UP Enterprise Open House May 16
I attended the recently held Open House by UP Enterprise ( View their website here) last May 16, 2012.
The UP Enterprise Open House attracted a small crowd of entrepreneurs, technopreneurs and academic people. The guests were given the chance to introduce themselves and the startups and projects that they are working on. The UP Enterprise’s Managing Director, Ms. Yolly Onchangco, also introduced what the Enterprise programme was all about. The discussion eventually led to how the education system slowly becomes more entrepreneurial.
I met several persons working on creating a workable business venture. They were working on diverse fields such as a My Remittance Hub – a way for OFWs to find all remittance centers in one place, and Pharmaceuticals – getting the prescription drugs into our country, as well as other web developers.
I also met someone who wanted to transform Education – giving teachers a way to collaborate with their students via the web. (In a sense, our team in Startupweekend, MentorsDojo is already doing it via providing a simple messaging platform for mentees to connect to their mentors).
The Mentors Dojo team, composed of myself, Glenn (the founder) and Louie (our business and designer guy), were also present. Radge Falcis of GoRated.ph’s who is working fulltime on his startup was also there.
The event impressed upon me that education isn’t complete in the sense that if you’re an engineering grad, you don’t get to learn much of the finance side of things. Say you have a great product, but will the market really buy it?
It seems that the problem is that due to the products being inside the lab for so long, it’s too late to try out the market for it. It appears that they have this big astrononomical future forecasts of sales and they have to change that system into a somewhat more ‘lean’ system. (Lean is more of a method that emphasizes quality testing, validating that the market really wants your product, before even doing anything. It’s all about making sure that you build what your customer really wants).