3A_Jalandoni, Harvy - BSCE ES302_Technopreneurship

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Business Model Canvas & Concept Design Presentation

We've arrived to the final major presentation of the semester. We finally presented the complete of our business model canvas and our conceptual design for prototype after a series of interviews, debates, and meetings.

For such record, we did not complete the 15 interviews for customer validation. We barely had less than ten minutes, yet we still learned a lot. According to their general reaction throughout the interview, they are still dubious of our product, despite the fact that they value it for its environmental friendliness. What we did was persuade them that the cost was justified.

We recognize that our product is quite easy to look at but it is actually difficult to produce since it needs a machine. This is an illustration of our design made by one of our team members, as seen below.

The teacher did not make many adjustments to the BMC. To name a few advantages, our product is environmentally friendly, transportable, and less priced. The primary effort would be the creation of improved biodegradable bags. According to our teacher, the second one should be removed because it is not significant as a crucial action. 

We had to focus on the conceptual design because we did not have enough time to create a practical prototype. However, we aspire to contribute to the society's study and development of biodigesters.

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Traction: Bull’s Eye Framework

According to Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares' book Traction, The Bull's Eye Framework Traction Method, a startup team may choose their best market channel in order to gain more people who would buy their product. Everyone in business wants they could expand rapidly. However, the vast majority of these ventures fail. This is usually due to a shortage of traction channels.

Furthermore, one of the most critical tasks in marketing is connecting with clients. The act of connecting with clients and understanding their requirements is known as targeting. Understanding the targeting process is critical since it will help you determine how the team or company plans its communication initiatives. The Bulls' Eye Framework may be used to prioritize communication channels in order to increase the reach of a business. This framework will help you to brainstorm all of your possibilities before narrowing them down to the most effective ones. Simply defined, the Bull's eye framework finds the most successful development routes for a brand.

We developed our bull's eye architecture for this week after adding the Force Ranking Game. Our top three traction channels are as follows: Sales, Business Development, and Social and Display Ads. Sales is the most prevalent of the channels listed. It is just the practice of reaching out to potential clients personally. Social and display advertisements entail reaching out to an audience via platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. Finally, business development is the process of forming alliances with other firms in order to promote each other's products and services.

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Meeting With The Team

This week's meeting was over in a flash. Our lecturer has just requested updates on our prototype. Furthermore, he stated that the final major presentation & final pitch deck will be held in the second and third weeks of June, respectively. He also advised us to keep improving on our customer validation.

We've been thinking about creating a prototype. A team member is drawing or drafting the design as others are exchanging ideas. We've also worked on our business model canvas. We resolved to revise the BMC that we gave in our third major presentation. We added the additional four portions because only five were previously included. That is the complete scope of the business model canvas.  Hopefully, we can finish preparing everything for the final pitching day. 

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Week 5: MVP Validation and Startup Metrics

Have you ever heard of the Lean Startup? In his book The Lean Startup, Eric Ries defines the concept as follows:"The Lean Startup is a new approach being used by companies to develop products, services and businesses. It was inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing and iterative design. Each iteration of a start-up's product or service begins with customer development and ends with a validated learning about what needs to be built."This process is critical because it allows you to make sure that your idea has traction before spending time and money building something nobody wants or needs. To learn more about how this works in practice, let's take a look at an example from my own life! MVPs are a way to test your idea before you spend a lot of time and money building it.

They're different from prototypes, which are usually more expensive and take longer to build than MVPs. An MVP is the minimum viable product that you can build with the limited resources available to you—it will give you an early look at how users might interact with your idea, but there's no guarantee they'll be impressed by what they see. A prototype is a more polished version of an MVP; it often includes additional components beyond just the core functionality, such as visual design or marketing materials that may make it easier for users to understand how they'd interact with your product if it were fully built (and ideally cost less).

And while these terms aren't necessarily mutually exclusive—you could have both an MVP and prototype running concurrently—they do represent two distinct phases of development: one where you're getting feedback on key features before going full-scale into production; another where those same features have been fine-tuned based on user feedback during prototyping phase 1 (or maybe even further polished based on feedback given during other iterations).

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Major Presentation: Market Size, Revenue Model, Competitive Advantage, Business Model Canvas

This week marks our third big presentation, and we will cover the following topics: market size, revenue model, competitive advantage, and business model canvas. This is the final diagram we generated to show the revenue process in our revenue model. Because profitability was our core aim, we focused our transaction-based revenue efforts on offline-online selling. For service revenue, we worked hard to build the best customer connections possible, and we provided our valued customers with smooth transactions.

