At the end of the internship @Pollenizer, it’s great to reflect on a six-week adventure. My whole winter break evaporated into a roller coast ride of #flearnings, WIPs, customer interviews, and iterating to find problem-solution fit and product-market fit.
I’ve been doing a lot of interviews this last week to understand the processes of developing products and businesses for my research report, and I feel I have captured a lot of worthwhile insight from everyone working in and out of Pollenizer. One of the big lessons I come out of the internship with was realizing team cohesion appears critical to the success of an idea.
I was grateful to work with such a great team of people while helping in whatever capacity I could in the GetListed business. I thought WIP sessions with Lisa, Phil, Mark, Mick, Danny, Kate, and the GetListed team were amazing to get fresh feedback. It was great to see their involvement in the process of developing the business and thinking about the user experience. I never imagined a joint venture between two companies to work the way I experienced it in the past six weeks. I thought the separate sessions with Phil and Kate were especially brilliant exercises.
Focusing on the principal team of GetListed, I really appreciate the amount of work and passion they put into the business. Bosco was really open from day one. He was great at encouraging me to learn more and pushing me to give it a go. I think he was impactful in creating a #teamhappiness work space to share ideas for GetListed. He was especially helpful in getting me to understanding customer engagement and development.
Kevin was Kevin. I’m not really sure how to describe him to capture his invaluable contributions in GetListed. He is one of those guys you really just have to meet. I think he is great at looking at the hypothesis at an angle I would have never thought of myself. It was fun to see how GetListed developed with his engineering and using an application he created in puffin.
Last of all, Michael was bossome. It’s a word my friends and I would use as a mash up of Boss and Awesome. I would use it to describe him. He was great at keeping the process grounded while I worked on the business. I think I understand how startup business works most from the one on one discussions we had. It was great to learn in such a quick, agile way and to constantly question each other like some sort of Socratic seminar. I found him most of all relatable and that sometimes is the most difficult to find in a workplace.
Ultimately, this small team is the startup business at its core.
—Thanks for the Memories & Flearnings from everyone at Pollenizer and APN—
Six weeks of finding a buzzing United Nations community at the nondescript locale in Surry Hills.
#support shout out to the FinOps ladies, Nicola, Bree, and Claudia!!!
And #challenge, Shout out to Qmunity, my new startup venture!