[ALL REFLECTIONS] GreenPlate Pitch Reflection

Final Pitch Deck: https://tinyurl.com/greenplatepitch

Reflections:

Ryan:

Overall, I’m pleased with the deliverables our group created for our pitch deck. It was an interesting and rewarding experience, albeit sometimes challenging, to be randomly assigned to a team, working through similar issues that arise in the real world, and managing a product within a simulated market space. Having no experience in vegan or health food markets, I found it fun to conduct in-person interviews with our target demographic, learning more about our market through boots-on-the-ground work.

Similarly, this was my first experience creating and delivering a pitch, which I believe will be a useful skill in the future. It not only honed my public speaking abilities but also introduced me to the process of marketing a product to a panel. Moreover, working in this team dynamic has allowed me to grow both personally and professionally as I learn to work alongside individuals from vastly different backgrounds, disparate work ethics, personalities, etc.

Star:

There was a lot of content in this pitch deck that was I was unfamiliar with, including pricing strategy, business model, the Ask, etc. There was probably one lecture slide that I identified regarding how to determine the Ask but it seems like a lot of other teams still underestimated how much monetary investment to ask for. For the future, I think more emphasis on the most important parts of delivering a pitch would be appreciated. Also, more explanation on why the practice of pitching is useful to the product management industry would really motivate why we are partaking in this exercise.

All in all, I think I learned a lot about delivery — not just verbal delivery but visual delivery. Visuals are so important in augmenting your ask and making your pitch convincing. Data needs to be accurate and visually digestible. I found my self simplifying our slides heavily to really get the key points across. I saw that other teams included a lot of information in their slides but it made some slides often unreadable during the presentation, especially if I was sitting in the back. It’s definitely worth having two versions of a slide: one that is for presentation and one that is for more details. That is why the appendix is easily helpful.

Esi:

The process of fleshing out this pitch deck was filled with a steep learning curve, as I was working in an area I previously had no knowledge or interest in. Because of this, everything felt completely new and exciting—I went in without any preconceived notions or assumptions, which allowed me to approach the project with an open mind. It was actually refreshing to work on a product as a non-target customer, seeing it from an outsider’s perspective.

What also made this experience impactful was the support of my teammates, who are much more well-versed in the vegan food space. Their insights and expertise provided a solid foundation, and I found myself learning a lot from them along the way. The dynamic fostered mature communication, and it became one of the smoothest team collaborations I’ve experienced in a class setting so far.

Anthony:

It was really rewarding to be able to present what we’ve been working on for the past few weeks. The amount of ground we were able to cover with developing fully fledged products and business strategies was amazing. I also think this was a great opportunity to learn about things I was not as familiar with and put them to practice. Organizing time and dividing work was definitely a challenge and something our team should work on going forward.

Simran:

While I was unable to present the pitch deck due to getting sick, I learned a lot through creating and practicing the deck. It was interesting to put together concepts like TAM/SAM/SOM in the context of our product pitch and plans, as well as to actually break down what we were doing. The practice of taking our ideas and refining them until they are easy to understand for others was also important for us to understand what we were doing ourselves. Through the deck creation, I think we better grasped the how, what, and why of our product.

I also learned about the timeliness and importance of understanding each others’ work. Since we divided up the deck, we knew little about the slides that weren’t ours. When I was too sick to come to class, I then had to prep notes for my teammates covering for me. However, because I knew a lot about what I had prepared, I ended up leaving out details that my teammate needed. They did a great job regardless, and I learned the importance of communicating and explaining the details of my work to others, especially my teammates.