FutureFounders - Present innovators

Dreamsruptive Beyonders

Introduction

As a member of the Future founder Fellowship program, I undertook two primary activities: the first is the Startup Readiness Simulation and the second is the work experience by getting a placement at a startup.

The Startup Readiness Simulation was designed to teach fellows the core values for working and succeeding at building at startups. Those values are growth mindset, self-learning, feedback, innovation, and strategic planning. To achieve this, we were assigned different activities to perform and we got the opportunity to talk with startup founders to gain knowledge behind the behind-the-scenes of these types of businesses.

On the other side, I got the opportunity to work at ECI Development with the Sales and Marketing department to create reports and dashboards based on the data that they had collected over the years to help with the decision-making of the company and evaluate the performance of the marketing campaigns. This experience has been very helpful personally as I have used all the values like feedback, creativity, and self-learning within a practical environment as well and discovered the benefits of working with that mindset.

StartupReadiness Training

As I mentioned above, during the program, the future founder team taught us different values through the following units: Become a Business Analyst, Solve Problems Through Innovation, Pitch like a Pro, and Ace your Startup Interview. At the same time, the FF team worked with their partnered startups to find us a match where we could put into practice everything they thought us as well as our diverse backgrounds.

In the first unit, Become a Business Analyst, we learned about strategic planning, everything from a startup’s mission and vision all the way to objective and key results strategies. To practice this we analyzed the successful strategy that a Nigerian Company implemented to stay in business. We analyzed Jumia, an e-commerce store that changed the way it interacted with its suppliers and adapted to the difficult environment present in the Nigeria, where logistic and distribution networks are very complicated and the public doesn’t trust online purchases due to the high number of online scams that happen in the country. They had to change directions in their operations and marketing strategy to survive in that market. From this analysis, we identified growth mindset, creativity, and feedback implementation as we reviewed each other work several times. Once we learned how to implement this methodology using Jumia as an exercise, we chose a startup to research and apply strategic planning to. I chose the Mexican unicorn: Kavak. This is a Mexican used cars e-commerce that is looking to revolutionize the used car market and allow more Mexicans to change and have reliable used cars. Read more about the strategic analysis at this link.

The second and third units (Solve Problems Through Innovation, Pitch like a Pro) then covered topics related to identifying and solving problems, like design thinking, and how to present your ideas to possible clients, investors or stakeholders. For this, we were assigned a team to work with to solve a problem that we identified in our communities. In my team, we worked to solve social inequality in Mexico caused by the lack of training or work opportunities. We employed the design thinking methodology to identify the best solution that kept the opinions of the end-user at the center of it. Then we elaborated a final idea and prototype and prepared a pitch to show at the FutureFounder DemoDay. Please visit the LEADEX - Design Thinking Hackathon to read more about the process and results of that project.

Finally, in the last unit, we reviewed a couple of methodologies to ace an interview. What to expect, how to prepare, and how to answer the questions they make in an interview. As part of the FutureFounder program, I was connected to two companies where I had interviews. In both, I felt very confident but in the end, I didn’t get the first job but got the second one.

Key Takeaways

The FutureFounder program is a truly amazing experience not only because of the simulation but also because of the people that join and the startups you get to interact with. Being a Fellow has made me learn a lot of lessons from Rodolpho and Mary in the simulation but also by talking to all the diverse fellows that make up the program. We have people from all around the globe from different academic backgrounds, but that doesn’t matter because we all share a small spark that moves us forward. Being a fellow means not wanting to conform to the traditional 9-5 jobs or people that keep learning every day to be more resourceful. As the name suggests all Futurefounder fellows are future founders and that is showcased in every simulation, exercise, or conversation of the program. So If you felt related to this paragraph I strongly recommend you to join the next future founder cohort as I am sure you will find the best people there.