The Lectures 2: What I have learned...
E.M Turdos
December 6, 2020
Intellectual Property & Technology Business Incubation PART 2
Intellectual property is a creation of the mind. It comes from within us - our mind. A simple idea can create a new or unique product, invention, and many more. Intellectual property has rights and protection which protected by the law to prevent others from stealing our idea. To have the protection of that law, we must first file the data to the authorized intellectual property office so that we are entitled to that property.
During the discussion, I realized that having an invention or a product that can solve the problem is important to register it before others because it will become into waste if others claim it first. We should also start to build our idea because we might not know if someone have the similar idea of ours.
I realized that if you want to start a startup, we must know first if that product already exists so that the time we have spent brainstorming, creating our startup product or services will be in vain because later it will not be registered because it already exists.
As a student, creating our startup also need guidance so that we will know what our startup will become. The Technology Business incubation has helped many entrepreneurs for commercialization to improve innovation and give assistance to a small business or the startup.
We can enroll our self to be an incubatee ( in the TBI) that will give us support to our startup and also enhance/harness our experience. Aside from that, we can able to prepare in establishig a clearer and profitable business plan which is one of the benefits.
The TBI of CMU can help us commercialize our startup and know the value of the economic benefit it will give to the community. Furthermore, to be an entrepreneur or an incubatee we should have this kind of perseverance or the desire, skills, and knowledge to continue the business and learn from the hardship. But, we can choose not to enroll and just do things according to what we have plan. Depend on us.
Do Things That Donāt Scale
If we decided to not be enroll in TBI, we always do the things that don't scale. Doing things that don't scale is like doing things manually to serve and deliver value to the customer. When doing things that don't scale - we can learn the process, figure out the problem, or what the business is lacking by getting feedback from the customer to realize what is the need to improve. By doing things this way, we will able to gather the information firsthand with regards to our business.
Doing things that don't scale is also part of the lean startup. The Lean startup is a kind of strategy to gather information faster. It is when you identified the problem then develop the minimum viable product and measure it by testing or getting basic information to learn if it was able to address the problem and how to improve it, then repeat the process.
A minimum viable product is an early stage of a product build to test a hypothesis that answers problems of early adoptors while creating and delivering value to customers. It starts with a simple idea to create a simple product that is design, usable, reliable, and functional product. And along the way, it will evolve accordingly from what we have learned from the feedback of the customer. The MVP is a building concept where every stage has its usefulness. It is a kind of a solution to deliver value, save time & money, able to minimize error because we started small, and get quality feedback.
Through the discussion, I learned that we should be able to know our target and their problem. The features of the product must be developed one at a time or just a simple at first launched to know if it delivers the value we intended to deliver and if our customer is willing to use and pay for it. Starting a simple first launch of the product will get us an advantage to minimize our losses if it fails. Throughout the process of validating our MVP, our minds must be open for feedback to avoid biases and to learn more.
Pitching & Fundraising
As the business/startup grow, we need funds. Every firm needs capital and funds when just starting their business. Owners can get the funds needed in the business from their pocket, family, and investors. Investors such as angel investors, venture capitalists, or public investors and finding them are not easy.
Sometimes, I think that finding investors is easy as long as our business is rising and has the potential to break through to the next level, but the reality is not like that because we cannot do magic, and most of us start from the bottom with no back-up. Finding an investor is the basic thing to do when the business or the startup we build is starting to grow to be able to fund all the expenses and the needs of the business.
In my understanding, finding investors is hard to do if we cannot express the ideas comprehensively to the investor even if we're pitching. We need to make them interested of what we have to offer. Pitching is like an advertisement to the investors to convince them and make them interested in our business so that they will be investing.
From what I have learned in the lectures, there are types of pitching - the elevator pitch, the short and long-form pitch. The elevator pitch consists of 2 minutes only, the short form pitch mostly happens in competition with a time limit of 3-10 minutes, and the long-form pitch where you have a longer time to present and express the idea to the investors on why they should invest to us.
Also, we can use to present our idea by using the 10/20/30 rule of PowerPoint in introducing the business in an organized manner because it will be very comprehensive and effective to remember the overview of the business plan.