When I look back, I can say that all our entrepreneurship and then the following corporate story depends on the day we won the Microsoft Imagine Cup Turkey.
How Did All Start?
I was on Facebook (yes it was 2016 and people were using Facebook 🙂 ) and I saw an ad about “Microsoft Student Partner Applications”. To be honest, I never heard about this program before but I was in my second year in university, and I was doing a long term internship. I remember that I thought “I can apply for this program, I have a good resume and more experience than my classmates”. I apply for this program and then I totally forgot about it.
In January 2017, I received an e-mail from Microsoft, it said that I was one of the students who selected for the program, as you can guess I was thrilled. The e-mail has all the details about the program, the orientation program and etc. For those who wonder about the program, you can check the details and the application dates here; https://studentpartners.microsoft.com/tr-TR
I am not gonna bother you with the details of the program because there is a lot of information about this on the internet.
MSP Turkey 2017 Orientation 
As you can see from the photos (there are 200 of them but I choose the ones I look cute 🙂 ) I went the orientation and in this orientation, we got the information about the program, our duties as MSP, and also they gave us MSP hoodies, laptop bags, business cards (yey free stuff!) and the most important thing free MS Office programs! That was the first time I heard about the “Imagine Cup”.
Little Laziness is not Hurt Anyone!
They said that as MSP we have to build a program by using MS tools but if we decided the apply Imagine Cup, we can do it with a team. To be honest, my first thought was “Oh! I can do this with Doruk and Mert by this way I do not have to build a program by myself” And this laziness shaped my whole future 🙂
Anyway, days come and go and we did not build anything, and then I got an e-mail that about the last application date of Imagine Cup and we only have 7 days to found an idea, make a video and apply the Imagine Cup also we had to not make ourselves like fools in front of the Microsoft guys with a funny project.
How the idea of Crystall Ball shaped?
When I started university, at my first year, I was an agent in a call center. I got this job part-time for you know pocket money and kill time. Our duty was to sell the products selected for that day. But there was a problem, we did not know which product to sell which customer so we just randomly call them.
As a fresh team, we talked about this problem in call center sector and we said ” Okay with this idea will not be got us the first prize but they will think that at least we tried” We made a video which you can watch down below, we took team photos and made a presentation, but we DID NOT BUILD THE PROGRAM! Because we were pretty sure that we are not gonna win.
When I filling the application form, I made a typo, I wrote “Cyrstall” instead of “Cyrstal”, and we accepted the name that way.
After a few weeks later, we were in a cafe hanging out with friends. I received an e-mail, you can see down below.
Actually we were shocked but still, we are thinking we are not going to won the competition. We were wrong!
In this phase, we just need to refresh our application with some new information and we did it.
And then we got a call from Microsoft. We won the Imagine Cup Turkey with Crystall Ball!
They are waiting for us to show our demo in Microsoft Turkey Office in two weeks. And they said they are going to book a flight and hotel for us because they said In 2017 MEA finals will be held in Lebanon. Actually this phase was best and the worst part. We won the Imagine Cup Turkey, but we did not build the program????
For these two weeks, guys were move in me and my parents’ house to work our as*es off. I will give the details about these two weeks in another post.
Anyway, at the end, we manage to build the Crystall Ball and go to Lebanon for MEA finals.
MEA Finals Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Long story short, (you can watch the details from videos but they are in Turkish) in Lebanon, we won the Jury Special Prize = Most Collaborative Team title in MEA finals with Crystall Ball and when we came back to Turkey, we decided to build our startup MaginTech.
To summarize my Imagine Cup experience;
- Do not apply if you did not developed the program!
- This is real guys, it is not a place for joking around! We got lucky at that time and we had to work our as*es of! Do not make the same mistake we do! We have a great mentor who is in the sector for like 30 years and he lead us in our critical two weeks.
- If I remember correctly in the MEA finals, there were 30 teams. We were one of them. 6 teams would be selected for the world finals. Our problem was that we didn’t think about how to make money with our idea. Your business plan should be ready. Because this a business competition not an idea.
- The host country always wins. Get used to it.
- Try to make a network. These days we are still in touch with some of the juries and other competitors.
- Artificial Intelligence will be always a sexy idea but people love to see a physical product in this kind of competition. You should note that. Because explaining software is a hard thing, but seeing a product is much easier for the jury.
- Our disadvantage was we show our demo to one jury group and we made our presentation to another one. The ones in which we showed the demo, did not understand the product. Be ready for the elevator pitch at any time. For our case, it was our demo presentation. I believe that if we prepare an elevator pitch for the demo, we will be selected for the world finals because the jury said that our real presentation was the best.
- The team is everything. Build a team with people you can trust.
- But the most important thing is, try to have fun and make a network!
I tried to keep it short, but if you have questions, please contact me if you are going to apply to Imagine Cup. I would love to give more information.
Until the next post, farewell!
Dilan Fatma ÖNCEVARLIK 
Leave a comment