Published on July 22, 2022

Aarna Gupta
Grade 9, Step by Step School

The Ivy Early Entrepreneur program was a wonderful experience for a business enthusiast like me. Learning from professionals in their respective fields, hearing their insights, and learning from their journey were some of the key components that make this program perfect for someone who wants to learn more about the hows and whats of entrepreneurship. During the program, we learnt the process from actually having an idea to it finally culminating into our very own business project. At every step of the way: ideation, brainstorming, prototyping, business modeling, branding, etc you get to hear the valuable opinions from experts, and using that allows you to bring your own project into perspective. We had the opportunity to interact with all of the mentors and it was truly a dream come true and such experiences can’t be replicated and are key to progressing your business idea. The mentors explained the concept to us through extremely elaborate documents breaking down all of it and making it very easy for us to comprehend. 

The process was interesting and thrilling and helped us make our business idea tangible. I spent months wondering how these things might work, but these 7 days have unlocked a plethora of ideas and different ways to work with them. I think one of the most important things I learned from this program is that age is just a number after all. Your entrepreneurship journey starts when you want it to. 

Executing a business includes a number of components that require different levels of creativity, practicality, and brainstorming and during the program, we went through all of these explicitly. I extremely enjoyed the sessions on market research and how to find your target market as well as the one on business modeling and marketing. It was fascinating to understand how to conduct surveys, look at the requirements of your audience, understand how to create a brand, how to keep your customers satisfied etc. 

The great part about these 7 days was that we really got to get into all of the important topics, taking time to absorb all of them and simultaneously implementing them which really helped improve my understanding of it. There were various hands-on tasks, especially during the prototyping stage and it was interesting to explore all of these different avenues of entrepreneurship. The program also played a key role in inspiring and motivating us as we heard so many stories about different start ups and how they progressed and eventually achieved immense success in their fields. Not only that, but the Ivy program also is an opportunity for us to collaborate with other kids around the country and build a brand with them. It was wonderful getting to know everyone and having the chance to work with such an amazing team. 

The experience really gave me a heads-up as to what entrepreneurship entails and helped me contemplate my ideas, organize them and make them into a concrete plan. If you’re someone

wondering how entrepreneurship works and how to work towards your business idea, then this program is your calling. 

Lastly, I would like to thank the mentors and everyone who helped make this program so memorable.