A Spoten Summer
My journey at Spoten began with an email from CCD. It had been 3 months since I left Wellesley and my hopes for an internship were at an all-time low. I applied and was pleased to see an invitation from Ivan, our CEO in the following days. I decided to pull a Ray Allen and shoot and was even more pleased to find out that we were both raised in the beautiful city of Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. But what surprised me the most was the unique Dominican-Brazilian Spanish that I was greeted with on my first interview. This moment can describe every moment at Spoten, unique.
On June 18, the Spoten Summer journey began. A team of 7 hummingbirds with big ideas and expectations sat in front of their computers in different parts of the world to merge these thoughts in hopes of doing something great. Danilo, Ivan, Joao, Leo, Rafa, Antonella, and Susana, all were faced with the challenge of uncertainty, but with the perks of resilience and passion. Although it was my first internship, I quickly realized that this was not going to be an ordinary experience. It could’ve been what some call the start-up culture or the newness of Spoten, but everything about it was different. In the following days, there was brainstorming, seven long and treacherous days of thinking and stripping down ideas, and building them up again. Soon enough, the ideas led to debates, and then these debates formed the tangible project; the Spoten Box. Soon enough, we started promoting our idea beyond the group and found great support in the Babson community that catapulted the project into something bigger than we imagined.
The Spoten Box became the focus, and in the two months of our summer journey, most of our efforts were centered on building this project and making our idea a reality. Between the 7 of us, no one had ever started a Box company, but as Babson Students and business enthusiasts, we dove into the challenge of the box and decided to go beyond. Truthfully, “challenge” does not encompass the difficulty of the project, but, we were willing to do anything to make this fly. Whether it was preparation meetings, extensive research, constant emails, hard negotiations, and templates back and forth, we began forging a system, and progressively the process began to ripen. In this process, we had our good moments, like every time we were able to receive a response from our prospects following an extensive process of hunting. We had our great moments, like the meetings were we closed deals and added partners to our box. But we had plenty of bad moments, like the bad deals, the rejections, the late hour works, and the unreturned emails. But the thrill of planning for a call, and meeting amazing entrepreneurs, and slowly forming the Spoten web, easily overpowered those bad moments, and our motivation soared with every partnership secured.
There were crucial moments, there were decisions to be made. Our Box was redesigned three times, our Instagram restarted and then split into separate accounts, and our website completely redesigned. The team never lost the drive. Like the hummingbird, we kept our flight steady, and like everything else, things began to flow. This box journey, if anything, proved to be an experience of growth and development for everyone at Spoten. We were all walking in uncharted territory and found great support in each other to keep moving forward. Whether it was practicing the art of feedback, or giving a pep talk right before a crucial meeting, in such a short period we developed a safe space for improvement at Spoten. There wasn’t a hierarchy, there was a team, and individual accomplishments were group accomplishments. But the fails were team fails, and instead of blaming one another we learned as a group and pivoted.
Our team grew, and we welcomed two more “hummingbirds”. And just as the first day, we all sat in front of our screens, introducing them to the grandness of our idea, and the importance of their roles. Giulia and Thiago brought with them knowledge and motivation, but most importantly they were willing to fly with us. This growth within was substantial, and by the time the summer came to an end, we proved to everyone and ourselves that despite difficult circumstances like a global pandemic, there are so many opportunities to do amazing things.
We will miss the you days, the virtual happy hours, and the jokes of our founder’s obsession with Airtable. But we’re never going to forget the lessons that this project taught us. We learned that more than a good idea and a great team, it takes more to overcome the challenges of starting up. It takes the drive, passion, and deep desire of working towards a common goal to achieve the amazing results that the summer team had.
As Fall rolls in, we keep the same energy. There is still so much more to accomplish, and the only thing we plan to do is go beyond.