This past week, my MSU media entrepreneurship class took a quick trip to The Hatch on Grand River. The Hatch is a program that helps student entrepreneurs grow ideas. I have had some friends use the Hatch’s resources to help get their company’s website up-to-date and figure out funding, but I personally never thought I would step foot into it.

As I have expressed before, I never have been a fan of the term “entrepreneur.” I think it has negative undertones of someone who hates kids who go to college and is lazy. As I found out after listening to the Gimlet Startup series, there is a ton of thought an effort that needs to be put in when coming up with a new idea.

While visiting The Hatch, we were tasked with pitching our own startup ideas using a simple formula: problem, answer, product. Seems easy, right?

Well, it wasn’t. I wanted to come up with something that related to media and journalism, as that is my major and something that is important for me. As I started to think of ideas, I couldn’t get the thought of how much I hate reading newspapers and scrolling through different websites and articles to find one that intrigues me or has the most information.

Boom. This is where my idea came from. What if there was an app or email service that did this for you? Something that tailored stories from your favorite new sites about important topics, and sent it right to you, links and all. For example, if you only wanted to hear about hard news and pop culture news, you would get stories from sites like E! and CNN.

For someone who hates reading the news even though she wants to work in media, this idea is ideal.

Pitching the idea in class was actually quite easy. I am not scared of public speaking, so I was able to get up and tell my idea and story in under a minute while getting the point across.

Our class came up with some great ideas for media and other things as well. It was really fun to see what other people had to think of and say. A lot of the class had similar ideas, which points out the issues that the media today/ modern media specialists come by.

Overall, this week I experienced something I never thought I would (pitching an idea of a company) and visited a place I never thought I would see (The Hatch). And, as a side note, I am starting to love podcasts.