The Fundamentals of Entrepreneurial Management II course culminated in a high-energy, highly competitive Pitch Day on March 25, where IESE MBA students unveiled AI-driven ventures built through an intensive hackathon journey. Guided by professors Liinus Hietaniemi, Jeroen Neckebrouck and Sandra Sieber, teams moved rapidly from trend identification to Minimum Viable Product (MVP) development and validation. In this post, learn more about the course experience in this post by Pedro Casali, MBA Class of 2027.
We were the Grand Finale Winner at IESE’s first Pitch Day!
During the second term in our Entrepreneurship class, we were challenged to go from zero to an MVP in just a few weeks. To achieve this, we learned about different steps of the ideation process: defining a persona, a clients’ job map and identifying unmet client needs; defining assumptions/hypothesis and how to validate them; building an MVP with AI; beachhead market strategy; market sizing (Total Addressable Market, Serviceable Addressable Market, Serviceable Obtainable Market). After each session of the course, the idea was to advance our business idea little by little to get to a final, presentable-MVP. The best ideas from each section would ultimately be pitched in the Aula Magna to all our MBA classmates.
Our team (Anamaria, Bruno, María José, Vanessa, Vítor) built CoffeeVision: an AI-driven platform to help coffee farmers in Brazil improve productivity and profitability. How did we come up with this idea? In the first session, each person had to identify a relevant trend in the market. Some people identified trends in sports/health, others in tourism, fashion, etc. Bruno, from our team, highlighted a trend regarding the coffee market in Brazil: its size and growth, the low (but growing) digitalization of farms and the growing use of AI in visual classification models. We thought it made sense to tackle that trend, and that’s how CoffeeVision started.
It was an intense and memorable experience to pitch our idea to all of our classmates!
It was interesting to see how we quickly connected with each other as a team. We didn’t work with our usual teams, instead the groups were formed by the professor in the beginning of the course. But that didn’t slow us down at all, as we hit the ground running from Day 1 and were able to do something great in such short time. I think that speaks a lot about IESE’s community and culture. It made me reflect how, after graduating, I’d definitely try to work with alumni whenever possible. On our team, we were all equals and every team member had a very key role in developing the business.
Throughout the course, the ideation process helped us by giving us clarity on our business idea (what we wanted to do, how and why), certainty that it made sense and confidence that we’d be able to answer the jury’s questions. After winning as the best idea in our section, Ana and I had the opportunity to pitch our venture on stage in front of 400+ classmates and a jury of industry experts. Definitely one of the most (in)tense experiences of the MBA so far.
What made the difference for us:
• Focusing early on a clear, tangible problem (of a big market)
• Keeping the solution simple and sharp
• Iterating quickly based on feedback
Out of all teams, we were honored to win two awards: Best Use of AI 🤖 and, most importantly, the Grand Finale Winner 🏆
My main takeaway from this process was the importance of always looking at the customers and their needs. We had to pivot to another idea (within coffee + AI) halfway through the course – and we only did it after talking to our target audience of coffee farmers. In theory, our first idea made sense; in practice, though, our potential customers did not see much value to it.
Grateful to my teammates for an incredibly strong collaboration, to our Professor Jeroen Neckebrouck for the opportunity and to the jury (Gabrielle Cummins, Marta Mateu Vilalta, Lisa Martinez Gomis and Pepe Borrell Segura) for pushing us to refine and elevate our thinking.
Written by Pedro Casali, MBA Class of 2027
[This post was adapted from Linkedin]
Pursue your dream MBA! Take these next steps today:
