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what is the management team?
what is the management team?The IDEA management team is led by 50 Northeastern University undergraduate students from a wide variety of educational backgrounds that are passionate about helping ventures succeed and growing the IDEA program to reach its full potential. These are students who became involved with IDEA to learn more about entrepreneurship, get a taste of venture capital before graduating, or simply want to make a real impact in the sorrounding entrepreneurship community.
?venture team
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The Venture team serves as the backbone of IDEA, working with all ventures to provide resources for what they need to succeed in the program. The members of the Venture Team are divided into four groups: Ready, Set, Go and Investments. The Ready, Set, and Go stages act as stage gates in the IDEA program with each stage helping an entrepreneur develop different parts of their venture and providing access to unique stage-specific resources. The Investments team directly manages the funding resources at IDEA and is supported by members from all teams. Over the past year, the team has worked on a variety of projects including: revamping the resource guides across all stages; increasing venture pipeline and diversity of ventures starting at Ready stage; implementing the first ever cohort model; revamping the coaching process in the Set stage; implementing new feedback-seeking tools in Ready and Set stage; having bootcamps around venture capital funding led by Professor Bob Lentz for Go stage ventures; working more with The McCarthy(s) Venture Mentoring Network, especially for ventures in Go stage; streamlining the Gap Fund application form and building a better grading rubric when analyzing ventures which apply for the Gap Fund.
marketing team
The Marketing team is responsible for fostering conversations and interactions with IDEA among the external community of entrepreneurs, and get messages out across all channels of interest (social media, blog, newsletters, slack ). The main goals of the Marketing team this year were increasing accessibility to the program, developing engagement with the brand, and being recognized as a thought leader in the industry. Some strategies that were adopted to achieve these goals included heavy digital campaigns, Public Relations initiatives, email blasts, creating new original content, and supporting IDEA events.
The Events team helps foster authentic human interaction, kickstart inspiration, and connect communities despite the challenges set by the virtual environment. In the 11th year, the Events team held NEXPO and Pitchathon, which aimed at featuring IDEA ventures and the resources that support them in our program and at Northeastern. The team also co-hosted workshops with Pathfinder, the IDEA Legal Officer, and E-club.
tech team
The Tech team leverages technology to optimize operations and data collection, transforming IDEA into a data-driven organization. Specifically, the team strives to enable operational efficiency, improve venture experience, and market IDEA and its ventures. To meet its objectives, the Tech team works closely with other teams, particularly Venture and Community. Over the past year the team worked to create a site to advertise ventures to outside observers and investors. The Tech team also analyzed internal data to modify processes with the goal of creating the best possible experience for ventures.
what is the management team?
The Community Team is responsible for ensuring stronger connections with IDEA’s core communities: Management Team members, ventures, Northeastern University, alumni, coaches, and the external Boston community. This year, the Community Team had several goals: best utilize connections, gather feedback for informed decisionmaking, and create a clear, welcoming, and helpful environment. The Community Team continued to create content for the Bright IDEAs podcast and spread awareness of IDEA’s resources via in-class presentations. It re-formatted Venture Advisory Board sessions to gather founder feedback on specific Management Team projects, and create Static Resource Guides about information highly requested by IDEA founders, such as How To Find a Co-founder.
rotational associates program
This year, we’ve brought back the Rotational Associate Program, now under the management of a new executive position, the Chief of Staff. With a set point of contact to help guide the associates, the program aims to help first and second year students gain exposure to the different aspects of the IDEA Student Management Team. The Rotational Associate Program sees the associates shadow and participate in initiatives during four-week assignments in the Venture, Marketing, and Events teams, as well as participate in full-team events, meetings, and sessions to learn the intricacies of how the organization works and figure out what positions they would like to pursue in the future.
