kickstart their careers while professionals seek ways to contribute to greater society. Cito provides an easily manageable online solution that includes support to charities

I'm actually feeling a bit under the weather so I will have to turn in early.

Signing off,

From words to digital to legos. Today we explained our business. Who we are, what we do, why and how we do it. I learned the importance of wording, but more importantly, the role of positioning.

Last night I worked with Atilio to create a user story with a simple script walking through a scenario from our ideal customer. We basically modeled the Kiva video (http://vimeo.com/16991128), wrote a script, recorded it, Prezified it. Too bad it'll be discarded. No position, no use.

Here's how we figured out that the model was lacking a clear position. Every member of the team was given the challenge of defining the customer, the problem, and our proposed solution. Seemingly straight forward task, but we had to express this all in legos. No two model looked alike.

First, a super hearty and delicious lunch of salmon, fried potatoes stuffed with cheese, and some delicious flaky lemon dessert.

And down to business - serious playtime with legos.

Work station

My interpretation of task, "make a duck in 30 seconds". To be fair, I made the plant during the instructions.

Meet the customer - approaching graduate, on a car without wheels, determined direction, but finding it difficult to piece together to move forward.

  Meet professional: experienced in his field, huge wheel of knowledge on head, but a blue shield keeping him from sharing.

 The problem: one seeks advice, the other has advice, no clear path to connect the two.

The solution: We are the gateway to connect the two, using charity (rake & tree representing social good, or something like that) as the pull factor.

Given the limited supply of blocks, I think I adequately made my point. Super corny and somewhat incomplete, but the exercise was mostly successful in revealing our different take on the same project.

The highlight of my day was actually watching my team pitch our model to various mentors from start to finish with confidence. We were able to defend our rationale and were given concrete feedback. I even received a compliment! Looks like I might have a bright future in product marketing and marketing communications. Let's hope it shows in our final product.

Oh and of course our CEO motivating us with chocolates.

Looking forward to another productive day tomorrow.

Signing off,

The pillar of the group, most dedicated member, cheerleader, whatever. When nobody else believes, the CEO does. When nobody else hopes, the CEO does. 

"Sweetheart, you know what? You have no choice. You have to love the idea. You know why? Because it's your baby. It might be slightly retarded, slower to progress, but you will love it. And that's why we'll make it." - Atilio, CEO of Citofund

Cito logo made, paper prototype built, usability testing tomorrow, business interviews booked left and right - things are getting real, real fast.

Today we had an intense workshop of prototyping our product. We are providing a web solution to connect networkers with businesses with society - one pays for the service that the other provides in the name of social good. 

The main frustration is getting a viable business model with revenue streams that could last and pricing plans that could attract. 

That's intense. But we did it!

Scarfed it down.

Insight from today: a little positivity can go a long way. When the entire team is spiraling into a negativity well, it's okay to let someone say you're doing okay. I was afraid that I'd get swayed into thinking we're doing things right when we really weren't, but after evaluating our accomplishments, I realized each of our goals had been met. At least the short-term goals of reaching out to X customers, conducting X interviews, creating a logo, and mapping out the system architecture, we hit all of these. 

It's important to acknowledge failure, note criticism, but also accept praise, and stay positive. This is to you mom, the most positive thinker I know.

Deserving of a good night sleep. Go Citofund!

Signing off,

The best weekend I've had since coming to Estonia was spent off the mainland. To Finland we took a ferry, nicely accommodated, and to the Estonian Island Naissar we took a boat, with an awesome view.

I had a great time exploring different lands and different peoples with familiar friends. It was nice getting to group together with the Berkeley crew to tackle fun (non-academic) problems - getting lost, finding monuments, weaving through forest, trying new foods ...

On Naissaar, I felt like Indiana Jones, ducking tree branches on the back of a huge military vehicle. We went back in time to see Soviet missiles and canon bunkers. Feasted on by forest bugs, slapped in the face by low-hanging branches, and cut all around climbing sides of the forest ... it was strangely exhilarating. I found myself laughing the whole time and I think the open air and rawness of the whole experience offered therapeutic relief from the closed working space back at Tallinn.

Wireless - no phone, internet, devices this weekend; digital detox worked. I am recharged for the week and ready to plug back in. 

6:30am and we're off to the port

Only Julia's awake

Our "Superstar" breakfast buffet on the ferry

Jack and Coke in a can? Awesome ad on the boat.

To Finlandia!

Lamp post orchestra welcoming us to Helsinki

Along with some very posh dogs

And very stylish women

Even their signs are hip

Hands of President Kekkonen, or so I think

Clock inside the headquarters of the oldest, biggest newspaper of Finland

The freshest fruit stand at the train station! Last chance to pick up some strawberries

In front of the huge white Lutheran Church

Another casual fashionista

At the open market, I had the best salmon huge piece, grilled with mushroom sauce and homefries - the picture does not do justice

When my roommate got lost and I went solo looking for her, the coffee shop I was so tempted to go inside. Good thing I turned back; she was waiting back with the others ...

