As I am sure you may be wondering, I am yet to receive my new (old?) phone. As fun as it was to show my smashed phone to my coworkers, I am ready to have my old phone (and American phone plan) back. This week I turned 20, which gave me an excuse to train over to Geneva and meet up with some friends from Lehigh! Having been to Lugano last weekend, I was familiar with the inconsistency of my Italian phone plan and brought it up to my coworkers. One of them showed me an app where you could download an eSim for any country onto your phone. I crossed into Swiss territory and my cell plan switched over to Swisscom, where I had to pay five cents to send a text message – I opted for 1 GB of the eSim for $4.50. With that out of the way, I was able to navigate around Geneva in peace. After not having eating since my birthday dinner the night before, I enjoyed possibly some of the best sushi I have ever had. We stayed in that night and spent the next day wandering around the city, visiting the botanical garden, and walking along the lake. That night we went to an 80’s and 90’s themed disco with three different areas. Each area had its own bar, restaurant, and dance floor. It was also the first (and probably only) time I have been carded in Europe. I guess 20 is the new 16!
On the work front, I have completed almost all the menial tasks given to me in the first two weeks. Having completed these, I proven my worthiness to the team! I met with my boss on Friday and discussed being more involved in the process of screening companies for investment. Five minutes after that call I had been invited to three screening meetings this week. I’ve studied up on the companies and can’t wait to hear from the founders. I have also been doing some proofreading of documents for our MD and am writing another scraping algorithm for him. In addition to screening, I am going to start working on fundraising for the new fund we are launching – which means lots of time spent on LinkedIn. I am trying to help the team come up with the ideal investor profile and I’ve spent some time thinking about what that could mean. If there were any week to have out of office work, it would be this one…
We continued our discussion of the corporate entity in class this week, watching the documentary form of the book we read before class. The planned coursework was interesting, but this week featured a deeper focus on content that other students produced. Sam and Mason had both written about the incident at Target after releasing a specific set of goods for Pride month. This led us to discuss why firms need to express opinions on social issues and the authenticity of those issues. I thought it was fair for firms to have opinions because the primary driver is (or at least should be) pleasing their consumers and increasing shareholder value. Plus, the only way any real change can come about is through individuals and firms pressuring the government. Many argued that it was unauthentic for firms to share their opinions on social issues and that most wouldn’t go through the hassle of fighting the government when it came down to it. To which I say Disney. Disney stood by their employees and consumers in Florida and have put their entire business in the region at risk to stand up for them. Although aligning themselves with the consumer was in Disney’s best interest, I struggle to find a time where advocating for your consumer isn’t the smart business play. Mason and I discussed that many of the questions we are given in the class don’t have answers or are still being solved, maybe that’s why it’s so easy to talk about them. I’ll let you know what the next endless conversation is next week!
