Since February our team has been working in collaboration with the cutting edge, Zurich based, start-up Nanoleq. The co-founders, Vincent and Luca, have invited us into the fold as if we were veritable members of their company, and we could not have asked for a more fulfilling experience.
Nanoleq produces a potentially industry shifting material that enhances the lifetime and reliability of cables (envision here your headphones or the cables you’d find on a robotic arm.) Our challenge was to work with Vincent and Luca to iron out their business plan and provide both strategic and tactical recommendations regarding their way forward.
Throughout this process, our team was excited by the opportunity to apply what we have learned in the lecture hall to a real-world application. Around every turn in the project we found ourselves recalling what we learned in our latest Finance, Marketing, or Entrepreneurship classes and sorting through how we might best apply it to our Nanoleq effort. For example, in the process of developing a “Market Scorecard” to help Nanoleq quantify the potential of certain markets, we drew on our NPV / Time Value of Money sessions as well as our newfound, better understanding of what makes a compelling Value Proposition. It was a fulfilling experience to watch our in-class learnings come to bear in the real world for real impact.
From left to right: Matthias Tschudi, Janis Doelle, Nancy Phelps, Luca Hirt (Nanoleq Co-Founder), Vincent Martinez (Nanoleq Co-Founder), Maria-Jose Oriz, Jaime Garcia-Prieto, Shingo Kawano.