A simple strawberry vanilla swirl soft serve, but they call it "ice cream hornet". So refreshing on a hot day at the park

No way I was going to stop in Finland without some coffee

I thought it looked like "meats"

And finally an espresso macchiato! Very good, considering I've been living off of instant and watery uni coffee.

This was throughout the parks in Helsinki, probably ode to their abundance of wood (>2/3 of the country!). They were the design capital of the year last year, and you definitely can see why in the building architecture, which I was too busy admiring to take photos. This wood stuff too, I guess.

My artful take on the lonely croc.

Finally our first week is over! Physically and mentally exhausted, but the week flew by since there was so much to be done. There were many disappointments and difficulties amongst the team throughout the week, but we came out strong. Arguing it out, battling over ideas, and breaking all niceties, our team got close real fast. I think we all learned to become better listeners and not let things get personal. You can't really learn team building from books or lectures, so this week was the best teamwork learning I've done since I've come to college.

I am so happy to stay in today to finish up some work alone, spend quality time unplugging and recharging for the eventful weeks ahead. 

The self-appointed CEO, our design and ux developer, Atilio

& of course, entertainment to get us hyped up for the day

David Szabo on longevity in the workplace - its about playing and working

Be social, go out, have fun, network! 

Building a genuine network will get you places, not just beefing up your resume.

The meat of the business

I got a blanket for being engaged! Active listening is paying off :)

Much needed rice for lunch

Our team set realistic goals and reachable deadlines so we are ready to go into next Monday with confidence. Tomorrow I'm going to Helsinki! Very excited to be getting away from Tallinn and exploring the rest of the Baltics. I hope the water will open my spirit and mind. 

Signing off,

Our team is currently playing catchup, gathering our customer segmentation interviews, mapping out the business model, and assessing the implementation strategy. We finally got to play with some design aspects of the business-making process with a quick workshop on user interface design. 

Most importantly, our team finally had our first dinner together with our awesome mentor, Riivo! It was great to put all this startup craze aside for a moment and practice some good old-fashioned team building skills with good food, good chats, and good company.

The importance of designing for users

The artist's dilemma: design for usability, not for art's sake

Motivational chocolates from the mentor. I now trust this bear as a symbol for awesome sweets.

Hipster town for dinner

Cool window seats

Water anyone?

First order of business, Saku Hele.

Roasted goat cheese. That caramelized crust, so creamy, balanced with spicy arugula and tangy balsamic - great food at last.

Yay team!!!

Wine and desserts @ KOHVIK MUST PUUDEL

 Guinness chocolate cake

Julia & Julia

The Berkeley girls

Strawberry soup a la mode. This dessert seems to be on every hip menu in Tallinn.

A gift on my phone from Arezu

Don't mess. She's a Jersey chick.

Fun night, ready to end the week right!

Signing off,

Wow, what a day! We have pivoted our business idea over two dozen times in the past three days but have finally chosen a viable project! Emotional whirlwind, testing each others' limits, ripping apart bad ideas - what a ruthless team. But we made it!

Day begins with landing on Mars!

Dream big

Not everyone will like your idea. Kenny on stage, rejection pitching.

Cabbage slaw and beet salad, sandwich i packed, and some pastry - quick bites.

Ended the day to find two beetles under my desk and dozens of tiny flying bugs on my bed. Still so many ... how will I make it alive to tackle tomorrow?

Signing Off,

Creative ideas are unlimited; innovation comes only from execution.

Its quite difficult to have a bad new idea. I believe all ideas are good, at least in the the creative sense. It's when there's nothing but ideas, we get in-actionable hypotheses and a lot fluff.

My team and I have been struggling for the past couple of days with narrowing our creative focus to manageable, actionable, and growth-driven ideas. Going around the table bouncing new ideas and then taking turns hammering away at its potential flaws - not effective.

4 steps? Not so bad ...

What what what? 4 steps ... information chart overload

Know thy customer.

Discouraged, distraught, and a little bit damaged, our team morale was not very high. Despite the setbacks, the team pushed through. Fully digesting lectures on lean startup methodology, customer segmentation and discovery, and taking mentor advice to heart, the team has grown stronger and closer.

Motivational recharge and team bonding at Mc-D's

We have yet to finalize an implementation strategy, yet alone a single idea, but we know for sure that we can work together as a solid team. In that sense, I believe we're in the lead.

Go team, go bears!

Signing off,

What a day! 14 straight hours of innovation convention later, I am now fully equipped to get innovating from creative thinking. From rock performances, key note speaker, skyping with Steve Blank, and team-building workshops, today was truly a great way to kick off our program.

It was great meeting my team, Educate, with some of the greatest minds of Estonia, India, Denmark, and our very own USA. I am completely exhausted as our team struggled through finding a focus, but we are getting closer to defining a "problem".

Go find your team!

Educate team where are you?

All 30-some teams were provided with huge monitors (the robot ads were distracting though)

Estonia X-Factor's winner

EIA's President Alar Kolk with his 3-D brain model

Skype interview with Steve Blank on Lean Startup

James Bond Cocktail Party

Thank you Alistair Fee for the James Bond Innovation Challenge

Hoping for a more successful day with the Educate team tomorrow. Definitely need some sleep for that.

Signing off,