The Sandbox may be over, but my work as a startup entrepreneur is just beginning. The past three months feel like a surreal, frenetic blur. They were very real and quite invaluable. I took an abstract idea and found a way to turn it into a viable business with tangible products. I even worked with…
Tag: Merrimack Valley Sandbox
Against All Odds
Tonight is the final awards ceremony for the Merrimack Valley Sandbox Winter Accelerator Program. It has been a challenging and very rewarding three months. Yet, I think I speak for everyone in my class when I write that this evening’s final ceremonies will be bittersweet for all of us. A couple of weeks ago, a…
Fake it ’til you make it
I went to an extra Sandbox session this morning. I went into the session thinking that it was about fundraising, but the more appropriate title would be “Pitch Practice and Ego Destroyer.” I came home with a hopeless feeling in my heart, heaviness in my chest, and a lump in my throat. You will feel…
Speak like you are a Fortune 500 Company, but don’t quit your day job just yet
Don’t call us, we’ll call you. It’s not you, it’s me. These clichés were ringing in the back of my mind during one of our recent evening sessions at the Sandbox. There were two gentlemen seated at the front of the room. They were entrerpreneurs with startup businesses in the Boston area. They each introduced…
E is for Entrepreneurship, not for Easy
Life does not stop when you become an entrepreneur, and I nearly let life keep me from getting to the Sandbox session this past Thursday night. Class was in Lawrence, and I was having a not so great day. I was moody. I had been sick on and off for the past month and hadn’t slept…
Perfect Pitch
Last night was the much anticipated, anxiety inducing Mid-Pitch for the Merrimack Valley Sandbox Winter Accelerator Program. I spent the better part of the day and week before reflecting and revising my pitch outline. A challenge with selling songwriting products is finding ways to describe something that can be rather abstract and difficult to explain…
Pitch and Pivot and Pitch—Repeat!
I stood up last night in front of a group of entrepreneurs and pitched my business. I had just come up with a new idea for a way to package my product the night before. This shift is what I have heard referred to in my class as a pivot—a change in business plan, product,…
Bless and Release
During my time in the Sandbox, my emotions seem to shift as capriciously as the sand in the metaphorical box. At times, I feel like a 10 on the scale of possibility. Just as easily, I can crash to a 3 or 4 and feel completely overwhelmed. “You are competing against the world,” Sandbox guide…
Who is Story-to-Song?
When I begin working with a participant on their Story-to-Song, I hear a few comments on a regular basis: I have a terrible voice. I am not an artist. I am not creative. I do not have any stories that are interesting. This is where I come in and assure you that your stories are…
A week in the Sandbox
Story-to-Song is an experience and an abstract one at that. For this reason, it can be difficult to describe in written words alone. When applications I have submitted for grants, conferences, and research opportunities are turned down, I try to lift my spirits with the reminder that I simply have to improve my skills at…
Marieke is Guiding Song 