Intro

          The FutureFounder program has the objective of training and developing entrepreneurship and innovative mindset on FutureFounder fellows to introduce us to a startup different and fast-paced environment.

            To have the opportunity to develop my skills and abilities as an innovator and be able to be selected to work at a startup, seven other fellows and I were selected among 200 applicants for the program in a very specific selection process where the FutureFounder program was searching those who had the best fit to be an innovator.

           At the beginning of the StartupReadiness, I could meet my teammates during the processes, make assignments and tasks together and gather each one’s opinions at feedback, group work, interview practices, socials, and so many other activities. This kind of interaction made me have great moments with my teammates and meeting them is obviously one of the better reasons why I love being part of the program. Everyone has their own skills, abilities, and singularities.

            Speaking about the structure of the StartupReadiness, it is a very complete one, and being divided into Lessons is a great way to separate assignments and set goals for every fellow. All days had their importance and every lesson and content were really linked with the assignments.

 

 

StartupReadiness Training

            In the first week, we were challenged to do strategic analysis and we learned about Objective Key Results (OKRs), STEEPLE (Social, Technological, Economic, Environmental, Political, Legal, and Ethical), and SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis. Then we had to choose one Brazilian startup to apply this new knowledge, doing some research and also interpreting all data and information we acquire on the internet. My choice was Petlove, an e-commerce petshop Brazilian startup. The objective of this lesson was to improve our abilities in doing research and interpreting data and information to develop an OKR based on what we have studied about the startup we selected.
 

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            At the second week, FutureFounder fellows were divided into two teams and each one had to develop a solution for a Brazilian current problem between Mental Health in Covid-19 and Climate Change + Deforestation. We use the Design Thinking method to guide us in order to create an innovative product and service. Furthermore, Arthur, Diana, Gabriel, and I named ourselves the Mental Health Team and we started to search for research and information to be the start for our project.
             After a lot of Desk research (with articles and news) and Primary Market research, through Google Forms which we had 80 responders, we realized that our problem was focused on the university students who had their mental health decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic due to many factors that the social distance triggered or worsened, where we created a persona called Enzo, a student who present anxiety, stress, and depression, to describe our main audience and develop a product that could assist Enzo with his problems and illnesses were our main objective. 

 

            For the next step of the project, we had to create a lot of different prototypes to achieve our objective, and as a result, we created the Mental Health Orientation (aka MOM), which provides solutions, personalized conversations, mental orientation, daily problems assistance, and a way to make our persona express and talk about his feelings, but without talking to an actual human. In the other steps of the Design Thinking method, we believed that a robot could be expensive and not as accessible as we thought, so we switched to a mobile app. At the app version, we were able to add more features, do a simpler design and make it Free and Paid versions, both with the same objective, but the paid version had more features than the free one.







 

 

           




            In the third week, we had to develop a pitch presentation for MOM, in addition, we had to present it to some guests for ten minutes. After that, we received questions and feedback to add to our project, and consequently, we wrote the MOM Blog Post collectively to talk about all the experiences as a team and described the process.


 

 

            On the fourth and last week, we had our Match Day. When we were interviewed by startup founders aiming to get an internship. Although, before that, the Future Founder Team taught us the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, and Result), a technique used to show how we can improve on presenting situations and problems and how we solved them in a clearer way of mindset. I had the opportunity to be interviewed by the founders and startup fellows of Treatspace (Cecily), InovaSimples (Clarisse), and also the FutureFounder team (Rodolfo).

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Key Takeaways

            The experience of being a FutureFounder Fellow was an amazing way to discover as an innovator and an entrepreneur myself who has some hidden skills, a lot to improve, and a great way to show my skills and my abilities that I develop linking my college classes and the FutureFounder program.

            It was a truly challenging (and sometimes really chaotic) experience, but worth it when I compare myself at the end of the program with who I was a month ago. After all the intense training, I am really glad to say that it was an amazing experience and I will take all the learning and my teammates for everywhere I will pass by, saying that the FutureFounder program helped me on the road I am willing to take as an entrepreneur and an innovator.