So, as it would turn out, my Digital Media Marketing class was much more of a term-long case study in Entrepreneurship than a course in Marketing. Our guest list proved to be a Who’s Who of Yahoo alums and big industry players, and hearing their stories, seeing their presentations, having the opportunity to ask them questions, and being encouraged to follow up with any of them (for good reason) is an unparalleled use of 3 Stern tuition credits.
In addition to the speaker series, throughout the term, teams of students conceived and expanded digital ideas into business plans, culminating in pitching to Paul Berry, CTO of the Huffington Post. Paul gave a brief presentation, and one of his most salient points was to avoid coding by specification. He argued that specs stifle innovation. It takes minutes to come up with an idea, but it can take months for a developer to implement it; the developer lives with an idea while breathing life into it. Forcing developers to conform to a spec is a surefire way to limit morale, motivation, and creativity.
Oyez!
My team pivoted on our idea, oyez (the interjection traditionally used by town criers), four or five times. (I’m purposefully not divulging the idea in case one of my teammates wants to take the venture to the next level.) Once we honed in on a concept, we bounced back and forth multiple times on a revenue model, how to market, the best first target vertical, etc… Surprisingly, nothing was too obvious. In any case, our oyez logo shall live forever on my blog, along with these records of some of the more memorable lectures:
