Entrepreneurship Journal

Over reading week I conducted my interviews for our venture ideas. I have learned a lot about myself and the importance of interviews. I think interviewing is a crucial part of generating ideas, especially when you already think you have an idea in mind. When asking people questions I realized that they were suggesting similar thoughts to my idea and that they had the problems I came up with. Instead of forcing a solution onto them, they had a chance to come up with solutions on their own, which promotes my ideas. I also learned that I have gotten much more comfortable talking in an interview or general conversations. I was able to stay pretty calm and maintain good conversation. I really enjoyed this task as it made me get out of my comfort zone by reaching out to random people and forcing myself to talk to them. 

After generating our ideas and coming up with new venture ideas, we talked about interviews. We are supposed to find people to interview to see if our ideas can be useful for people who are actually going through the problems we came up with. I have generated my questions and I'm beginning to reach out to find interviewee's. We did a group activity to get a better understanding of what to ask and how to do the interviews. I feel a bit nervous to conduct these interviews because I get anxious when talking to strangers, however, I think this will get me out of my comfort zone and help me with future entrepreneurial skills. I hope to get enough people to interview and that my generated problems are real. 

 We worked on coming up with new ideas and possible problems that people might have to start a new venture. We used the business model canvas to help generate ideas and possible problems that people might have. This was very cool to use our own ideas and think about other people to generate new ventures. After using the canvas, we talked about reaching out to people to find those who actually need help with these problems. I feel a bit nervous about reaching out to people because I feel as though I may have come up with a problem that not a lot of people have. I chose mental health and its relation to people struggling with acne and how it affects their daily routines. I think people struggle with this, but I'm afraid not a lot of people will admit it. I'm hoping to find others who are going through this struggle and hopefully offer a possible solution. 

 After coming up with an idea, we actually launched our product! This was a very interesting project as it generated many emotions that I'm sure people feel when actually selling their own products. It was fun to create a website and name for a product and see what others thought of our idea. I think the fear of starting is much harder to deal with than actually launching it. Once I created the website I felt very excited to see what we were going to do next. I find it very different to feel these emotions in a classroom setting. I was intrigued to find out what was going to happen next and how it would affect my self-esteem when using my own idea.

After the second week of classes I felt more comfortable learning about my ideas. We came up with an idea and began talking about possible venture ideas. It was interesting to see who enjoyed my ideas and wanted to work with me, as well as hearing others input on how to better my ideas. I think it was hard to express my ideas at first because I was afraid to share and hear negative options, but once I shared them, I only heard positive feedback or constructive criticism. I appreciated the feedback as it gave me insight on what starting a venture might look like.