“It Changed My Life”: Arthur Varin on the Sunstone Innovation Challenge
To say the Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship changed my life would be an understatement. I moved to the U.S. from France after completing my engineering degree with the goal of becoming a lead developer and potentially a CTO later in my career, but things took a turn when I joined the AMBA graduate program.
It all started with an innovative idea pitched in a marketing project, a “Duolingo app for mindfulness meditation.” After my colleagues encouraged me to, I joined the Sunstone Innovation Challenge and the Apostle Incubator (business creation courses) laid out by the Institute. That is where I learned life-changing knowledge to succeed in business, including ideation, market research, customer discovery, marketing, finance, and more.
After winning 2nd place in the SIC, I was able to kickstart my project. One of the many crucial things I learned was that persistence guarantees that results are inevitable, but also knowing when and how to pivot, which allowed me to transform Unwind Wellness into much more than an app: a coaching service company fueled by viral content creation.
After only 3 years, we are the largest anxiety disorder healing coaching platform in France, accumulating 330,000 followers and averaging 500,000 to 1,000,000 monthly views through our content creation.
I could not have ever dreamed of that much success and I owe most of it to the Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship 🙏🏼.
