Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship

By Bethy Hagan

All of a sudden, my flight to Hong Kong will take off in less than 24 hours. With finals, pitch preparation, and a bout of the flu over the last two weeks, I seem to have put packing and final arrangements on the backburner. But now it is the day before I leave and I realize I do not even have a suitcase! Today is certainly going to be a whirlwind.

To do list:

1. Find a suitcase! Luckily, my parents live about an hour away and have generously offered to lend one to their poor student.
2. Pick out outfits for daytime activities, company visits, and the pitch competition. With other trips, I typically visualize my day-to-day activities and go from there. This trip will be different. How do you visualize yourself in a place that seems completely dissimilar to your home? After much fretting, I gather together what I think should keep me clothed over the next two weeks. If not, a quick trip to the market is all that I’ll need!
3. Call Bank of America. We need two different currencies while we are there. My head is spinning already.
4. Flight check-in. Check!
5. Water the plants. My petunias need constant TLC, so I will need to delegate that responsibility to my boyfriend while I am away.
6. Secure a ride to the airport from that same helpful boyfriend! My United flight departs at 9:45 AM from Baltimore to Newark. I plan to give myself 1.5 hours to check my bag and go through security. Once I arrive in Newark I will connect with five or six other Smith students for our 16-hour flight to Hong Kong. That’s right, 16 hours.
7. Which leads me to my next point: download movies for the plane. I have packed two books: 1) Divergent, which is over 400 pages and will hopefully keep me occupied for at least a few hours, and 2) Predictable Revenue, which was written by Aaron Ross, former Director of Sales at Salesforce. Have to have at least one educational book in there! In addition to these, I plan to download at least three movies to get me to China and back. Any suggestions?
8. A trip to the grocery store for medicine and toiletries. It is safe to assume that finding medicine for an upset stomach or a headache will be nearly impossible once we arrive in China. I will be buying Ibuprophen, Nyquil (which might also come in handy on that 16-hour flight), Dayquil, Pepto-Bismol, and Sudafed. You can never be too safe.
9. Make a copy of my passport
10. E-mail last minute “pivot point” notes to my team for the pitch competition. Time is winding down on our pitches and we all must devote as much energy as possible to perfecting our pitches. The “pivot point” part of our pitches will explain how our business ideas have evolved over the last few weeks. Ours has certainly changed for the better!

There is certainly much to be done in a short amount of time. China will not wait!

Bethy Hagan is a first year MBA student and Dingman Venture Fellow from Baltimore, MD. She received her undergraduate degree from the University of Virginia. Following her degree, she worked for a sports startup in Santa Monica, CA in a variety of operations and program management roles. Through the Smith School and the Dingman Center she hopes to build her understanding of strategy implementation in order to assist in the growth and development of early stage companies.

Next week, a group of Smith School faculty, staff and students will travel to Hong Kong and Beijing for the AdVENTURE Challenge: China. This global experience will take students to Chinese startups, multinational corporations, venture capital firms and cultural sights. Along the way, students will be able to earn points by completing various challenges designed to push them outside of their comfort zones. Smith School MBAs will be joined by members of their cross-cultural teams from Peking University in Beijing and Technion – Israel Institute of Technology. The trip will culminate with a business plan competition at Peking University.

Throughout the trip, students from the Smith School delegation will be sharing their experiences here on the blog. This first post is from first-year MBA student, Katie Tedrow. Stay tuned for more updates from the AdVENTURE Challenge: China.

The countdown is officially here. In less than two weeks, 16 of my fellow Smith MBA classmates and I embark on a seven-day trek through Hong Kong and Beijing as part of UMD’s China AdVENTURE Smith Experience course.

In true entrepreneurial fashion, the premise of the trip is a business pitch competition. Here’s the twist: the participating teams of MBA students are based in 3 regions of the globe: North America (College Park, Maryland, USA), Asia (Beijing, China), and the Middle East (Israel).

Before we step foot in Hong Kong, there’s much to be done. We’ve been meeting (many of us virtually) for weeks to develop our ideas, draft our business model canvases, conduct customer discovery, and practice, practice, practice!

We also have a lot of travel-related “to-do’s” while stateside. Here are some things to do before getting on the plane (thanks to our travel partner, WorldStrides, for some of these tips!):

• Get your visa a few weeks in advance. For those who have not had the pleasure of visiting the Chinese Consulate, it is an experience unto itself. The office was abuzz with travelers, business people, families, and children — what I imagine may be a microcosm of what’s in store for us when we arrive in Hong Kong. The office is open from 9:00am-2:30pm. And they mean 2:30. On the dot. I learned this the hard way and had to use some of those b-school negotiation skills to make it in under the buzzer. Come prepared with all your documents. They run a well-oiled machine and this will make your experience all the better!
• Contact your bank to let them know you’re traveling abroad. You don’t want to get stuck without cash in the Silk Market!
• If you don’t want to go completely off the grid (or pay exorbitant roaming fees), ask your wireless provider for an international plan. There are also some great apps for FREE international texting that are worth checking out: WhatsApp, Viber, and KaKao, to name a few.
• Make copies of all your important identification cards (license, passport, credit cards, insurance, etc.) and keep in separate place from your passport while traveling. Also make note of the international contact information for your bank and credit card company.
• Get a good camera.
• Pack extra tp, tissues and hand sanitizer. I’m told that tissue paper is a rarity in some parts of China, better safe than sorry!
• If you’re not a fluent Chinese speaker, download a translation app. I’m trying out Pleco for our upcoming trip.
• Invest in a couple good books, celebrity gossip business magazines, and download those movies you’ve been wanting to see for the 18-hour plane ride.

Now, I think we are ready to embark on this epic journey; see you in Hong Kong!

Katie Tedrow is a first year MBA student focused on Marketing Strategy at the Smith School of Business. She has over seven years experience in B2B marketing, client development and corporate communications, and has a passion for entrepreneurship, social value creation and leadership. Katie is VP of External Affairs for Smith’s E-Club and will be interning with a financial services firm in New York this summer.