Bagerloop
In 2015, Elon Musk announced the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition, encouraging student engineers to accelerate development of the Hyperloop concept he introduced in a 2013 Whitepaper. I texted a few of my classmates, and we quickly got to work; meeting regularly via Google Hangouts over the summer to start building a team and creating a design we could compete with. Ultimately, we went on to win 3rd place (behind MIT and TU Delft) at the Design Weekend in 2016, at Texas A&M. At the inaugural competition in 2017, the Badgerloop pod was the only pod that Elon Musk sat in himself.
The Challenge
Design and build a hyperloop pod to be testing in a 1 mile long evacuated tube in Hawthorne, CA.
My Role
Looking back at the experience, this is probably were my love for start-ups first began. I had to wear many different hats, navigate an ever changing environment with shifting constraints, fundraise, and align the team. Formally, I was a co-founder and the self-declared Team Coordinator. Informally, I was everything in between. Some of my responsibilities included:
- Creating a registering a student organization within the University
- Determining leadership structure
- Building industry relations
- Understanding 501(c)-3 status to facilitate donations
- Visiting local schools to promote STEM education
- Participation in various fairs and events
- Carbon Fiber Manufacturing Lead
- Secured a space for fabrication
- Planned our travel to Texas for Design Weekend.
What I learned
Experience comes in many shapes and sizes.
I was deemed the carbon fiber manufacturing lead because I had the most experience working with carbon fiber. In reality, I had watched a friend do a lay-up once. It was a good lesson for me in realizing that no one knows what they are doing, and that’s okay. It’s important to embrace the unknown and dive in headfirst in learning.
Creating a positive culture is really, really hard.
I had always wanted to join one of the various engineering competition teams, but being one of the few women in my mechanical engineering program, felt that I didn’t fit in and wasn’t smart enough. The team cultures seemed toxic and aggressive and I did not want to be a part of that. I was so excited for the opportunity to help build a new team that could be different and inclusive. In the end, I do not think I accomplished that goal. I ended up leaving the team before the first physical competition because I was so stressed and tired. In retrospect, we were so focused on building our pod that we did not devote enough time and energy to building a team.
There will always be critics.
Two of my most vivid memories are negative. It’s not seeing Elon Musk in person. It’s not winning 3rd place for our innovative design. The first memory is an email I received shortly after we released the above video. It simply said, “Where are the women?” I was frustrated because I was in the video and because I wanted nothing more than for more women to be involved with the project. In general, I wish there were more women in mechanical engineering. My program was only 10% female, and it hurt to be called out in this way. The second memory is speaking to a group of high school students. The students thought the project was super cool, but the teachers had so many concerns and seemed very skeptical of the overall concept. Both of these experiences have helped me learn to take the criticism with a grain of salt and remember that negative feedback is not personal and is essential for building something bigger and better.
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