On a frigid Friday night, October 1, 2021, Adam briskly flowed into the annual Entrepalooza, a celebration of entrepreneurship hosted by MIT Startlabs. Recently his interest in startups, with their promise of creative freedom and destiny control, had been piqued, and he, a tyro of the field, wanted to learn more. And indeed, over the course of the introductory presentation given by Startlabs, his mind churned with the possibilities of starting a venture, taking an idea to market, and recapturing glory. As the event moved to the next section, the Bad Pitch Competition, Adam would get his first taste of public speaking at MIT, and true to the nature of improvisation, it would come unexpectedly.

Part of Entrepalooza involved the famed Bad Pitch Competition, in which students could sign up the week before Entrepalooza to prepare a slide deck for a funny, stupid, or otherwise entertaining startup idea. They would vie to be one of 5 presenters live at Entrepalooza. Adam did not think to sign up, so he merely expected to laugh along with the audience as the 5 chosen ones delivered speeches on why they had the best idea. And the presentations were brilliant. The first concerned a pair of special nerd goggles; the second, a gadget whose silliness was outshone by the presenter’s surprising voice acting talent; the third, a super-chicken meat source that would be fed to…chickens, in an act of cannibalism. And now, presenting…

The room went silent for a minute, and the stage remained empty. Whichever student missed the chance to win a lucrative steel mug, Martin Trust Center jacket, and noise-cancelling headphones—the prize for 1st place—must’ve ditched the competition for a concurrent royal cruise. And then, the inevitable, as the host announced: “Looks like that person is missing. Anyone in the audience want to give it a shot?”

Adam sat at the very front, and he heard audience members in the back nominating each other for fun, the same way mischievous students call on each other to answer the teacher’s questions. Realizing the opportunity might be stolen by someone else, Adam raised his hand. It was a meta display of improvisation: not just the presentation he would have to give, along with a foreign slide deck, but the unexpected opportunity seized out of nowhere.

He would present ToppIrr, a parody of Topps baseball cards. He began by riling up the crowd, most of which had donned black “Invest” hats given out at the start of Entrepalooza. The first slide was just a logo of ToppIrr, and as he spoke in 70s fashion about the importance of collecting the cards and projecting dominance in society with the rare Babe Ruths, the audience followed him like a frantic laser, trying to keep up like a goalie out of position. After exclaiming the merits of owning baseball cards and mimicking a variety of voices, including a squeaky child’s and a stern boss’s, it was time to take the greedy salesman pitch to the next level. So Adam asked for the next slide in the deck.

“There’s only one slide!”

Howls of laughter erupted from the audience, and from Adam himself, as he realized he had just been roasted. Perhaps for whoever prepared ToppIrr for the competition, the royal cruise was just too appealing. He kept his act, noting that he would soon be a billionaire from ToppIrr cards, and gave a nod of approval to Chicken, proclaiming he would corner the baseball cards market, and the audience better invest in him before it was too late. He sang, he rapped, he danced around the room; he advertised ToppIrr with the same conviction as if it were his real bad pitch—which it was.

Two minutes went by in a flash as the audience roared in approval.

An eternity of time flowed through Adam, as the energy of the presentation coursed through him. There was one more presentation, and then, at the end of Entrepalooza, everyone had a chance to vote. Adam voted for the gadget, due to the incredible voice acting; for second place, he voted Chicken, for the solidity of the idea. And as the winner was announced, and its logo projected on the screen, it was more familiar than expected. It was ToppIrr that had bagged the audience’s hearts! Chicken, perhaps due to Adam’s endorsement in his presentation, took second place.

Life is stochastic, crazy, spontaneous. Opportunities pop up and vanish like those annoying gophers in Whack-A-Mole. For one night, Adam, who sucked at Whack-A-Mole, seized the gopher and ripped it out of the machine. And in the coming months, his entrepreneurial interest would take him to co-found a startup.

Entrepreneurship is mysterious, a risky, dangerous pursuit in the eyes of the masses, even among MIT students still. As a result, every entrepreneur will be asked by interested students and onlookers what the spark was—that moment in which it all came together, a match lit in the recesses of the mind. And Adam will answer that, on a frigid Friday night, October 1, 2021, when he briskly flowed into the annual Entrepalooza, he snatched an opportunity as forthrightly as startup founders snatch the initiative, pitching to the crowd, Topp-ing the field.