On November 28, At 12 PM (GMT 5+45), Hult Prize at IOE and NxtGen successfully completed their Level 8 of the Entrepreneurial talk series on Tackling your Failures. The Wild Card Pitching for the Finals of Hult Prize 2021, Food for Good challenge was conducted as well. The hostess, Suprima Shrestha, greeted the audience, guests, judges, and contestants. Level 8 of the entrepreneurship talk series marks the last episode of the talk series. This particular episode truly reflected the essence of life: Never giving up and always fighting for your dreams, especially if you are strongly guided and driven to bring changes in the world via your ventures and projects.
Let me share the speaker's perspective and strategies on Tackling your Failure and saying Failures goodbye after the first meet. Let's start with the first speaker, Ms. Cassidy Murray, a motivational speaker, refugee advocate, and activist.
Hodophilic Cassidy Murray - A devotee and advocate of humanity
There is no age limit to start a change and get your hands into organizational learning ; Miss Murray is the perfect example of this quote. Ms. Murray is a traveler who got inspired to start her journey on advocacy and activism when she saw the hideous and gruesome refugee crisis in Greece and Turkey back in 2015. It won't be wrong to say that A in Cassidy actually favors the ACTIVIST nature.
Please do not freak out when I say Ms. Murray, is a 19-year-old activist who owns 3 blogs,2 businesses, 2 online stores, and 7 awesome projects. At present, Cassidy has been rigorously working with Kids Unite 4 Hope (Charity for refugees), Changemaker Odyssey (Social Enterprise), HumanityUp (NGO for Ambassador Programs for Change Making), and GimmeMo Youth (Media Platform for the Youths).
The Mistakes in the Early Times
Starting an organization or entrepreneurial venture is not as easy as Putting the Godrej Hair Dye: Cut, Mix, and Apply. It is more complex and needs high levels of sensitivity towards the image of the venture, and the team invested in this. Cassidy admits that she made mistakes and suffered dilemmas. First, It was not having a team with a similar vision and mission of the project, which contributed to getting distracted. The urgency to finish the job contributed to actions before planning, which undoubtedly limited the brainstorming period. Adding to this, the priority list was missing from the team. Also, pretending to be somebody else or losing the essence of "Cassidy Murray" made her feel sorry and sad. Topping the list, her public speaking fear, which was hindering her from the audience who wanted to hear her speak. But she worked on this and faced her fear. Now she now enjoys talking her heart out to the mass.
7 Lessons to learn from the Failure
According to Cassidy, Failures are not the demotivating agents; they are the lessons you have to learn and never repeat. Let's check out these beautiful lessons Cassidy has to share with us.
1) Check on your Direction
Sometimes you can get carried away from the thing you were targeting. So you need to pause and check what you were trying to achieve. Like you can't search for Problems in our country when your target is to build a house, Makes sense, Right?
2) Find Your People
The world says, "Opposites attract," but here, discard the opposite. Make a team that believes in sacrificing sleep for weeks and enjoying benefits for years. Always, Remember, you are forming an organization that solves yours and hundreds of people's issues. So get loyal, honest, and persistent teammates, not the ones who run away after a failure.
3) Don't repeat mistakes
In the initial phase, you are prone to and allowed to make lots of mistakes. But with the progress of time and funds invested, you have to have the mindset of not repeating mistakes again and again. You do not want to invest in the same thing every time.
4) Stay authentic to yourself
Wearing a mask to tackle daily life crisis is not a new thing for every human being. But when you start cheating yourself and sell your authenticity for some money or opportunities, then you would own the greatest loss, losing the True self. So always stay true to yourself.
5) Know your vision and mission
If you are thinking of starting a new venture, then always focus on your mission and vision. Clarity on these two aspects will guide to launch the project as well as approach and collaborate with the organizations, which have similar beliefs.
6) Align your intentions
Setting goals, vision, and mission are not enough. You and your Team have to align them together. Bring out the discussions and arguments and make things clear. This will remove the doubts and will strengthen trust and understanding.
7) Asking for help won't make you inferior
Some people presume that asking questions means you are less-educated and were less attentive in the sessions. However, those who believe in healthy interaction accept questioning as a sign of being interested and Activation of LEARNING MODE. Thus, ask questions to the experts or any entrepreneurs (if available) before wasting time and funds on the unnecessary steps or, say, launches.
Now you might be expecting to know the Tips to tackle and push through the Failure, which Ms. Cassidy would have suggested (See, I can read minds). So, here some 4 excellent tips to tackle the failures.
- Find your peers and homies for the needed HYPE
- Trust Yourself and tell yourself you deserve better
- Stay True to Your SELF: Don't Change for the money
- Own an attitude of, Give up, What's that?
Ms. Murray stresses excelling the public speaking skills can aid you a lot with pitching. Adding to this, Cassidy states you should use Social Media to access the people who can collaborate or help in your project.
Arif Nezami- The storehouse of Innovation and Startup ideas
The opportunity to work for Digital Wing (project launched by Bangladeshi Prime Minister ) initiated Arif Nezami's journey in getting to fields of entrepreneurship. Arif is Founder at Preneur Lab Limited and leads Facebook Developers Circles in Dhaka. The second speaker for the session, Arif Nezami, is a serial entrepreneur (someone who has multiple startups).
