Seth Gallman ’22 — The Business Innovation Program has been an extremely beneficial step in my young professional career. Through the three main projects of writing two business plans for two different mock startups and working on a consulting project for Wabash College, I have gained many new skills and abilities. Thank you to the CIBE Business Innovation Program for funding this wonderful opportunity for me. A few experiences I found extremely beneficial were the financial boot camp, the site visits to South Bend, and the trials and tribulations of writing a food truck business pitch. The financial boot camp led by Zackary Carl ’18 allowed me to become familiar with writing out full financial statements as well as how to actually understand and comprehend all aspects of financial statements. During the South Bend trip, we were able to visit alumni at companies such as Trek 10, Cup Print, and EnFocus. These three companies all do extremely different things. Shane Fimbel and Jim Abercrombie at Trek 10 taught us the importance of the cloud and how it has completely shaped the way they look at the business world. After this visit, I became more motivated to familiarize myself with the cloud and how it works. Cup print was a business sparked from Todd Hooglin’s project at Notre Dame’s ESTEEM program. This business does exactly what it sounds like, print designs for cups. Through this trip, I learned the importance of a process and business plan that sounds simple, yet still had so many aspects to make it work. The trip to EnFocus showed me how the non-profit is working to reshape the city of South Bend. It was extremely beneficial to see a business that works essentially like the CIBE at Wabash College but on a much larger scale. Finally, the food truck business plan provided many lessons and experiences that changed the way I think about startups. The humbling experience of pitching our idea to investors taught me how important market research and consumer feedback is when crafting a startup. While my group was able to raise the most investment money with our innovative Waffle Kebab idea, we learned that there was still so much untapped potential and work that needed to be done on our business model. Overall, this summer internship experience has changed my mindset on the business realm and has given me future insight into what career path I want to take in the future. I cannot express how grateful I am for this opportunity, and I believe it has set me up well to succeed as a young business professional in the future.
