Lesson 4 - Pitching session by the industry players

This is one of the more exciting lesson I attended so far in NUS. Style of teaching seems to be similar to a module I took in Stanford, Global Entrepreneur Marketing. The lecturer invited people from the industries to pitch about their company and the project that they are working on, and hopefully can attract some smart people to help them in their marketing efforts.

I'm so glad I took this module since I thought there will not be similar lessons offered by NUS and here I am seated in LT 19 listening to the wonderful pitch session by the veterans.

Credits to Prof. Ben, since this isn't possible if he is not charismatic and influential enough to attract these people to talk to us. Ha enough of all this ankat. . .

I'm just wondering if the 2 months are enough working on such intensive project and how do we get graded since everyone's progress and standards for the different projects are different. If it was a self proposed project, can we set our own milestones too as we can't be evaluating ourselves?

Causes App Critique

Having sat through 2 hours and 15 mins of intensive but intriguing presentations from all groups, its time to critique on a particular FB app that caught my interest. That would be the app, Causes. I'm a fan of charity events or charity works and to bring such notable voluntary action and integrate it with social network service, the founders definitely need to be applauded. As follows, I've summarized a few points that caught my attention after the group "pitched" on it.

Causes is a FB app developed to raise funds for non-profit organizations(NPOs) directed from various causes which can be raised my users. Users whom raised such causes were able to link the event to a registered (recognized by US laws and regulations) organization whom would be benefited from all donations collected through the cause.

The effectiveness of the app to the causes so far there were only 2 organizations which raised more than $100,000. This to me is a huge figure as raising funds online is pretty difficult job as there were lots of scams around since the start of the internet age. First we had chain emails to send to all of the user's contacts to raise fund for a leukemia patient or any dying person. People are very sceptical when donations come online from an unknown source.

The introduction of leaderboard for exceptional or successful individuals whom were able to raise lots of money for a cause proves to be some kind of double edge sword. In a way it spites users to be more enthusiastic in raising funds but it might also be not the true intention of users whom just want to be socially recognized through such "philanthropic" acts.

In order to be more successful in raising funds for a caused, I felt that the company, Causes, needed to make known or emphasize that and X amount of the funds raised would be to this charity organization and beneficial organization should make some form of publicity about funds raised through the cause raised in Facebook. This gives users in Facebook a form of credibility and are more willing and susceptible in donating money.

To conclude, I'm perfectly fine with the leaderboard as I don't really care of what the true intention of the user whom raised the cause but so long as we (the donors) know that the money that we "poured" in must go to people whom are in need of it.