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SKEMA Ventures Americas bootstrap
SKEMA Ventures held its Americas Bootstrap on April 4-7, 2022, in Raleigh, North Carolina and Belo Horizonte, Brazil. The Bootstrap provided an opportunity for selected entrepreneurial students to consolidate their business projects and move closer to launching them as viable businesses.
Over four days, the 12 teams of students explored the issues and challenges of entrepreneurship while creating the core elements of a viable startup business for a final pitch to a panel of judges.
Pragmatic, hands-on workshop
In this pragmatic, hands-on workshop the students worked to a mantra of “Pitch-Learn-Update-Pitch Again”. The first three days focussed on knowledge transfer and iterative practice, leading to the formulation and presentation of the first version of the value proposition, a business model that would support this value proposition, and a formal business pitch of the business developing a pitch that could be delivered to early investors. In these workshop sessions the participants conducted iterative construction of the different steps of the business plan with daily pitches and feedbacks from professional entrepreneur coaches as well as interactive discussions to leverage cross-fertilisation between participants. We worked in a hybrid mode, with local coaching and online shared sessions of pitching and lectures. On the final day of the bootstrap, the students pitched their business in person, locally in front of a panel business investors and professionals, similar to the US show “Shark Tank”.
