by Shena Lohardjo, MBA2027
Coming to London Business School, I knew that I wanted to explore the entrepreneurship path and take advantage of the resources available to help me uncover that. Prior to my MBA, I was a Product Manager in the fintech space for 5+ years and worked at two startup accelerators. Still, I felt unsure about what the first step looked like, especially with AI, and what idea to pursue. I initially enrolled in Entrepreneurship Summer School (ESS) without necessarily having an idea yet. ESS gives you a mentor, a framework, and three blocks across the summer (a week in July, then two weekends in August and September) to find out whether your idea is viable and whether you actually like being an entrepreneur. But a few months before ESS, I got a chance to attend PocketGamer Connects – a gaming industry conference where LBS sponsored student tickets. The conference sparked my desire to pursue a career in games, and my idea was born.
My idea, A Lil Shenanigans, is a TikTok-style swipe feed platform where users can play mini games and engage with friends through likes/comments/shares and a leaderboard. Through ESS, I developed a thorough understanding of the mobile games industry and user sentiment toward casual/hypercasual mobile games and tested the viability of my idea. In my survey of players, only about 10% were genuinely enthusiastic about playable ads (interactive game previews used in advertising), yet 66% said they’d install a game after playing it, so how an experience is framed matters more than its format. Below are four ways that ESS has helped me through my entrepreneurship journey:
- Understanding whether entrepreneurship is the path for me
Having only worked in companies, I was unsure if entrepreneurship was a route I wanted to take. It was daunting not having a manager set my KPIs or a team to work with, and being solely responsible for how much time/effort I put in. ESS provided a sandbox for me to pressure-test my ability and see whether I enjoyed being in this environment over the summer. This is a sandbox that most people working full-time jobs can’t access. I was really driven by my passion for my idea, and I developed the discipline of putting in the time and effort.
- Having a community of founders
What I looked forward to every day at ESS was the breakout sessions. In class, we would have a lecture or a speaker talk about a topic, and then we would go into breakout sessions to discuss how that topic applies to our venture and give feedback to one another. For example, we would talk about our research plans or monetisation strategies. I found these breakout sessions to be immensely valuable because I could talk through my ideas and get feedback on them. One of my classmates suggested I use games for brand activation, prompting me to build a Flappy Bird-style game around Red Bull’s ‘Gives You Wings’ slogan in my prototype.
- Assignments that created a structure for idea validation
Throughout ESS, we had assignments that built toward our final assignment, which was a presentation on whether our idea is viable, and the evidence to back this up. When starting something new, you don’t know what you’re supposed to know about the industry or your customers. ESS provided an evidence-based framework for determining whether your idea is viable. I found these frameworks helpful for someone who is transitioning from a corporate setting to an entrepreneurial one. For example, my survey results are why I cut playable ads from my initial prototype.
- Mentorship
Each participant is paired with a mentor who selects which mentees they want to work with. My mentor is an entrepreneur who also does leadership coaching. He was excited about my idea and was incredibly encouraging. He was a huge help in determining whether entrepreneurship is the path for me as well, through sharing stories of his own experience and giving advice on how he navigated similar hurdles. A piece of advice that stuck was setting goals by my next birthday because I won’t forget it and I’ll have something to hold myself accountable for. Having a mentor helped me with imposter syndrome, kept me accountable to my goals, and gave me someone to bounce ideas off.
Overall, ESS was a great way to determine whether entrepreneurship is the right path for you and learn how to validate and develop your business idea. I’m still working on my idea, and I’m grateful for the support to get it started. ESS also helped me realise how much I enjoy building games and being creative.