This post had been delayed for quite some time due to my exams. These are the key takeaways from my LabX – Startup Village internship – listed briefly.
- Learned how market research and competitive analysis is performed
○ Identified tools used for the analysis.
○ Understood what to look for in the vast amount of available information.
○ Learnt to process and present the raw data as useful information.
○ Avoiding plagiarism, properly referencing and citing details etc.
- Acquired basic working knowledge on a new domain life sciences
○ Got a high level overview of the drug development process, steps involved etc.
○ Got to appreciate the size of the drug development market in general and the cancer cure vertical in particular.
○ Developed more confidence in getting out of comfort zone and tackling unknown domains.
- Was able to take part in a software development cycle OSUTEAM
○ Understood how custom softwares are build from a customer standpoint and a developer standpoint.
○ Understood how technically sound softwares may fail to meet end user expectations and how that can be resolved.
○ Was able to understand more about ontologies, semantic web (ResearchIQ, met Omkar Lele)
- Learned a lot of new perspectives and strategies on entrepreneurship 10Xelerator
○ Interacted with a lot of entrepreneurs who were passionate about their causes.
○ Got lot of guidance from entrepreneurs (mentors) who had been there, done that.
○ Learned a lot from hands on workshops on things like team building, storytelling, brand building, pitching etc.
○ Worked closely with a startup called Stockleap (10x participant), helped design the development strategy.
○ Had first hand experience of the entrepreneurship culture of the west.
- Takeaways outside the program
○ Met many interesting people from a diverse background
■ Stayed with and learned a lot from PhD. and Masters students in computer science (and other branches as well).
■ Interacted and took guidance from professors in computer science (Prof. Rajeev Ramnath, Prof. Arnab Nandi) as well as business (Prof. H. Unnava Rao).
■ Met a lot of MBA students from Fisher COB and learned about opportunities for future business studies.
■ Met people who have led social entrepreneurship initiatives (like Farooq Busari from ShakePoverty), people who guide social innovators (like Patrick Westerlund from Tony Wells Foundation) and took guidance for implementing DialBlood.
■ Met IP coordinator Jennifer Warner, Technology Commercialisation & Knowledge Transfer Office and learned about market potential for a patent related software product.
○ Attended a lot of technical and startup meetups
■ Including Startup saturdays, Wakeup Startup, weekly Python Dojos, MongoDB meetup, Ohio Linux Fest, AngularJS meetup, Columbus CodeJam etc.
○ Saw a lot of beautiful places within Columbus and outside (Boston, Las Vegas) as well.
○ Worked on a project called Intopia Simulation for use by an MBA program.
○ Read startup books like The Lean Startup, The Art of the Start etc.
On stranger tides 