Sherman Center Venture Co-op: Frieda Huang
Frieda Huang, MS’24, product development, describes a venture co-op experience at the Sherman Center for Engineering Entrepreneurship Education as the founder of Moonshot, a web application that provides real-time feedback and suggestions for foreign-born professionals to know exactly how to respond in an online conversation.
What are some things you have learned so far/some challenges you’ve faced?
Project management and time management. Before school, it was mostly either school or working. But being on this co-op you have control over your own time. You have to constantly think about how you can best organize your time. I work on product development, coding, design, customer interviewing, and social media. Every day I need to think through which tasks are our priority as a company and as a team and then schedule my day around that. It is something I’ve never done before, so I’ve been asking people what worked for them and have been trying to imitate that.
Looking ahead, what are your plans for the future of your co-op?
Right now we are going back to the bronze era, where we’ll try to build more features and prototypes and determine who we want to interview. Our goal is to build a great product even if only one person uses it, I want to make this user happy about my product. That’s the first thing, the second thing we’re working on is securing two pilot programs, with the two different, accelerators. We want to secure some of the pilot programs, before launching the product, or before applying for any other accelerators. And the final thing we’re working on is increasing in my Twitter followers. In this day and age, it’s hard to launch a product if nobody knows you to begin with.
What is some advice you would give to students either in the Sherm or ones that are considering doing a venture?
It’s easy to overthink and hold yourself back, a lot of people have ideas and want to work on a start-up but they never actually do it, because there are so many obstacles and excuses not to. You have to bring your ideas to life and make them a reality, only then you can know the result. There are so many concerns and problems sometimes you just need to do it.
How has the Sherman Center impacted your experience at Northeastern?
I’m very grateful to be given this opportunity, whenever I tell other people what I am doing, they are so surprised and are like “My school doesn’t offer things like that, lucky you”, and I get paid working on my venture which is like the greatest thing ever. And if I am successful, it’s because I was given this time outside of school to work on my venture and have the Sherman Center to support me. And if it doesn’t work out then I will still have made all these friends and mentors and learned how everything works during the process. And if it fails I will understand what led to the failure. If anything it’s not a real failure, it’s an opportunity to change your way of doing things. Either way, I will learn so much during this 6 month time period.