The Negatives

I think that one of my major takeaways from this project was simply the fact that frequent feedback and check-ins from CAs are important and would have loved more attention at the beginning of the quarter. For some reason, all teams other than ours had received “good” financial numbers except for ours, and we were not really advised on pivoting; it had only just been mentioned as an option, broadly to all groups. Only after being (understandably) flamed by judges was it brought to our attention that we should actually be jumping ship instead of trying to salvage it, even though many of our members had expressed this earlier to various people of the teaching staff. As a result, we ended up having to do double the work and, while I am grateful that we did receive more guidance, it was frustrating and almost felt too little too late. I don’t mind doing the extra work, however it all felt too hollow and unsatisfying because we had to create things from nothing within the span of a week—how can you possibly devote time and effort to create something quality within a week when it was supposed to take six weeks?

The Positives

Outside of that, I did enjoy the judge’s scathing criticism. While much of what they asked was not covered within the scope of the class, I think it was very interesting and enlightening to hear their perspectives despite that. It felt like these were probably questions that we should have been answering and that I would have loved to learn more about. I feel like I was already decently well-versed in product design, so I would have loved to learn more about the actual business and marketing side of things. As a result, while the pitch presentations did for many teams feel humiliating, I think it also foregrounded something that every team was missing.