Week 9: Techstars

Time: 03/23-03/27, 13.25 hours

Topics: Tech Startups and Entrepreneurship.

Tools: Framer Motion, Prismic, Netlify, GitHub, Gatsby.

Summary:

I built some kind of routine in Toronto. My 9 AM scrums with Wunderite kept me to a decent sleep schedule. With classes resuming, I had papers to write, books to read, and zoom calls to join on Wednesday and Thursday nights. I filled my free time with baking and long walks in the nearby conservation. It was a different rhythm and it took some time to adjust to. Calling my family and friends irregularly led to less and less frequent interaction. Canada was quiet. I think it was during this week I started descending into the strange sluggish mental pace that would make it impossible to stay focused on finishing my classwork. 

This week, I submitted an application for Wheaton’s CVC summer internship scholarship and began work on a website for Wheaton’s independent academic journal, The Pub. I began exploring Javascript animation libraries to use with Gatsby and found Framer Motion. I spent time learning how to animate components for a website that’s rendered server-side using this library.

Tech Startups and Entrepreneurship: Because the world had moved online, I could, for the first time, participate in Techstars with Wunderite team! I joined my first all-hands meeting on Wednesday where I heard from two other participating companies, S/O/S and Cortex. It was exciting to finally see the faces behind participating teams and hear about their projects. It was also a bit intimidating to jump on a giant zoom call with such an experienced and wise community of entrepreneurs.

This week I realized what an incredible opportunity it was to be interning with Wunderite as they participated in Techstars Boston. I’m grateful to Peter for reaching out and inviting me to join his team this season, and to the Wheaton in Chicago program for giving me space in my academic schedule to intern during the second semester of my Junior year. The startup community in Boston is impressive.