WEEK 15 - Lecture Series and Update

 For this week the Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology together with CDO Bites started a bonfire session wherein they tackle the common misconceptions of ending a startup. The speakers for these session are Ms. Cherry Murillon, Mr. Kenno Michael Uy, and Mr. Franch Maverick Lorilla. Ms. Cherry Murillon is the founder and CEO of Cawil.AI. Cawil.AI is an industry-agnostic artificial intelligence solution that provides AI driven business solutions integrated to web, mobile application, and industry automation. They focus on computer vision artificial intelligence to impact decision making for businesses, and to create an inclusive society. Next speaker is Mr. Kenno Michael Uy. He is the founder and CEO of Lesstics, Inc., a startup that wants to tackle the growing problem of unemployment among the youth and the use of single use plastics in the Philippines. Their solution employs the use of vegetable based adhesive to combine with shredded plastic to manufacture construction materials (identical to plywood) for the housing sectors. THe final speaker for this bonfire session is Mr. Franch Maverick Lorilla, the acting TBI Manger of CDO Bites. 

Questions raised during the session were very informative and the speakers were able to give a definitive answer to those questions. The question that interest me the most was the question about disclosing and protecting one's unique idea. This interest me because I too have this kind of thinking before. I was anxious about sharing my ideas for the fear someone might stole my unique idea. In addition to that idea, I have also read stories about the founders of some popular software company that they have just stole or copy the original idea from someone else. One example I can think of is Facebbok. We all know that Mark Zuckerberg made this social media platform but it was not his original idea. The original idea for a social media site came from the Winklevoss brothers who are co-founders of HardvardConnections which later named ConnectU. They accused Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their idea for a social networking site.

Scenarios like that makes me think twice of sharing my own idea to others. However, the speakers cited that it is important to share your ideas to the right people like for example investors and startup incubators so that the project or startup will get funded.