Technopreneurship - Week 5 THE WEEK OF APPROVAL
For my 5th week, on Monday we went to Sir Mabulay’s office. We explained more to Sir Mabulay of the concept of DropBuy. He understood and questioned us who what will be the manual and automated process of DropBuy. We weren’t sure what to do after that. By Monday night, I watched the video linked by Sir Mabulay on Slack. The videos was about different case studies regarding the journey of different CEOs on their Startups. I enjoyed listening to their lecture because for me, they have inspiring stories on their Startup journey. They all started small and talked about their mistakes. One of the startups on the video included Twitch. Twitch is video streaming for gamers. As a gamer, I was amazed because Twitch was actually a startup from the beginning. That night, I also made a sketchup on my notebook of my idea for DropBuy’s front end and a bit part of the manual process. On the next day, we had our Technopreneurship class. Our lecture was about “Doing things that don’t Scale”. Sir Mabulay discussed some case studies on the video. There are three things that DoorDash learned while making their MVP. These are 1. Test your Hypothesis 2. Launch Fast 3. Do things that don’t scale. He then reminded us to always define the problem. Once our MVP is done, he said that there are three things that have a cycle LEARN-> BUILD-> MEASURE. We should learn from the feedback from the customers, build it and then measure it. The quote in the presentation “Entrepreneurs are not born, they can be made” struck my head. It reminded me that anyone can be and entrepreneur as long as you are determined to be one and know the process of being one. Sir Mabulay also discussed about User Persona. It is achieved when the same story is already known from many different customers.
After our class, my team decided that we should meet in the Library. I showed them my sketched idea for the front end of DropBuy that I made on Monday. They all agreed to it and we just made a few corrections. I also made and initial sketch up for the inside process of the buyer. As a team, we continued the work I started on. We shared our different ideas during the discussion and finally finished the initial sketch up on my notebook. Muznah volunteered to make the PowerPoint presentation. By night, I sent more survey links to some CdO sellers and outside cdo buyers through facebook messenger. All of the respondents we need can be found in Facebook’s marketplace. I searched for CdO online selling groups in Facebook to look for local sellers. I also searched for Facebook groups named for different cities outside CdO esp. Bukidnon, Davao and etc. to reach out to outside CdO buyers.
On Friday, there was a Lecture Series Program held on the Performing Arts Theatre (42-6th floor). All members of our team attended the program. The Speaker for the program was the CEO of StreetBy, Mr. Rhey Minoza. He said that he started from the bottom and that he was like us before, students. After graduation, he began an internet café business but failed. Soon enough, he had an idea of starting his own company and so he went for that opportunity. He said that he took the road less taken. As the years grew by, StreetBy also grew and expanded from a startup to a company. He thanked Sir Mabulay for the recommendations of Students he hired in StreetBy. There were I learned a lot of things from his lecture. He told us that there were three important key persons needed in starting a startup. As long as I can remember that first person needed was the leader I think. The second key person needed is the technical person. The third one is the support of the team. Sir Rhey said that he was the first one. Then, he mentioned about the quote “Success is not a destination, it’s a journey”. It isn’t some destination reached only when you achieved your goal. Even small accomplishments were worth celebrating. It’s a journey wherein you’ll realize along the way, step by step and little by little, things will be achieved successfully. I also learned from the questions asked by the students and was answered by Sir Rhey and Sir Mabulay. All of the questions made sense and are meaningful. By Friday night, Muznah sent an interactive demonstration of DropBuy’s flow and sent it on our Group chat in Facebook messenger.
By Saturday, We all saw both the presentation and the interactive demonstration of the application. All of us agreed on it. I suggested about the logo. I wanted our logo to look like a man’s arm holding a package so I told them about my suggestion. The team agreed to it. By Saturday night, we received as message from Sir Mabulay that our proposal was finally approved.
That was all that happened on my fifth week. I learned a lot during our class, team meetings and the Lecture Series Program. DropBuy was finally approved by Sir Mabulay. I look forward on next week on what is the next step our team can do. I hope we can all use our own strengths in making our startup possible and make it working as a team. Please stay tuned as I update more weekly blogs for my Technopreneurship class. This is Dianne C. Yap of teamMabaylan. (~ ^ _ ^)~