Founders Institute Graduation

Great event tonight watching the Founders Institute(FI) graduation. The night kicked off with a good description of how FI guides entrepreneurs and their young companies from idea formation into launch. The Keynote speaker,  adjunct professor Howard Tullman at Kellogg, had some great points about being successful in this space. I will have to take a class from him next semester!

His first major points were on why concepts fail, with the most pivotal being they simply fail to meet customers needs! This is why we also focus on customer discovery first and then build the company around what the customer wants.

After this he went into getting the "Yes" from investors. The major point of this part of the presentation was that your team is very important. You need to surround yourself with successful people and find a way to motivate them through strong leadership.

After the Keynote we moved onto the pitches and were able to hear our own Colleen pitch the Healthify idea!

Overall the night was a great look into the future of some fantastic Chicago based startup companies.