*This is a continuation of my last post, which outlined some of the basic information about Sage Corps and what I did my first few days in Amsterdam with my cohort!* This post primarily focuses on the second half of the program, which is where we really jumped into working with our start-up organizations. My cohort of 12 was divided into three teams of 4 and we worked with 3 different start-ups: Project Fearless, PR Lab, and Pikaplant. I was on the marketing track with Pikaplant and really had an incredible experience. I'm a junior journalism major at Ithaca College and I had no previous marketing experience whatsoever, so I had no idea what to expect as an intern. I will say that Sage Corps prepares you incredibly well for working with the start-up. To be perfectly honest, I didn't make it through all of the training modules on their website, but I did do all of the modules attached to the Project Proposal & Deliverables that my team received prior to flying to Amsterdam. Throughout the experience, I found myself saying "In the modules, they referenced ___," so trust me, they are really helpful. (As a bonus, those modules were through LinkedIn Learning, so now I have several skill certifications I can display on my LinkedIn profile). We had Monday through Thursday to prepare for our presentation for the CEO on Friday, and within those four days, we were asked to deliver the following: 1. A coherent 2020 Social Media Marketing Plan 2. Estimated costs for marketing channels. 3. Competitive market landscape 4. Recommended recurring revenue streams/models Our work days ran from approximately 9 to 5, but due to some flexible hours (we ended early on Monday to go the Van Gogh Museum due to a mix-up with ticket dates, and attended a professional development panel with female start-up leads at 4 p.m. on Tuesday), my team met for some short periods in the evenings to make sure we stayed on track to meet the deliverables. Sage Corps Day 5: First Day at Pikaplant This day was intended to let us dive deep into research, make sure we understood the product goals, and to get a rough outline developed for what we would be producing throughout the week. As a team, we met with our CEO in the morning to ask a few questions, then worked on our own until after lunch, where we re-convened to provide an update of what had been accomplished. On our first day, we:
We left Pikaplant around 2:50 in order to head to the Van Gogh Museum, which was absolutely phenomenal. Although — much to my disappointment — Starry Night wasn't at the museum (it's kept at the MOMA in NYC), I loved getting to see the progression of his work and how he both was influenced by and influenced other artists. His style of using texture, color, and brushstrokes created profound art pieces, and I'd definitely love to revisit the museum again someday! We had a few hours on our own to decompress and explore, then the cohort reconvened to go on a Canal Boat Tour at 8 p.m., where we heard more about the history of Amsterdam and some fun facts about the city. (Did you know that over 1,300 bikes are fished out of the canals every year and that — at the lowest estimate — there are over 600,000 bicycles in the city at any given time?) Once the canal tour was over, we headed back to the hotel, where I worked on this blog post and prepped for the next day of working with Pikaplant! Sage Corps Day 6: Project Work & Female Founders Panel Tuesday ended up being a deep dive into our project — we met with our CEO right before lunch & gave us a lot of feedback on the work we had done so far, but we definitely had to pivot a bit in our approach. We ended up being pretty happy with the brainstorming and rough outline we were able to get done, which set us up for a really great workday on Wednesday! Jacob Gordon, our amazing City Lead, also coordinated a panel of all-female founders of start-ups in the Amsterdam area, which was super cool to listen to! The four women on stage talked about everything from the hardest part of being an entrepreneur (it's not a 9-5 schedule & there aren't benefits when you start out) to how to deal with sexist comments in a workplace. Our cohort had 8 guys and 4 girls, so it was great to have a chance to discuss how the men around us could act as allies in the business world (and beyond). Sage Corps Day 7 & 8: Project Work Days I didn't separate these two days because their tasks were very similar in scope. By Wednesday evening, my team had:
Sage Corps Day 9: Presentations & Wrap-up The group met at 8:30 in our hotel lobby to take the tram to Impact Hub, the start-up space we were using for our presentations, together, then split off to practice our presentations/grab breakfast from Albert Heijn. Although we were all pretty nervous, the presentations ended up being a little more low-key than we were expecting because of how great our CEOs were & because of how close the cohort got. Each group presented for around 30 minutes, then answered questions from audience members, other CEOs, and our city lead, which was a really valuable learning experience to help us think on our feet. Once presentations wrapped up at 1 (which was a weird feeling, because after putting 40 hours of work into 4.5 days, it feels almost anti-climactic to be done), we didn't have anything officially scheduled for Sage Corps until 7:30. My roommate and I checked out the Albert Cuyp Market, which had the booth of the original Stroopwafel, and picked up souvenirs for some people at home. After that, everyone in the program went their separate ways (I went to a bookstore, which I 10/10 recommend as a way to decompress) until dinner! Dinner was at Oresti's Taverna and was a super fun experience — it was great to reconnect with everyone in the cohort (besides the panel on Tuesday, most of us had only seen the team members we were working with over the past few days) and to celebrate the end of a really phenomenal program. As I'm reflecting on the program two days after it ended, I can say with absolute certainty that the Sage Corps Start! Program far exceeded my expectations. As a Sage Corps Fellow, I was able to grow both personally and professionally while working with a diverse team of students from across the United States (we had students from California to Maine, so we literally spanned the map of the country).
Although I wasn't originally sure how much valuable work we'd actually produce in 5 days, it's so exciting to see how enthusiastic the Pikaplant team was about the research and analysis that we conducted and the CEO asked us to consider acting as remote consultants while he is implementing our suggestions. I had never done any official marketing tasks before and literally had no idea what a competitive market analysis was until I did the modules that Sage Corps emailed to us in our project deliverables, but my experience in Amsterdam has given me tangible skills I can add to my resumé, along with a level of confidence in myself and ability to learn quickly that I can bring into any job interview or workplace that I encounter in the future. I'm also much more comfortable navigating in a new city, learning on the fly, using public transit, and getting outside of my comfort zone than I was before I came to Amsterdam. Sage Corps provided exactly the right amount of free time, work time, and tourist time to allow us to gain valuable workplace expertise without missing out on all the incredible sites (and sights) the city has to offer. Our program fee funded our hotel, the two dinners, our travel expenses (like tram passes), tickets to both Van Gogh and the Rijksmuseum, the excursion to the Zaanse Schans, and a canal tour with the history of Amsterdam, which was incredible. Jacob (our city lead) kept us logistically on-track, provided guidance as we worked through our start-up deliverables and finalized our presentations, took care of navigating and organizing, and was hands-on without being overbearing. It was obvious that the Sage Corps team cared about allowing students to have something as similar to the semester-long study-abroad experience over the course of 9 days, and they both met and exceeded that goal. Sage Corps connected me with a network of peers and professionals that I am excited to continue to stay in touch with. I have a unique internship experience and a strong skillset to accompany it that I can add to my resumé that will make me more competitive in the job market. Most importantly, however, Sage Corps gave me the ability to get outside of my comfort zone and into a city that will always be an incredibly special place to me. and I cannot wait to see what doors the Sage Corps Winter! Start Amsterdam program will open for me in the future.
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LizWriting, running, reading, and keeping it real along the way. Archives
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