In today’s class we talked about the personal aspect of being an entrepreneur – what are your motivations, and do you “have what it takes.” We continued the theme talking about how important articulating your vision is to help you recruit others for your journey.

Motivation

We began the class talking about why people start companies, and the risks in doing that. Some examples from our Miro board:

Entrepreneurs

Each member then shared thoughts about three traits of an entrepreneur of their choice:

We touched briefly on personality types, as are commonly identified in the field of psychology and profiling systems like Myer-Briggs and others.

There isn’t a strong correlation between personality types in entrepreneurs, but there is commonality in:

• Being responsible to make things happen
• Taking a big risk (emotionally, financially, economically, socially…)
• Having the passion to keep pushing forward
• Inspiring others with their vision

Vision

Your vision is the most powerful tool you have for your company. A strong vision will keep everyone focused and aligned on the same goal, give clarity about your purpose, create confidence from your customers and stakeholders, and will even help you define your company culture.

Now is a good time to reassess your motivation for starting a company.

We will talk about core values later in the semester. Today we focused on companies’ core purposes, and the envisioned futures they may have shared. Though we looked mostly at game and film companies, the exercise works across any industry.

Today’s Powerpoint Deck

Class 02-S21 (vision).pptx (Formatted to be an overlay in Zoom/OBS).

Homework

Each team (announced in class, and sent via email) will do a ~7 minute presentation in Tuesday’s class. After each presentation, we will discuss both the content and the style of the presentation.

Content

Your Team – Who you each are, your relevant background.

Your Vision – What is motivating this team? What problem do you want to solve, or what outcome are you trying to create?

Three Product Ideas – These are only meant to be simple examples of how you might address your vision. No need to do analysis on their viability yet. We need to be inspired by what you want to accomplish.

Audience

Though it will only be us in the room, imagine your audience to be your first angel investors. You want them to be intrigued with your ideas and your qualifications to succeed in that area.

Format

We’ll be in Zoom. Screen sharing is a possibility. You can use OBS or other tools to augment your webcam. Use whatever techniques you’d like, but remain in the Zoom domain.

Each team member should participate in the presentation.

Visual aids are wonderful. They can also be distracting. Use images that are relevant to your message. Minimize the use of text, to the point of a maximum of three words per slide. You want us paying attention to you, not reading text.

Text exception: You can use more words on a Vision slide, but be concise.