Arif shares his early day's struggles with the revenues and funds, the pressure on teammates (from their family to get a concrete job, Typical South Asian Parent Trait), and the trust people do not want to put on a young person in entrepreneurship.
For the last issue, Arif had a quick solution, portraying himself as a mature person AKA be the bearded guy (It worked, and it definitely works for males who look young). However, the prior two issues were harder. For this, he focused on the Venture's PR and asked the teammates to convince the parents and get into quality marketing.
Failures during the Journey
- The failure of Meetup.com and ticketing service (for various events) got shut down within a year because people at the time people were not really into using E-cash.
- Failure to grab digital government and private company tenders.
- Putting out a lot about the projects named to his team on social media made Arif lose a considerable project.
Tips for tackling the Failure
- Maintain some secrecy and continue your job.
- Invest more in MVP( minimum viable product).
- Always have mentors but make sure they are supportive.
- Have the right attitude to work again.
- Study your market, logistics, and technical aspects.
- Be good at managing a good team and strong accounts.
How to get the best investors?
Mr. Nezami is a firm believer in "Preparation before Exhibition." If you are not sure of your project, then while pitching, you will face utmost shame as well as a lousy impression on investors, which is sure to block your opportunities for some time. Thus, being very calculative and having a balance sheet (one that mentions money to be invested, where it will be used, and how much money to return for investors) is a must if you have to get trust from the potential investors. You can use online media to gain more Infos. And knowing your customers will gain you quite some love (funds!) from the investors.
Nasrat Sharif Aveek- A believer of "Trying is better than Leaving"
"Failure is an individual thing but it does impact one's life. Using Failure as a turning point will help you take a leap.", says Nasrat Sharif, the third speaker for this session. Adjusting to communicate issues in the university and the environmental inconvenience led Mr. Sharif to have bad grades. But with persistent effort and a focused-mind, he excelled in the semester exams (Bachbenchers take notes). This is obviously a relatable example for all the academic success seekers. Relating to his field, Android development, Nasrat shared that staying focused on a project's utility, its usefulness for the customers, and making the product from a business point of view are some cores of his projects.
Try Multiple Times or Give up when exhausted?
Mr. Shariff says that passion for work has more significant weightage than money. Failing multiple times can be an indication of a lesser drive to follow passion. Most people realize this when they have exhaustion from numerous efforts and failures. Thus, at some time, withdrawing and giving up can be a good option. But investing to know more about real passion is essential. Thus, have a passion, which is sure to get you lesser failures.
Tips for tackling the Failures
- Learn from your past and motivate yourself.
- Give your best to win/achieve your goals.
- Never give up on your passion.
So, who won the WILD CARD for the Finale?
After hearing from the speakers, the Wild Card Pitching for the Finale of Hult Prize 2021 was conducted. The judges for this segment were Sanjog Koirala, Sumit Saha, and Ahmad Farhad Sarwari.
The teams made sure to have their ideas and views projected clearly. The presentations did make a good impression on the judges. It was amazing to see the high enthusiasm and competitiveness in the Wildcard entry (Those who watch reality shows can relate!). Unique and innovative entrepreneurial ideas were provided by these young entrepreneurs/entrepreneur aspirants.
Among them, 5 teams: N-NEP-ABN, Team Demeter, Team Vitamin N4, The Coding Innovators, and Mechverse(Smart Bhojan) were selected as wildcard entries finals.
Summing Up
Hult Prize at IOE and NxtGen's Final episode on the Entrepreneurship Talk series brought emerging and inspiring young entrepreneurs. Listening to their stories, views, ideas, and suggestions and interacting with them was a delightful experience.
The common thing with all the speakers of this session was their youthful energy invested and devoted to bringing changes in themselves, their teammates, their nation, and eventually the world. The stories of not being accepted, losing a great project due to immature steps, and getting diverted by the minor problems were relatable to the young entrepreneurs' failures. Thus, realizing and analyzing mistakes is important. Making such a preparation that Failure stays out of the room and more learning and opportunities get welcomed should be one of the main concerns of the entrepreneurs.
The wild card pitching for the Finale was an exciting segment. Watching the young people devoted to making it up to Finale showing their optimum, better, and unique ways of using food for the HULT Prize's 2021 challenge was quite a show. Every team's research and planning for the last opportunity to get into the Finale journey showed them being invested in the competition.
The end of the entrepreneurship talk series marks the HULT Prize's consistent and rigorous effort to inform and educate people about entrepreneurship and the pros, struggles, and a great team it requires. We, the Yeklo and the Yelko team, are proud of this great team effort and feel very fortunate to witness this success. But the most awaited event is yet to take place. The audience is excited to know the winner of the 2021 Hult Prize.
Here's a Wishing all the best for the Finale to all participants from Yeklo and Yelko.
Do check out the live video of Level 8 of Entrepreneurship Talks: Tackling Your Failures.
Visit the official page of HULT PRIZE AT IOE.
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Visit the official page of NxtGen
Follow NxtGen on Facebook
Also, Check out some inspiring and cool blogs in Yeklo, and for your website requirement, remember Yelko too!
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