Personal Reflection Essay

 Tetyana Ekwalanga

Everyone on the G Box Diner team worked so well together. We each brought our own skills and talents to the group and helped each other out in every way. One thing we did really well was create our minimum viable product and the hypothesis’ that go along with it. When we first got together as a group, Gillian talked to us about her idea of a 100% gluten free diner and although we did not know very much about gluten free foods, we were all on board and excited to get started on this new venture. Once we knew what we would be working on, creating the MVP and hypothesis came very easily to us. We used our differences as our best asset and came up with a handful of hypothesis that we believed would be crucial to test to make sure a gluten free diner was the right direction to go in.

Another aspect of our group that worked really well was our commitment to the team. Everyone wanted to be part of the G Box Diner and we made a big effort to always meet up with each other and work with one another’s schedules. All the time we spent meeting up to work on the venture brought us closer together as a team and as friends. Once we were all on a friendship level and not just group members, everything began to go along a lot smoother. We felt comfortable enough with each other to always be honest with our input, and there was a level of trust that everyone would complete the work they were set out to do.

Something that our team struggled with was the financial aspect of the venture. I have taken accounting and financial classes and I also had trouble with the cash flow. No one in our group had a very strong financial background and we all felt a bit lost when we had to start working on the cash flow statement of our venture. We were very fortunate that Gillian had already calculated some of the numbers for the assignment when she first began planning the venture and that was a great starting point for the team. From there on we had a lot of help from the advisory board meetings and from the instructor on how to create the rest of our cash flow. Now that the assignment is completed, I wish I would have stepped up to the plate and worked on all of the financial aspects of the venture because I had taken finance the most recently out of the group and had the strongest financial background even though it was still very minimal compared to what I would have liked. I believe it would have made the group run more smoothly if there was just one person dedicated to working on the financial aspect so that everybody could have worked on their strengths.

We also struggled with our “ask” for the advisory board. This was not just a problem with the financials but with the scalability as well. We were not sure how big to scale our venture and that brought along a lot of confusion during the final weeks of the assignment. This problem was solved when we consulted the instructor about our ask and learned that it is always better to go bigger when scaling a venture. If we had this mindset and knowledge at the beginning of the assignment it would have helped us to scale our venture better, and to have a better understanding of what we should be asking of the advisory board members.

I learned a lot from this assignment relating to the entrepreneurial mindset and scaling of a new venture. There were some things I had learned in previous entrepreneurial classes that I almost forgot about until the end of the assignment like always keeping in mind the growth potential of a venture, and that it is better to go big and take a risk than to stay safe and not plan for growth. I also learned that it is not the customers job to know what they want, but our job to show them what they want and what value we can bring to them. When working on a new venture and a lean start up the first thing you have to do is find a business model that works for your venture before you run out of energy, time, and most importantly, money.

Throughout the entire course, the most important knowledge I have gained is about the minimum viable product and the business model canvas. I had never really understood either of these until we looked deeper into them and discussed all of the different aspects of each. Now I feel confident beginning my own lean start up and I have the knowledge that will keep me one step ahead of the rest.