Have you ever wanted to start your own business? If so, 3 Day Startup is something every inexperienced entrepreneur needs to participate in. This intense three day process will leave you running on motivation, adrenaline and, of course, caffeine, with the tools you need to build your very own successful business.
Let me back up a little. My name is Nick Stern and I am an exchange student from the United States. I am currently an intern at Accelerator and was presented the amazing opportunity to participate in this 3 Day Startup program. I’ve always had the desire to start my own business but never had the slightest clue as to what type of business I wanted to start or how I was going to even go about accomplishing this. Seriously, not a clue. And when I told this to people, I can feel the skepticism that they had and most people didn’t believe I could pull it off. No one came right out and said that, but I could sense that’s what they were thinking. To be fair, I had no way of proving myself. I never had a genius business idea or anything. I just knew deep down that I could and would accomplish it, but this started to get to me. People’s uncertainty made me start to question myself and I began thinking that maybe their skepticism was right. Now after 3 Day startup, I can honestly say, this is no longer the case at all. I am now completely, 100% confident that I will achieve my goal of starting my own business. This program really was life changing.
To set the scene a little bit, 3 Day Startup was being held at Queen Mary and comprised of about 60 students and recent graduates from all over the world. This was very cool to see because they all brought different perspectives and this became a very powerful tool to opening up my mind.
We began by congregating in the lobby to simply meet each other and sign in. You couldn’t help but notice and feel the energy in the air. Everyone was brimming with excitement and enthusiasm; it was really such an unbelievable atmosphere. The participants were also extremely supportive of one another. They truly cared about doing what they could to help each other out. For the most part helping consisted of simply listening to one another’s business ideas and giving honest feedback, but that was enough to build a sense of community. Then suddenly everything went silent. It was time to start.
They led us to the room we would be working in. Little did we know at the time, but we would be spending close to 30 hours, over the next 3 days, working out of this room.
The wait was finally over. Our instructors, Marc and Ozzy, were finally introduced to us. They were both very successful, young entrepreneurs, around the age of 27. This was unbelievably motivating for us participants. The reason for this was because it made the thought of us being successful feel like an actual reality and made it feel like success was right around the corner as opposed to something we will reach later in life. I couldn’t stop thinking to my self “I want to be teaching this class in 5 years.”
Marc and Ozzy gave a brief overview of the program and they said something that I will never forget. Marc stood there and sincerely said “ Art students have studios, engineering students have workshops but any business school is just theory. But 3 Day Startup is different. We will actually be putting entrepreneurship into action,” and that is exactly what we did. This weekend was not about theory. After Marc explained this, he immediately backed up his statement with having us jump right into pitching our business ideas to the class. Some of the ideas that were chosen included Square Eyes, a movie recommendation website; Fanster, a way for music artists to connect with their fans to combat illegally downloaded music; and finally SnapSave, the idea I worked on. SnapSave, to explain briefly, is an app that analyzes your grocery shopping patterns to get you the cheapest possible option. We then sell this data to the supermarkets. It made no difference if you came without a business idea, because we took a vote and split up into the group we felt had the best chances of success.
If you feel like you can read a few books and get a sense of what starting a business is like, well to put it nicely, you could not be more wrong. This program is essentially a bootcamp that forces you to step out of your comfort zone and gives you a real feel of what starting your own business will be like, in basically every aspect possible. Like I said, this weekend was not about theory. A quote from Steve Blank, “No business plan survives first contact with customers,” was constantly being preached to us and we got to experience first hand what that really means. That’s actually what day 2 was all about. We physically went out into the real world to interview our potential customers to validate our hypotheses and see if what we believed to be a problem in the industry, actually existed. With no surprise, what so ever to Marc and Ozzy, every single group returned back to the room with a huge pivot in their business model. We all realized that our theory was not accurate in one aspect or another and a significant change was needed to address the real problem our potential customers are facing. As you can see, “No business plan survives first contact with customers.”
A huge aspect of starting a business is being able to finance it. With that comes investment. We learned all about presentation skills during day 3 and we ended the program actually pitching our refined business ideas to a panel of well established entrepreneurs. This was both nerve racking and adrenaline filling.
Overall, 3 Day Startup was an unbelievable experience that I will never forget. It goes WAY beyond just a good learning experience. As I mentioned earlier, 3 Day Startup will give you a realistic feel of what starting your own business will feel like in almost every aspect possible. In fact, some groups are moving forward with their ideas, so this actually was their experience starting a business. That’s how real this program was. You can come in with nothing but the desire to work hard and leave with an excellent team of diverse individuals and a business idea that can ACTUALLY succeed. It doesn’t get more amazing than that. DO NOT MISS OUT ON THIS OPPORTUNITY, sign up now.
What Students Are Saying About It
“ I found the 3 Day Startup training course very informative and pivotal to transforming my idea into a reality. The days are long, intensive and exhausting, but well worth it. I’ve also been able to form meaningful collaborations with mentors, developers and potential business partners.” – Memory Pinchbeck
“ I honestly felt this weekend equipped me with the skills, knowledge and confidence to start a business. It constantly made me break the mental barriers I had put in my mind and made me grow. I found myself loving the process, as intense and difficult as it was. I would highly recommend this program to anyone who is passionate about entrepreneurialism.” – Faiz Pokun
“ The 3 Day Startup program gave me a lot of insights about myself dealing with certain situations and gave me a framework which I can now always use to see if my idea could work or not. It’s a weekend of hard work but at the end it’s certainly worth it.” – Joris Beemsterboer