Living the Dream

This all brings me to the point of this blog. I've been so lucky in my time at Notre Dame. My wonderful team last year was connected to a wonderful mentor who helped us connect to another great team for this year's competition. The difference between this year and last, however, is that this year we're moving forward with the business. The basic idea of the business is that it's an online shopping portal that provides you with same-day delivery of almost anything within 2-4 hours. I'm sure you'll get more details as we go along, but the point of this blog is to give anyone who cares enough to read it an idea of what it's like to be inside a start-up on a day-to-day basis. I probably won't write every day, as I anticipate feeling like this picture of me at the airport on the way home from California most of the time, but I'll try to keep it updated on a regular basis. Our official start date is June 1, although we are all working from our own separate corners of the world until then. We meet in South Bend June 1 with an anticipated trial launch date of June 7. More updates to come!



Crashed

Business plans

Right as we were leaving for Lebanon, I found out that I needed to come home about 3 weeks early to participate in two different business plan competitions. I had been working with members from my very first randomly-assigned team at Notre Dame to compete, and we had done really well so far. So I arranged things with my professors to miss the last two weeks of classes, left Mike to enjoy Cairo and Cyprus without me, and headed home. This picture is of Justin and me working into the wee hours of the morning at our hotel in California to get our presentation ready for the judges. All the hard work paid off in the end, as we got 2nd place at the Jungle Media competition and took home the grand prize at Notre Dame. Things are also looking really good for getting funding to move our business forward, and we have the $25K in prizes from the two different competitions that will hopefully tide us over until then!


Justin and I working into the wee hours

London in Springtime

I came back from South Bend for another semester, but the restless gypsy in me called to wander. I finished up my last semester in London, where we had 4-day weekends every week, plus two week-long breaks! This allowed for a lot of travel time for Mike and I - we traveled to many different countries within Europe, including Spain, France, Germany, and Sweden, plus ventured out of Europe to visit Morocco and Lebanon. This is a picture of Mike and I with our professor, a native of Lebanon, and one of our classmates. We were there about 45 days after Hariri was assassinated, so there wasn't a lot of competition from the other tourists. It is truly a beautiful country, and our professor was a wonderful host! Mike has more details on our European adventures on his website, so if you're curious, take a few minutes to check it our.



Khalil Matta, me, Mike, and Steve Conlon

Summer Internship - South Africa

MBAs are expected to do an internship between their first and second years - usually one that relates to the field they want to get into. I chose a rather untraditional route, however, and went to Cape Town, South Africa to do some work with two different NGOs. I worked on developing a business plan and strategy for a football (soccer) program that would encourage youth to seek opportunities for growth outside of the sporting arena for an organization called Youth Unlimited, partner of Catholic Welfare and Development. My other project was performing a feasibility analysis for a joint venture with a commercial company to set up a dry-goods packaging plant. Oh, and I also got to travel a bit while I was there. These giraffes, just yards from our jeep while we were on safari, were seen grazing in the trees just off my patio as I was relaxing later in the day back at the lodge.



Giraffes

Notre Dame MBA

I entered the MBA program two years ago at the University of Notre Dame. While the catholic atmosphere on campus was quite a bit different from my BYU undergrad, I was happy to be back in school. Life was good - I had a great roommate, met a wonderful guy (you'll meet him later), had a fantastic team for all school projects, and, although it was a losing season, I came to enjoy football as a spectator sport!



Josh, me, Justin, and Radu at the stadium