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- Jun 12, 2023
- 3
- 1
My friend and I have taken part in a high school competition for business plans. The first of its kind to this scale in my country. Real investors, CEOs, Businessmen and whatnot of big brands (both national and international) were the ones to judge us on our ideas, results, business plans, ideas and questions they wanted to be answered. Think Shark Tank on easy mode. My team won 3rd place on the national phase with a tech project, scraped from an idea we had for an AI and YouTube tutorials on how to pull something like that tailored to our needs, something that is not on the market but supposedly worth investing in.
Naturally, me and my friend, both 17, broke, not skilled in anything, interested in entrepreneurship, have no clue how things genuinely work. However, we were told that we can access a program, a so-called startup accelerator, that involves funding in the 6 and 7 figures. This is backed by Microsoft, and so I ask what would you do in this situation. We want to take advantage of all opportunities, but we don't know how these kinds of things work and what would be expected of us. The person that told us we should join is someone with a leading position in our country's branch of Microsoft (I don't even know if that's the correct way to explain it)
This is our situation:
-Me and my buddy are dead-set on entrepreneurship, and happened to meet not so long ago in the debate club.
-We don't have a product, just a barely functional proof of concept, the funding would be supposed to help develop the product.
-We have a business plan made for the competition, so naturally the numbers for... pretty much everything are not exactly the most accurate
-We do not have any real world experience (unless you count my friend's $5 sale on a muscle gain plan over discord experience)
-We have no real hard skills, just a wide range of surface level knowledge in coding, psychology, economics, accounting, management and marketing and law (partly because of our interests and partly because these are subjects taught in our high school)
-We were offered help with entering a program for startups that can result in full funding for our AI Powered App that eases communication with people suffering from hearing loss.
Tomorrow we have to talk to the person that introduced us to this opportunity via email or LinkedIn, he said as long as we were persistent and genuinely interested he would help us as much as he could in taking advantage of this opportunity and perhaps others like it.
I'd like to know a few things:
-What should we expect to be required to do in order to benefit from funding (we were told funding was not the only thing involved, however I feel this is the most relevant)
-What should we expect from this sort of environment, what kind of people would we need to talk to and what would they want to know.
-What do you think would be important to know, so we don't head into this blindly?
-What general information or wisdom do you consider should be common sense, that we might not have a clue about.
Feel free to say anything that you consider helpful, and I apologize for any mistake in writing, labeling this post and everything else that might've slipped.
We live in Eastern Europe, if this information is relevant.
Naturally, me and my friend, both 17, broke, not skilled in anything, interested in entrepreneurship, have no clue how things genuinely work. However, we were told that we can access a program, a so-called startup accelerator, that involves funding in the 6 and 7 figures. This is backed by Microsoft, and so I ask what would you do in this situation. We want to take advantage of all opportunities, but we don't know how these kinds of things work and what would be expected of us. The person that told us we should join is someone with a leading position in our country's branch of Microsoft (I don't even know if that's the correct way to explain it)
This is our situation:
-Me and my buddy are dead-set on entrepreneurship, and happened to meet not so long ago in the debate club.
-We don't have a product, just a barely functional proof of concept, the funding would be supposed to help develop the product.
-We have a business plan made for the competition, so naturally the numbers for... pretty much everything are not exactly the most accurate
-We do not have any real world experience (unless you count my friend's $5 sale on a muscle gain plan over discord experience)
-We have no real hard skills, just a wide range of surface level knowledge in coding, psychology, economics, accounting, management and marketing and law (partly because of our interests and partly because these are subjects taught in our high school)
-We were offered help with entering a program for startups that can result in full funding for our AI Powered App that eases communication with people suffering from hearing loss.
Tomorrow we have to talk to the person that introduced us to this opportunity via email or LinkedIn, he said as long as we were persistent and genuinely interested he would help us as much as he could in taking advantage of this opportunity and perhaps others like it.
I'd like to know a few things:
-What should we expect to be required to do in order to benefit from funding (we were told funding was not the only thing involved, however I feel this is the most relevant)
-What should we expect from this sort of environment, what kind of people would we need to talk to and what would they want to know.
-What do you think would be important to know, so we don't head into this blindly?
-What general information or wisdom do you consider should be common sense, that we might not have a clue about.
Feel free to say anything that you consider helpful, and I apologize for any mistake in writing, labeling this post and everything else that might've slipped.
We live in Eastern Europe, if this information is relevant.
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