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During the weekend of April 24th I was part of the Ottawa Innovation Challenge. The event took place at the Entrepreneurship Centre and consisted of a 48-hour challenge of problems faced by 2 Ottawa local businesses. The businesses were Wedding Republic and Unique Home Sites. Khaleel Jivrai) and I tackled issues such as marketing, product development and a final pitch of the changes to the Wedding Republic team. This was a short period to develop skills for each of these topics, but we were matched perfectly with our partners to tackle all aspects of the competition. As advisors to the teams we had arguably some of the more influential people in entrepreneurship in the Ottawa region. I was very happy to have finally met Stephen Daze, Scott Lake and Manu Sharma who I’ve known of from discussions with others in the Ottawa startup scene and twitter. Sitting down with each and discussing our goals in solving the problem statement provided. After a couple minutes with each of them, I was impressed by the quick wit in marketing and product development that each displayed. It is definitely a great example of how experienced advisors are a great asset to a startup. Although my team did not win I did use the experience as a means to draw some 'Lessons Learned'. Lessons learned: 1. 10 minutes to pitch is a lot of time to say nothing. Keep it brief and hit on the points you were asked to cover. They know their business so there is no point explaining what the product does. What did they ask? What are you proposing? Why will it work? 2. Deliver on what was asked and don't think too much outside the box. Improving on what already exists and works may sometimes be better than introducing too much new functionality. This is especially true if you are a startup with limited cash. 3. Friendly competition will always bring the best out of you. Even though I was competing against a couple of friends I didn't let my guard down. There is no fun in sharing too much information when you’ll eventually find out what everyone else is doing in the presentation. I expected nothing less of exceptional from the team (we were all chose for a reason) so I stepped up my game. I never once thought I would be thinking of the wedding registry space for 48 hours straight. In many ways I feel I am too young to worry about that stuff just yet. :) 4. Consult with everyone you can but don't let everyone tell you what you should do. We discussed our plans with a decent number of folks (organizers, friends, family, mentors, startup founder). In that process we got a lot of feedback; some amazing and other less amazing to our vision of the solution. I had difficulty disregarding some opinions and suggestions as they came from people that were more experienced. Of course, if you hear the same thing over and over again you most likely have to visit that issue. Regardless, we did and I feel that we met the goal of the competition. 5. Have fun! In the end it is an experience and no matter what the results are, you are experiencing this as a group. It is a great opportunity to network with like-minded individuals in Ottawa and potentially bond. I felt very honoured to be a part of such a talented group and will stay in touch in order to help grow this initiative in Ottawa. It is much easier to be successful and have impact as a community (or ecosystem) than as a lone ranger. I'd like to thank OCRI and the OIC planning team for running such an event. They deserve a lot of credit as the event was well organized and they're the visionaries behind the future of Ottawa's technology ecosystem. Cheers, Filip