The end of Summer Lab – my reflections:

I signed up to Summer Lab wondering if it was going to be worth it and also anticipating that I might not go through with it. I was already enrolled in my last general education paper in summer school and thinking I should purely focus on just that but felt like I wanted to do something more and as cheesy as it sounds something in me was like Summer Lab could somehow change your life …and it actually did.

I just wanted to come out of this experience with some confidence that I could be an entrepreneur and I got much more than that. I felt welcomed into the entrepreneurship world at the University and it didn’t feel limited to the CIE. The mentors I was given and the continued relationships we have further make me believe I have a place to keep exploring in the innovative landscape and community in New Zealand. I’m also grateful to have gained a foundation in business models, negotiating, raising capital, market validation and so many other things that were not so long ago foreign concepts.

I’m thankful to have met all the other summer labbers that are so nice and humble for how talented they are and inspiring in terms of their projects. This includes my teammates which I feel like are a good example of why you shouldn’t miss the opportunity of doing summer lab. Having a team is everything and finding one sometimes feels impossibly hard. Summer Lab is where you get to meet those people who care about innovation just as much as you do and it allows you to keep each other motivated, focused and passionate about a startup.

I met Weilian purely by accident because she saw my VR poster which I made on the first day of Summer Lab and it led to her approaching me. Sarah who I already knew, by chance, could attend summer lab this year and when she joined us we became a full group. Weilian found the mschools SDG competition and for 3 days including one all-nighter we completed an application she sent through that made us finalists. The result of this meant being flown out to Barcelona and getting the chance to pitch our idea at the most influential tech startup event, 4YFN. I even got to attend the even bigger Mobile World Congress on its final day. We talked to a number of VR startups, well-known companies and this ultimately opened my eyes to how big the world is and what opportunities are out there.

What I wanted to get out of Summer Lab was confidence and becoming the Co-Founder of Socius VR has given me that. I couldn’t even imagine this all happening at the start of this year and it’s significantly impacted my perspective as well as my decisions. Currently, our goal is to make a Virtual Reality video that can help people with autism practice social interaction more efficiently. We’re organising meetings with autism organisations, clinicians, parents and most importantly people with autism to make sure we can accurately pinpoint difficult social situations for them and make a simulation that could help them overcome it. We’re also working with Social Innovation New Zealand under their SOL*VD initiative gaining access to their professional mentoring services as well as pitching at their Collide event.