No Challenge Is Too Ambitious

Monday, July 12, 2021
by Harry S., Natasha C., Angela Z. and Leo C., AFM students

Three components that brought us to second place at the SAF Strategy Case Competition

“No challenge is too ambitious, so we believe that Peloton’s user goal of 100 million users is attainable.”

As a second-year team entering the School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) Strategy Case Competition, our team’s main goals were to exercise our consulting skills and learn from the unique experiences each member brought to the team. As competition day neared, our team was most excited to witness a plethora of top-tier presentations from our upper-year mentors. Never could we have guessed that we would be amongst the teams on the podium!

Group photo of the Chensulting team

The theme of this year’s competition was to present a strategy for Peloton to continue its post-pandemic growth and reach its 100 million-users goal. With the two weeks given to prepare, our team initially found it challenging to balance our busy school terms with an intense co-op job search, while also squeezing out time to work on our presentation.

Here’s a summary of what we believe were the ingredients to our success:

  1. Communication

With our teammates spread across three locations, it was imperative that we updated each other on our progress and ideas. We held daily calls to check in with each other and checked whether there was new information we had researched or new problems that needed to be addressed.

  1. Inspire and Motivate

Not every second of our journey was sunshine and rainbows. Whenever our team felt uncertain or lost, we tried our best to keep up the team morale. We cheered each other up with the catchphrase “Easy”. Even though the task at hand was not easy, we were able to boost our confidence by repeating this phrase.

  1. Revise, Revise, Revise!

Throughout our process, we always voiced our suggestions on sections that other members of our team worked on to encourage healthy, constructive criticisms and discussions. By voicing our concerns, we were able to continuously refine our strategy until it became a version that we were proud of.

These components ultimately helped us win second place in the competition! In addition, it was the perfect way to gain insight into the consulting world, connect with alums from top firms and experience what the life of a consultant is like. We believe that the SAF Strategy Case Competition is a valuable experience that all students should take advantage of. Furthermore, our team was delighted when we read in the news weeks later that Peloton implemented a similar strategy to the recommendation we presented!