TKS Session 28: Global Community Session 2
As we did with the last challenge, we finished this challenge off with another global community session, where everyone in TKS gets on one of two calls (or both!) for a session to meet your fellow Innovates around the world and have some fun. Everyone’s intention for this session is to meet and connect with at least 2 new people, which everyone was actually able to do this time!
We kicked off the session with congratulations to everyone on the challenge if they were able to submit the deliverables. It was difficult, but the hard work is now over.
Then, we got everyone awake and into the groove with an energizer. We normally do different kinds of energizers to kick off our sessions and get everyone locked in to do well. But, this time, the directors wanted to give us a little more choice in our energizer for this session. Normally, they get us to do something more fitness-related, like a mini-workout or a few exercises. This time, we had the option to choose between 3 different energizers (or you could do all 3 if you wanted to!). The options were
Drink a raw egg yolk
20 push-ups
I always prefer doing a fitness activity, so I chose to do 20 push-ups because I know I feel good after doing them. But, it was really funny and cool to see the others try out the other 2 energizers.
Our first activity as a group was to join breakout rooms with groups of 6 people and find six things we had in common with one another, maybe more. I had a really great group for this activity, and we all talked and got along so well. I would say in that first activity alone, I had already connected with my entire group as new people and achieved my set intention for that session.
Then, we moved onto our next activity, which was a TKS innovates vs directors scavenger hunt. They put us into groups of 4-6, and we all had to work together to complete the scavenger hunt checklist. Items were worth varying points, from getting a screenshot of your scavenger hunt group, being worth 2 points, to getting the founder of TKS, Navid Nathoo, to repost your post during the scavenger hunt, being worth 10000 points! It was really fun to work with and just hang out with some of the people and joke around while trying to get the stuff checked off the list.
Our last group activity was to create an ad for a new futuristic tech or idea, like Designer Babies or AI dating, for example. A lot of the ads created were very creative, and there were different awards like Most Funniest Ad or Most Scary But Possible. But, all jokes aside, it’s crazy to think for a moment what might actually be possible, and how scary some of these possibilities are. Our group did PetSpeak 3333, a collar powered by AI to tell you what your dog was really thinking. Some other ideas we had bounced around as a group were to do a machine that allowed you to be in 2 places at once, as well as an AI parenting tool.
This was the image of the ad we made for the challenge.
We then did this activity where we all got onto this big Miro board, and on it was the TKS logo made out of a bunch of sticky notes. What everyone did was put their dream on one of those sticky notes, with the goal of it being a collection of everyone’s dreams for this year's 24-’25 TKS cohort, like a memento. The purpose of this was to show us that people are told they can’t achieve their dreams, or they choose to hide their dreams because they doubt themselves. But those people who hide their dreams most likely won’t achieve them because they aren’t trying, getting support, or aren’t putting themselves out there. They wanted us to publicly display our dreams to everyone and write them down with our names on them so that we could share our dreams and put ourselves out there, even if it’s only a little bit.
After, we did a little conversation as a group about what was coming up for the rest of TKS. Our year ends in a couple of months, and our last big challenge is what we call Moonshots, which are based on X, the Moonshot Factory, by Google.
The purpose of this challenge is to get into groups and build things that the world hasn’t seen yet, things that could help solve the world’s biggest problems that are so innovative and “out of this world” (hence the name, moonshot), because you are aiming for things where sky’s the limit. You let the moonshot project be led by your curiosity and what you’re passionate about. And then, you work on that and innovate an idea that you are invested in. What makes this different from the first 2 challenges we did before is that there was structure with the challenge, where you must follow a specific prompt or guideline, and there may not be room for that much creativity if it’s a really technical prompt or you may not be interested in what the prompt is asking of you. But, with moonshots, you follow your passion and curiosity and build what you think is important. People from TKS who have built successful moonshots have gone on to start companies or get actual funding from legit investors to start the projects. So, it’s a reminder that these ideas are also aiming to have a real-world impact that will make the world a better place.
Moonshot projects also need to be thought out and put together, because you are trying to change the world and actually build something that can help it. But, the idea can be crazy, which also makes it a moonshot.
To finish off the session as a whole group, we broke into breakout rooms like we did last time, where different brainpods were hosted, where each group hosted a specific discussion on a topic. The one I joined was understanding how to start a startup.
We first talked about what a startup was, which, defined by the directors, is a company you are building where there is a customer who needs your product. If there is no customer, then there is no startup; it’s just a project. Once a customer shows a need for your product, then it can be a startup. But, we got to the point where we decided it doesn’t matter what you call yourself, but (this is what they were stressing during this entire brainpod), it just matters that you start.
Something they told us was that people waste so much time trying to figure out the small things of their “startup” or the little nitty gritty things like websites or what kind of company they want to be and all that kind of stuff before they even begin. It doesn’t matter what you are at this stage when you’re just starting out; what matters is that you start out and actually begin putting yourself out there. If you don’t start and you waste your time overthinking the little things, that’s taking away from your time to build and try to get traction and test your idea out to see if it can become something more.
A lot of the questions that come with starting a startup aren’t easy to answer in just one way. Some of the stories they told us about different startups are all so different, with some people coming up with what most thought was a “stupid idea'“ turning out to be success, with other people grinding away on one specific idea, even when their customers weren’t buying into it, until they had a lightbulb moment and turned their idea into something successful. Every startup story seems to have different things that worked for each startup. So really, a lot of the “answers” will come as you begin. There were three things that seemed to be consistent throughout all the questions, which were these:
Just start, don’t overthink it.
Don’t stress about people stealing your idea, it probably only happens about 1% of the time, which shouldn’t stop you from putting your idea out there.
Make sure you have a customer base, can you sell your idea?
To test this last point, we played this role-playing game where everyone was the owner of a babysitting business, and one of the directors was a new mom. Our goal was to sell the new mom on this babysitting business we had. We went through multiple different scenarios, asking her different questions to see what worked and what didn’t. We learned that selling an idea isn’t just all about the business, you need to make it personal and find a connection with your customer, share the why for your product (this was covered in another session as well). Also, you needed to find things that would appeal to your customer base, sort of guide them in the direction you wanted them at. When you are trying to sell to a customer, you can find out the three important things about your product:
Is there a problem that my product is trying to solve?
Do my customers know there is a problem that needs to be solved?
Can my product solve this problem?
If there is no problem, then the product most likely won’t get the traction you are looking for. Even if it’s a problem that could be solved better, sometimes better isn’t what people want if there are already methods that can get the job done. And, even if there is a problem that needs to be solved, are the customers aware? If the customers are not aware of the problem, then it makes it much harder to solve the problem because there aren’t people who know/want it to be solved by your product. This is what we are able to learn through our role-playing exercise, as well as just being able to learn how to sell the idea, to begin with.
Then, that was the official end to our entire global session. It was fun getting to hang out with some new and old friends again and just have some fun after the stressful challenge. I definitely feel like I enjoyed this session compared to the last global session, and I’m not really sure why that is. Moonshot projects start next week, so it’s time to lock in again, and I can’t wait for this part of TKS to begin!
