Week 2 Lunch & Learn

My second week I helped run one of the monthly events that the company puts on called brown bag Lunch & Learns. At my previous internship I learned that a brown bag is an event or meeting that takes place during lunch, with the expectation that you will bring your own food, hence the title. At VentureSHOT, the monthly brown bags are opportunities for entrepreneurs to come together and collaborate. To get started, one of the VentureSHOT owners introduces the session and carefully outlines that this is NOT an opportunity to harp on challenges that the businesses are facing, but rather a chance to share positives and look for ways to work together with other entrepreneurs or businesses. He had everyone give a 2-minute pitch and share one "opportunity," either one they have created or one that they're looking for, that they could use to connect with someone else in the room. I thought that this was a great perspective for the session, and it turned out to be super useful for everyone that came!

One of the things that I would love to take away from this internship is the ability to hear a pitch and be able to think of the "smart" questions (about revenue flows, potential problems, etc.) that the VentureSHOT owners and investors are always able to come up with when they hear about a new company. I know that this will come with experience, so I am going to try to attend as many events as I can, both within my company and outside of it. I am also working on my goal of asking colleagues and entrepreneurs to grab coffee to tell me about how they got to where they are now, and I am looking forward to hearing advice and multiple perspectives about what I should do after I graduate.