WSO Suit Drive #1: Sponsor Indochino - Winner Announcement

When we initially announced the Suit Drive, we weren't sure what the quality of the essays were going to be. I'm proud to say the The Suit Drive was a success. While there were many fantastic stories, one truly stuck out. Congratulations BankingWaffle. Here is BankingWaffle's winning entry:

“The software license costs $7,000?!? F*ck. Me.”

My WSO nickname is BankingWaffle, and I am entering this competition in hopes of winning both the suit and the ticket for three obvious reasons:
1. It’s a free quality suit!

2. It’d be great and fun to meet people at the conference.
   

3. I’m broke—and even worse, in debt.
   

Although I’ll concede that I don’t have some incredible story, I’m hoping I still qualify as a worthwhile charity case. Here’s pretty much my situation:

I’m from a middle-class family under a lot of debt and with savings investments gone badly; top that off with college expenses and consequently my family and I are pretty cash strapped. To afford textbooks, airfare to travel home, activity/lab fees, among other things, I’ve had to pick up a part-time job. It’s been tough balancing academics, a job, and extra-curricular activities, but at least I’m already prepared for investment banking hours!

But I digress. Now that I’m a junior, I’m at a fork in the road where I’m trying to determine what career path I should head down in order to be happy and pay off the bills: a corporate career (banking, consulting), or entrepreneurship. I’ve done a few internships in the former, so I decided it was time to really test out my interest in the latter. And unfortunately, this testing is very expensive.

To be concise, I’ve co-founded and grown a mobile-gaming start-up to the size of nine people, and our stealth-mode operation is currently in closed alpha with regards to our initial releases. We’re debugging, optimizing our developments, and market validating our games to make sure that we’ll at least be able to break even with this venture. The start-up costs for software and hardware needed to build out our company’s infrastructure and products is surprisingly expensive, and my friend and I are sinking significant amounts of money into this company. Since we aim to bring some pretty innovative technologies into mobile gaming, we’re also stuck with expensive software licenses (see quote at the top of the page).

Ideally, our company becomes the next Zynga or Rovio; I’ll become my own boss and never have to wear a suit again. But until then, I’ll still wear my Sunday’s finest to go pitch to VC’s and drive our company through pitch-offs. If I continue down the corporate route, I’ll need to make a good first impression with my interviewers, especially important as full-time recruiting approaches. I could use a nice suit for those interviews, and especially for work. Lastly, meeting people who work across all industries of finance at the conference could prove to be a fun learning experience.

I’d be thrilled if I could reallocate “decent suit” funds into my start-up. In short, I’m a cash-strapped, motivated, and ambitious college student who’d appreciate a little help; winning this suit drive would be really cool.

Regardless, thank you for your consideration. I look forward to hearing the results of this competition.

Best,

BankingWaffle

BankingWaffle please contact Indochino's marketing manager. I have sent you an email with his contact information. I want to thank everyone for taking the time to enter. I know many of you will be successful and wish you all the best.