You did it! You made it to the finish line!
Last week of the accelerator!
Can’t believe it is already the end of the accelerator!
Today you are standing at the finish line. Have a look at your very first Lean Canvas, and think about how far you have come. In these three months, you have done primary market research, gathered insights from your potential customers, evolved your solution, and worked on creating a viable business model and go to market strategy to build a financially sustainable enterprise.
You probably struggled… you may have lost motivation temporarily… some things don’t work out as expected. And yet you prevailed, and you learned. Kudos to you for taking that first step to start your venture. Great job all!
End of accelerator retrospective
At the end of this accelerator, we encourage you to look back upon the entire summer, and answer the following questions about your venture building journey in the past eleven weeks.
- What went well?
- What could have gone better?
- What might you do differently moving forward?
- What have you learned about yourself, your team and your venture thus far?
- Where might you take your venture from this point forward?
Getting ready for your next chapter
The last three questions are particularly important. As you transition out of the summer, you will need to make decisions about whether and how to continue working on your venture while balancing other demands on your time.
Now is a good time to rethink your goals and expectations for yourselves and your ventures, and make decisions about how you might proceed, and who on your team will continue working on this venture with you. If you have a lot of team members who are going back to school, you will need to work harder than ever on goal setting and prioritization. You will also need to recalibrate your expectations for the amount of progress you expect your team to make. It will likely be uncomfortable – but that’s ok. If you are committed to your venture, you will find a way forward. You are always welcome to continue to use our Self-Guided Learning Center and Knowledgebase to help you make progress.
If you decide to put your venture on hold based on what you have learned – that’s ok too. Entrepreneurship is about learning, acting on data and making decisions to persevere or pivot. You now know the process. No matter what your plans are for your venture, what you have learned will be helpful to you wherever you will go.
Stay in touch!
Entrepreneurship is a team sport – it is better when you engage with your community. Don’t be a stranger – stay in touch with us and with each other. Come back to attend events at the Derby Entrepreneurship Center! We will be keeping most events virtual (including Jumbo Cafes, Entrepreneurship and Innovation Speaker Series and some meetup events) to make it more accessible to Tufts community members who are not local. It’s been a pleasure working with you and stay in touch!
Thank you all,
Tina, Elaine, Adolfo and the Derby Entrepreneurship Center team
