You mean there's only one month left? - July at LaunchBox

Wow, time is moving fast! This article marks the end of month 2 at LaunchBox and with that comes a strong new focus. Our teams spent June focusing on customer discovery and validation, they spent July focusing on product development and prototype testing, and we are about to enter our final month, August, where pitching and presenting becomes the main focus.

Like every other month, we have had plenty of excellent speakers in to Tangent who gave expert insights and advice to our student entrepreneurs. We heard from Sean Judge about all things AWS, Gríana O'Kelly and Katie Oakes about the incorporation process, Stephen Ralph about product trialling and development, John and Michael O'Dea about the supports of the Local Enterprise Offices and Enterprise Ireland, a pitching masterclass from Andrew Keogh, an investment pitch example from Devan Hughes, and an excellent workshop on hiring great talent from David Ola! As you can see it was a busy month for the teams and looking ahead with Demo Day creeping up fast, it is only going to get busier!

However, as usual in LaunchBox, we still managed to fit in time for social events and team bonding:

Above, we see a rare image of our teams outside of the office, and on the beach of Seapoint going for a dip in the "cool" Irish Sea. We highly recommend all start ups to bring their team for a dip in the Irish Sea, you will quickly find out who can't stick the tough times, by those who can't get into the water!

We continued through July with Bring Your Own LaunchBox, where each team gets one hour to "pick the brains" of the whole LaunchBox cohort for whatever reason they deem necessary. This month it was the turn of, GiveDish (formerly Aloca), Ecode, Qutrip and Navigate Health. The teams are coming up with more and more innovative ways to extract knowledge from their peers. Ecode for example, split the cohort into groups and each group would pitch another use for their sustainable fashion solution. Below you can see Cian (GiveDish) and Aiden (Qutrip) giving it their best effort!

One of the greatest advantages of LaunchBox this year has been the return of in-person office space which has enabled the collaboration between teams such as what is seen above. When you bring 10 different startups into the same room, the wide range of skill sets you have access to at the drop of a hat is something that is just not possible in the majority of offices. We are very grateful for this at LaunchBox, especially after the past 2 years where we had no choice but to hold the programme online!

While everything I have mentioned so far has made life on LaunchBox sound like a dream, don't get me wrong, there has been quite some stress along the way. From disheartening meetings with potential customers, to issues with product development, to issues with domain names, we have had our fair share of stress on LaunchBox too! With only one month to go and the added stress that comes with developing a product, contacting customers, seeking advice from professionals and developing an excellent pitch, all at the same time, the finish line can seem impossible to reach. On that note, I will leave our LaunchBoxers with a quote from Nelson Mandela to set the mood for the next month, "It always seems impossible until it's done."