I always knew I was a STEM girl. Since a young age, I was inclined towards math and science. I much preferred equations to essays and practice problems to readings. Naturally, I figured I would major in something related to STEM in college. Throughout high school, I pursued programs and initiatives related to Computer Science. However, as I dug deep through the tech websites and information, I realized that when it came to applying technical knowledge, business expertise was not only helpful but necessary.
This realization was spurned during my sophomore year in highschool when I participated in the Technovation Competition. The purpose of the competition was to work with a team to develop an app and present it to Yahoo executives for a chance to move onto the semifinals. I signed up to participate because of the coding opportunity that was presented with the challenge. This was my first real opportunity to use my programming knowledge to create a tangible product that people could physically use. However, as I began, I realized that a key part of the competition was creating a potential business plan for our product. This involved estimating profits and costs while analyzing potential competitors and consumer markets. This experience left me with a multitude of knowledge about business prediction and analysis. More importantly, it taught me about the crucial intersection between business and technology. To make our product successful, it needed to be marketable. We needed to create features and designs that would appeal to consumers, and I couldn’t code my portion without understanding our business model.
My next experience with business and technology was the summer before my junior year in high school. I attended an entrepreneurship summer program in which our team had to create a startup from scratch. Instead of focusing solely on the development or prototyping of our app, we learned the ins and outs of creating a business from scratch. Alongside all of our lectures and presentations on maker-spaces and programming languages, we heard from business professionals. VC’s talked to us about strategies in investing, lawyers discussed the legalities of startups, and CEO’s lectured on analyzing competitors. In the end, my team and I created a 3D printing startup. As important as it was to create prototypes and code our website, our model would not have been successful without a key understanding of who we were competing with.
All of my previous experience with creating products and apps culminated in my internship last summer. I worked at a large tech company, where I had to create an app out of a plain idea. While this did involve more code and Android programming than my previous projects, there were still elements that required business knowledge. Before creating and implementing a feature, we had to think about the effect it would have on the consumer and the overall marketability of our product. The beginning ideation stage involved a lot of iterating on our idea and comparing our output to current competitors on the market. At a large tech giant, I had assumed that my work would be all about my code, but it involved so much more.
I realized that as much as I wanted to just focus on coding and STEM, business was a key element. In order to be successful as a tech entrepreneur, I had to understand both fields. I have learned that I enjoy understanding key business concepts, like competitor analysis and market strategies. If your ultimate goal is to be an entrepreneur, you need to be a jack of all trades. Having business knowledge gives you a broader view on the impact your code will have and ways to make it the most effective as possible. Often, being a woman in tech means being a woman in business, and I prefer it that way.
By: Alisha Mirapuri