Flashes of Panic

An update on the business plan competition: about a week and a half ago, we attended a session where all the finalists ran through a summary of their business for a panel of experts who weren’t the judges, but were, I think, assembled from a similar pool of experience. We discovered that there are five finalists; one didn’t send anyone to the panel, and we think there are two others (beyond ourselves, of course) who have a solid chance to win.

Fortunately for us, there is an associated “Social Entrepreneurship” competition. This is fortunate because it draws the “we’re going to save the world” plans; we don’t have to face off with a group from the medical school which plans to cure cancer, for example. (There is no such group this year, but that’s the idea.)

We have to submit a one-paragraph summary (for the program) on Wednesday, a revised business plan on Friday of next week (the end of Spring Break,) and a ten-minute presentation the following Monday. Then on Wednesday the 28th, we (all) deliver our presentations, answer questions (one question per judge per team,) and the results are announced. We’ve started our rewrite already, which is tedious because we’ve altered the plan so much since January. It also reminds us how useful it has been to start planning in January; even if we don’t win, the contacts we’ve made through the contest and the work we’ve done will mean it has been worthwhile.

As I’ve noted before, if someone gets mentioned here often enough, I assign them a pseudonym to allow me to call them by name without coming up on web searches for their real names. (Hence, for example, Professors α, β, and γ, and my advisor Professor Σ.) So I don’t have to keep referring to “my business partner,” he will now be “the Shipwright,” which could be a pun on his real name if you stretched it far enough. He and I tend to be a little bipolar about our chances; on any given day, one of us is bracing for a long struggle to profitability, and the other is certain we’re going to take the world by storm, but it’s not easily predictable which of us is which.

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