Post by Aasheer Ishaque Taswar

If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that a startup is only as strong as the team behind it. People love talking about the "lightbulb moment" in startups, but this semester taught me that the real story is the pressure cooker that comes right after. For our Entrepreneurship course at Politecnico di Torino, my team and I partnered with ÜLINK to build a comprehensive business plan from scratch. This wasn’t just a standard assignment—it was a grind. Attending every single class, working day and night, and dealing with the constant pressure to deliver market-validated results pushed us to our limits. But all those late nights paid off. When the final results came out, out of 9 teams, we ranked 1st and I’m incredibly proud to have personally received a 30/30. The biggest lesson from this process? Leave your ego at the door. We rebuilt financial models when our assumptions failed and scrapped entire pitch decks over a single confusing sentence. One piece of honest feedback was enough to force us back to the drawing board. A massive thank you to my teammates riccardo bagnaia and others for having each other's backs through the stress. #entrepreneurship #startup Politecnico di Torino #engineeringandmanagement