In creating a competitive advantage, nothing has changed dramatically from our previous work. However, we will look for other contenders, both local and international, to notice any extra features that must be prioritized. This week, we also presented our business model canvas. A business model canvas is a graphical depiction of a company model that focuses on all major strategic factors. In addition to offering a basic overview of the business model, these canvases enable firms to visualize and assess their strategy.

Our professor instructed us to form partnerships with other groups, which is proving difficult for us, especially given the little amount of time remaining. We're wondering how we'll be able to collaborate with them if we simply have a conceptual framework or design. We're not sure if it's doable.

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An Update: Market Size, Revenue Model, Competitive Advantage

We had a difficult time discussing about market size, particularly cutting it down, who exactly should we include in our market, or what fraction of the area is potentially engaged. However, it was really good since it allowed us to recognize how precious it is.

Our competitive advantage includes our ability to produce biodegradable bags. This is an important point because it means that the biodegradable bags we produce will be better for both the environment and consumers. It is true that some people may not want to buy something that is good for them, but it is also true that everyone wants something that's good for the world and future generations.

You may have heard about the growing concern for the environment and its negative impact on our planet. That's why, more and more people are making an effort to reduce their carbon footprint by choosing reusable bags instead of disposable ones.

All of these factors make reusable bags a very attractive option, especially for shoppers who are looking to be more environmentally friendly and cost effective while still looking stylish and convenient. As a result, we expect this market to grow in the coming years as individuals strive to live greener and bluer lives.

We are in a unique position with this market because we can provide both reusable bags and biodegradable bags. We are committed to helping consumers reduce their carbon footprint, and we want to do that in a way that will make them happy too. This report has shown us just how much potential there is for our product if we take advantage of this opportunity now while it's still developing.

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Forced Rankings & Revenue Model

In our Forced Ranking game, we were asked to make difficult selections from features to cost to marketing. We each developed three criteria for ranking the products. The first criterion is the feature that has the most impact on our product. In this criteria, all of our team members ranked eco-friendly as number one. That makes eco-friendly the feature with the most impact on our product.

We used four different sources of revenue in our product: transaction-based revenue, service revenue, project revenue, and recurring revenue. Our company concentrated its transaction-based revenue efforts on offline-online selling because profitability was its primary goal. For service revenue, we strove to develop the finest customer relationships possible, and we served our valued clients with seamless transactions.

We can work with different companies to help us sell our product and brand our product for more exposure in order for customers to buy it. For example, working with wet markets and department stores will enable us to expand our market. Next, influencers can advertise and review about our products online so customers will see them online by searching on search engines like Google or Bing. Lastly, affiliate marketing means that other businesses that sells similar products may partner up with us by recommending our brand when they sell their bags; in return, they will earn commission by doing so. Our collaboration model includes partnering up with companies who are willing and able to help us sell our products as well as spread awareness about it!

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Competitive Advantage: Overwhelm Your Rivals

It is a given fact that when you enter the world of business or entrepreneurship you will not only have one nor two rivals but a lot. All of you will have to compete or monopolize your targeted consumers. 

Every entrepreneur desires a lucrative and growing company. When starting a business, it's not only about the sales; as an entrepreneur, you must be completely prepared for what your company has to offer. That is why we must build a Competitive Advantage in order to distinguish ourselves from other current businesses. This Competitive Advantage enables us to picture our strengths and capacities in order to supply our customers with the best items possible.

Yuca Bags, a biodegradable plastic bag produced from cassava starch, has a great deal of potential since it aids with pollution, primarily marine pollution, in addition to being composed of renewable resources. In the Luzon region, there's already biodegradable bag manufactures. The starches corn and cassava were utilized. We uncovered a number of complaints about their merchandise and transactions after browsing their website. 

Our product is significantly less priced than competing products. Although it is less costly, the materials are of great quality. It's simple because Mindanao has one of the highest yields of cassava. As a result, cassava plants are substantially cheaper in our area, which is advantageous because we do not need to move our raw materials.

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Value Proposition Canvas and Business Thesis: An Update

To recall what is a value proposition canvas, it is a tool that can assist in positioning a product or service around what the consumer values and needs. We were instructed to check our value proposition canvas ang provide an update about it to our instructor. The team and I conducted a virtual meeting to clearly discuss if what changes can we make to our value proposition canvas or just leave it unchanged.

We thought it thoroughly and this is our updated value proposition canvas:

As you can see we only did some little changes but that doesn’t mean that it is just minor changer. It is still a significant change since we based it on the gathered information from our targeted customers that we interviewed.

As for the business thesis, it expresses the argument or perspective on a product concisely and previews the important points. It serves as a guide, or essay map, for buyers. A successful thesis informs clients about the product and why it is important. We also did an update for our business thesis this week.

