On the morning of March 2nd, 2017 the students of Propel were introduced to the event, Tiger’s Den. The event was taking place at 900 St. Mary’s road, also known as the board office of the Louis Riel school division. Only the few returning students of Propel knew what we were about to get ourselves in to. I arrived at the board office 15 minutes prior to the mandatory time of 8:30, having no clue of what Tiger’s Den was completely about, I had little rushes of anxiety running up and down my spine. There was a table set up at the entrance of the den, the table contained some information, booklets, & a name tag with a table number printed on it. I had the honour of being a part of table number two.
As I walked to my table I only saw select few faces that I knew from our Propel class. I was ready to take on this experience. 8:30 came around and we met our colleagues for the day, we had a brilliant team that consisted of visionaries, quiet thinkers, & outgoing presenters. We were the dream team of the den. After meeting our team, and the speakers finished their speeches, we set off on our adventure to find the million-dollar idea that would win us the Tiger’s Den trophy. We spit balled ideas off of each other, getting feedback from one another, eventually we came down to one idea that involved fostering dogs and bringing them to workplaces to help relieve the stress of workers in large corporations. The next hour and a bit consisted of working on our project and getting feedback from professionals. All the groups had assigned roles within them such as CEO, marketing, financial adviser, etc. After working on it for a fair amount of time, we came to the conclusion that this idea was not going to work the way we thought it was going too. Our group needed a new idea, as quick as possible. As somebody who is a quick thinker and problem solver I took the liberty to brainstorm another idea with a colleague I grew fairly close to, Brandon. We thought of an app, Gift & Go, the app would be the new main source of gift cards for the upcoming generation. The app could store all your gift cards, keep track of the balances on every one of them, a customer could buy, sell, and send them from the app. That’s a sneak peek in to our top-notch idea. Our time was short, we only had a hour if not less to get everything ready for our presentations to the Tigers. It seemed as if time slowed down but was moving a rapid pace all at the same time. The cardboard station was our first step in crafting this magnificent idea, we built a iPhone out of cardboard, as well as an over packed wallet with gift cards. Shortly after that we rushed to start rehearsing our presentation as well as filling out our lean canvas. Faster than any of us had hoped, it was presentation time, the room grew silent as the MC of the event was running through the rules of the presentations. We were ready.
The 12 presentations went by in the blink of an eye. At last we were done, we gave it our all hoping to place in the top three. Having heard many Tigers give us great feedback, we thought we were a top contender for number one. The mic boomed, everyone was quietly waiting for the announcement of the top three contenders. Our group had high hopes, but as the teams were announced we realized we did not make it. Our team still held our heads high and we thought were proud of what we achieved. It turned out to be we were only out by half a point. Overall Tiger’s Den was one heck of a ride, and it was a great experience. I am thankful I had the chance to participate in such an event.
paradise 