February 15, 2024

Thinking like an Entrepreneur

After feeling pretty useless last week being sick, the tables have turned with the Rise Bionics team making a comeback on our home stretch of wrapping things up. Although I can sense Arun is disappointed with the progress we haven’t made, I am confident he will be pleased with the deliverables we will be presenting to him soon. The interviews we did with the organizations this week were a huge success as we learned much more than we were expecting.

One of the organization we visited, Samartharan Trust for the Disabled, gave us a tour similar to the ones we had during the first three weeks of the program. They warmly greeted us and taught us about all the different departments they have for educating differently-abled children as well as providing interview training for successful career placement. We were given a live performance by talented musicians and singers and learned how they convert hardcover books into braille and audiobooks. We were shown a well-used STEM room for an upcoming science fair, and their cricket for the blind trophy room.

I am surprised at how capable we have proven ourselves to be to reach out to various organizations on our own and initiate meetings with wildly successful founders of these NGOs. To see the passion in the hearts of these individuals has left me feeling inspired and grateful to be in their presence as they take the time to share their stories and thoroughly answer all of our questions. This experience has even given me the confidence I need to venture into similar entrepreneurial pursuits I’m aiming for back home.

But with the initial GCIL report due today, it feels as though I have no solutions to offer as we’ve just begun to gather data. We are supposed to have a prototype of our solution and have tested it on our customers by now which we are nowhere close to. The pressure is real but in some ways, I appreciate the hard deadlines as it pushes me beyond what I think would be my limits. Like many of the successful entrepreneurs we’ve met, I’m wanting to see results faster than my fears of failure will try to hold me back. Just like we’ve learned, getting a half-hearted solution out there and testing it is much more effective than waiting to roll out the perfect one only to find out it is useless.

90% of the time it feels like I have no idea what I’m doing. But I’ve learned that as I just trust the process and go with the flow, things start to come together and make more sense with every step we take in what feels like the right direction. I’m starting to get a sense of what it’s like to think like an entrepreneur.

By Matt