It shows here the answers on what, who, and why we should produce our product. Though it still needs some very minor revisions but it is indicated there why we need “Yuca Biodegradable Bags” (Yuca another term for cassava). All of these are necessary to be able to see a vision where your product can be of great help not only to the our consumers but to the environment as well.

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Diligence Is The Beginning of Brilliance (Part 2 of 2)

An interview is a two-way exchange of ideas between the interviewer and the interviewee. It includes of consultation, mutual exchange of viewpoints, and group deliberation. It may be used to gather information, disseminate information, and influence behavior.

On our 6th week, our instructor didn’t uphold a synchronous class or meeting since he had other things to attend to. So we continued to make more interviews to our targeted customers to make our gathered information more solid-proof. We interviewed a total of 15 interviews and the results we’re quite predictable. 

Most of the vendors we interviewed still uses plastic bags to store the products that were bought by their customers despite the no usage of plastic bags policy. The reason they keep on using plastic bags is that eco-bags aren’t suitable enough to store wet products in it and it is to expensive. 

We can say that our product, based on the interviews we’ve taken, will blast through the charts since this product that we will produce would be very useful to them. Not only that, considering that people will use our product, this would greatly decreased of damaging the marine life on earth, hence, having a healthy ocean, river, sea and any other bodies of water that will not make the homes of marine creatures unhabitable.

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Diligence Is The Beginning of Brilliance (Part 1 of 2)

So how can you be sure that your product will meet the needs of your customers? How do you know if your customers are happy with the product that they will purchase from you? What do they like and dislike about your products and services and more importantly, how can you best keep up with their ever-changing requirements? 

To fully understand your customer’s requirements, it’s necessary to talk to them and ask for a short interview about the specific problem they are facing. This can help with innovation, product development and also build a loyal customer base. We need to be diligent and gather more information, it’s time to be more practical and go into a new approach. But we just don’t interview someone randomly, we need to interview someone that will be one of our potential customers and will give us useful information that will help us deal with problems we are having in making our product.

We interviewed 9 market vendors, most of them are fish vendors and out of the 9 we interviewed, all of them uses plastic bags to store their sold items. We asked them if why they wouldn’t use eco-bag for storing their sold items and most of them answered that it is not convenient to store their sold items in the eco-bag since water will just pour out of it and it is too expensive. So we think we have collected enough information for our potential customers but we still need to interview a manager of a cassava production to ensure that the crop production rate of cassava is not quite low. But luckily we searched it up on Google and statistics says that Mindanao has the second highest cassava production rate in the Philippines, still we need to interview one manufacturer of cassava to verify that the statistics shown on the internet is true.

It is especially significant when planning to make your own product. The investigation will seek to unearth any hidden liabilities or possible issues with the product. Due diligence improves the quality of information provided to us, allowing us to make more informed decisions.

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Value Proposition Canvas: Generating Products and Services in Response to Customer Requirements

A product will be seen useless if it doesn’t cohere with what the customer is looking for or their needs. Our product should be able to solve a specific problem that the customer is experiencing and will be provided of good service. We cannot just foolishly think of something, manufacture it, and sell it without even knowing how the customer will react to the product you’re selling. No one might even be interested to buy and just think that what good would that product be if they bought that. So with the use of the value proposition canvas, we can think of ways to develop the product and fulfill the needs of our customers.

We utilized this value proposition canvas as part of our technopreneurship training. It is made up of two segments: (a) the client profile, and (b) the product value proposition. We interviewed a few folks and asked them pertinent questions to assist us create our product. Actually, we already have a product in mind, but as I previously stated, a product is meaningless if it does not meet the wants of the client. First and first, it is critical to hear what the people desire or what challenges they are currently having, since this may assist us adapt or better our proposal.

Although, we haven’t had a proper interview this week so we made up a customer and named him Cardo. He’s a market vendor who is also a scuba diving instructor as his sideline job and couldn’t help but feel upset every time he sees plastic bags floating in the water. Then we tried to put ourselves in Cardo’s shoes and began to think what would Cardo say, hear, see, feel, and do in this kind of situation. We know that it wouldn’t be very accurate since he’s just made up but we cannot say that we didn’t get anything from that. We thought a lot of ideas on how to improve the product, biodegradable bags out of cassava starch, and we did more research to what other things our product can achieve.

As I previously stated, the value proposition of a product is heavily influenced by the consumer profile. So, once again, before creating a design, consider what the people require.

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7Ps Framework For Effective Meetings

To make our idea/s come to a reality, we must first assemble a team. Of course, in order for us to achieve something we need the help and support of other people. We cannot do it on our own flying solo all through out. So our 3-man team established a meeting last week to research, organize and talk about how to make the prototype of the product.

