Anisha Palaparthi Project Reflection

This process of working on our Green Plate project, and particularly putting together this pitch presentation, has been a really insightful experience. This is one of the first times I’ve had to think about business ideas and solutions from a customer perspective; in most of my CS and engineering coursework, even when designing potential products for business, the typical approach focuses on technical implementation and delivering features. I found it really unique to be able to approach the Green Plate idea instead from a PM viewpoint by focusing on customer issues and how to build a product that solves the users needs.

The pitch experience also taught me how to present business ideas to investors. I’ve realized the importance of being succinct in the presentation. I hope to pursue entrepreneurship in the future, and I’ve learned that it’s important to prioritize what information needs to be presented and how to balance leaving out minute details while still presenting a cogent idea to the investor. The pitch was also a good experience coordinating the design and presentation of the project across a large team, since most projects and presentations in college are three to four people at most.

I really valued the panel feedback from a our presentation; it was interesting to see the perspectives with which PMs in industry view problems and businesses compared to how we as a team viewed the problem. For instance, they had really helpful feedback about focusing more on the distribution aspect of our product, while we were approaching the business from the consumer experience side. This advice not only gave us a good direction on how to improve the business idea but also provided insight into the aspects of the business model that investors find important.