Naturally, business meetings aren’t just casual ordinary meetings. Business meetings means business and must generate an idea to  that will give the team progress after the meeting. Our team followed the 7Ps framework in order to have an effective meeting. The 7Ps Meeting Framework encourages you to first define a clear meeting purpose, then choose the right people and processes to generate a product that meets that goal. The framework will serve as a reminder to prepare for the meeting while also addressing practical difficulties and hazards.

Needless to say, the purpose of our meeting is to think about what SDG should we pick and what product should we make that will resolve the problem of the chosen SDG. From my previous blog, “Our Water is Suffocating”, it is mentioned there about what product we are trying to create. Then we assigned each other roles: hustler (Ella Aclo), hacker (Ryan Naguita), and Hipster (Harvy Jalandoni). 

Before the scheduled meeting, we researched and/or thought in advance about any potential products we could suggest during the meeting. Although we were having issues in scheduling the meeting since all members have different free time and the major practicality is that the pandemic is still going on and it’s highly impossible for us to meet up personally and create the product, considering the fact that all members live faraway from each other. But we will try our best even if we are just meeting virtually and we’ll possibly try to meet personally if given the chance since this product needs more hands it could take to produce, even if it is just a prototype.

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Our Water is Suffocating

Not only water is an essential need to us humans in order for us to rehydrate our system, but water is a home to many. It can be fishes, crustaceans, mammals or even humans. But what if there will come a time where all the bodies of water that covers 70% of our planet Earth will become unhabitable? You might be thinking right now that that would be impossible to happen. Well, Earth is not only slowly dying on land but also underwater.

It may be a hard pill to swallow but it is true and that one of the most cause of this is plastics. To be precise, plastic bags...

Plastic bags are widely used especially in third world countries. They’re used for putting in the groceries you bought at the store and such. This wouldn’t be a problem if all people dispose plastic bags properly like throwing it in the trash bin and not on the side walk, some even just throw them off the river or some shore on the beach not knowing what the consequences will be. As a result, organisms that live underwater get choked to death because of this plastic bags.

We could simply make a campaign about saving the lives of those living underwater but will everybody listen? What I meant by ‘everybody’ is every person living on earth? Are we certain that they will avoid throwing plastics into the ocean at all times? Is this enough of a solution to sustain the lives underwater? If you have doubts, then we thought of a product that will positively help and greatly reduce the risk in killing and polluting the water life.

Biodegradable plastic bag made out of cassava starch. This plastic bag is non-toxic and what’s better is that we can dissolve this plastic into a hot water and drink it. In addition to that, garbage collectors don’t have to worry on where to dispose the plastic bags, they could just dissolve it on hot water. Although this product is still a prototype and we are still finding ways to improve it. But think about it, the lives of organisms living underwater will be safe and our oceans will be healthy.

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Self Assessment is the First Step to All Assessment

Have you ever thought that there might be things you don't know about yourself? Things that can make you say "oh?".  Yes, we know ourselves better than anyone else but do we know ourselves completely? To a point where we could object or correct a person's impression about us. So I took this Berkeley innovation index and MBTI test to assess myself and see if there are things I didn't recognized that I have this kind of trait. Although this two test doesn't give you precise results, but they are still accurate. I took the Berkeley innovation index test first and I could say that I don't totally agree with my results. It even shows here that I got only 60 out of 100 in my "trust" score. Well yeah I cannot trust someone I just bump on the streets but I can fully give my trust to someone who I am teamed up with and its up to them whether they'd break it or use that trust given to them as a form of motivation to provide the best output and/or ideas for the team. And about my score in "innovation zone", I guess it's quite understandable that my score is only 58 since as of now, I'm focusing on my academics and graduate the program I'm taking. But I do have plans to save up some money and invest to start my own business someday. After the Berkeley innovation index test, I took the MBTI test which is a personality test. There are a total of 16 personality types and my results showed that my personality type is a logistician. Logisticians are people who have judging, thinking, observant and introverted traits. Well, I disagree with the "introverted" part, I am more of an extroverted person. I make friends easily and can even have a casual conversation with someone who I just met. Other than that, I can somehow agree with the results shown. After taking those two test, it really comes down to what you think about yourself. It gives you that feeling that helps you think that if this is the kind of person you are or not. Other people or a mere computer program cannot precisely describe the person you are. But it does help you discover and know yourself more and by knowing the person you are and the things you can and can't do.

If you want to take the test, click the links below to redirect you to the website on where to take the test.

https://innovationindex.berkeley.edu/

https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test