Fiona Mendoza's Technopreneurship Blog

[technofgxm]

Witnessing The Pitching Competition

Even though it wasn’t me that presented in front of the panels, I greatly felt nervous and anxious for the presenters. Even when the screen monitors drew a boundary between the pitcher, the panels, and us the audience I still felt their nervousness through the screen as I heard their lowkey shaky voices. Compared to us though, it was more of a general sense pitching since it included offline products and even the trendy ones and easy to gain customer ones - food.

Throughout the presentation I’ve heard different positive criticisms and advices from the panelists, ranging from their data to their customer gain traction. What caught my attention the most though is how particular they are about the investment that the pitchers ask from the investors. There were times were the price was too small, or the price was too big. It really depends on the scale of the product that you want to release... that wouldn’t have been a problem though if you had a good grasp and research on the real prices of the labor and materials that you need when starting a business - which again makes me realize how the education on accountancy takes a very huge role when taking on this class.

Of course you have to knowledgeable about the stuff that you say, but what’s important is that you have the capacity to think in a business mindset. Which makes sense that you need a “team“, if you’re good at ideas, you must have other members in the team that are cunning - or “strategists“ per say, some that are good at analysis, good at the maths, etc. And of course when pitching, you must always be ready.

[technofgxm]

December 7 to 12

For our meeting here, we didn’t have formal classes but we were allowed to attend the opening (days 1 and 2) for a pitching competition event held in USTP - CDO. There, we learnt a lot from the opening speakers.

What stood out to me is the idea of Social Entrepreneurship. What I’m aiming for in a different subject actually kind of leans towards this subject more. It’s the idea of promoting donation to even the less privileged ones... I’ve had this notion that my idea was kinda bad since it doesn’t necessarily require payment and can’t gain much income with how it’s designed, but after being enlightened by last time’s session, I became motivated to get more geared towards what I was thinking of doing.

What followed then after was a memorable sharing of experience by a speaker of her experience as someone who worked for Amazon and Google. It was inspiring and a fun talk to listen to. I’ve been really demotivated for the past few weeks, especially that I’ve begun to lack the resources needed to finish my activities. Although I can’t say I’ve been totally encouraged and inspired to work harder, listening to her experience made me hopeful at least... and it did help me slightly. She actually did a game afterwards and rewarded the winners with either a google mini or an echo dot, which the winners can choose from. Unfortunately for me, I transferred to the FB live since my phone’s storage was full and lagging so I wasn’t able to answer in the Zoom session.

For our breakaway meeting, we presented our prototype and our customer feedback. I was glad to know that our prototype was well-received. There are still bits to work on but the flow has been amazing, thanks to our group member. Hoping to improve it more!

[technofgxm]

8th Meeting - Doing Things that Don’t Scale and more

For this meeting we had an example given by our instructor to give us a brief view and importance of testing our assumptions. It was really encouraging ud to put out our idea to the open as fast as possible - basically formulating hypotheses and testing them out via what we call a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I already previously searched about this one and was encaptured by the thought of doing MVP that involved making a video and gauging out random people's reactions and responses as to whether they'd be interested enough to check it out and sign up for a registration. But after the breakout session I figured out to do it much later when our initial ideas have already been tested out.

What's assigned to us for now is to have people try out our prototype (which should be as minimal as possible and only showcases the most important parts of our system). Our group member has already started on the prototype via Adobe XD and it's just a matter of a hurdle how to make the random respondents try it out without having to go through so much hassle. I guess we can search for an online tester that caters to Adobe XD's file type.

I hope to experience what Door Dash has experienced too - to learn more about the ongoing and evolving process of our product, the customer's needs, and the more accurate estimation for the demand of our proposed idea. Since start-ups are as equal as an experiment, we are sure bound to fail, but those failures will help us reach a definitive answer someday.

[technofgxm]

7th Meeting - Intellectual Property

A discussion that is very much important in the world of start-ups. I’ve always known about copyrights, patents, and such and have very much tackled on such topics in my prior years. That doesn’t mean though that continual lectures of the same topics are useless - having refreshed my mind on the topic is very helpful and of course obviously timely since we’re trying to achieve a business mindset.

It’s my first to see an emphasis on how important it is to universities though. Knowing that the following are incentives we can achieve through claiming Intellectual Properties for ourselves, although partly common sense, is very assuring: being able to publicly finance your project, commercialize results, accelerate the transformation of your product, and other economic and societal impacts it brings as well.

I’ve always had trouble distinguishing among the different terms in this topic - from copyright to trademark to patent and such. After lecture, it has enlightened me and strengthened my knowledge foundation on the idea. How I see it, what’s most talked about in businesses are copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets and it’s most likely what we’d have to focus on on our product too. It actually depends on what the company does but for us who’d develop mobile applications and is mainly a service company, trademarks and copyrights would be the main focus.

If I may digress, it’s actually my first time hearing of trade secret - I just knew that that was the term to use when referring to recipes or formulation made by popular food chains or brands. It’s really interesting that I get to apply what I learned about company rules in this context too - where you promise to not disclose anything secret outside necessary even if you’ve stopped working for them already (which is known as a non-disclosure agreement).

The world of business, start-ups, and the like are really complex. It involves a lot of things and is basically a threaded of multiple sorts of professions. This makes me excited but at the same time worry of what’s to come... we need lots of connections and consultations to make this work after all.

[technofgxm]

6th Meeting - Business Model Canvas

This meeting has helped me a lot to reflect on the things that we have been doing pre-pitching this Midterm. We might’ve known these facts already but it’s a good feel to review, reflect, and be reminded of the important and basic aspects of how the process of developing a start-up should go. All these pre-planning, interview practices, analysis, and post-analysis are an important reminder for us on which to focus on.

The day of the lecture meeting, I learnt a lot of new and familiar technical terms in the field of Technopreneurship. I have had a grasp on these things but I can’t say I’m all too confident about explaining them. Having gone through it during the lecture, I can say I have a better understanding about them now - though I still might have to do a bit more self-study to properly understand each of the things I learnt.

Before, I used to wonder if a business model structured exactly in a canvas is necessary. I pondered on it a lot since when I searched for topics relating to our product, business model canvases always showed up in my feed. I mulled over it as I wanted to do it for the sake of more clarity for our product and start-up mechanics but I didn’t know where to start. I definitely agree that as a start-up team, a concrete plan is a must - so that in case what may happen, we would have a blueprint of what must be done no matter what. It lays out the fundamentals of the would-be company for the team too. As it is only a guide, it is ensured not to be static that it would be unable to be flexible in case an issue arises or our product scope scales up.

What stuck to me the most in this meeting is the discussion about keeping customers. It is said that keeping them is less costly than getting them - and that’s exactly why we must work hard on the keeping aspect as to prevent from having customers leaving and having to waste more money to get more customers to compensate.

A minor thing I wanted to share that I was glad about is the fact that we kept demographics when we did surveys and interviews. It definitely serves a lot of purpose during analysis to pin down exactly what our customers need.

Another key point I’d like to put emphasis is our cost structure. We’ve already set on a revenue stream but the exact details for the cost structure is something we’re still unsure about. We’re just a team of 4 students, barely knowledgeable about the business world - but this lecture has indeed added more knowledge to our minds and we hope to apply it for the second half of this sem.

[technofgxm]

Virtual Lecture Series - Using Online Tools and Platforms

This was a problem that I have personally experienced. I’m sure it’s not only me but every student researcher out there too, or just anyone needing data but aren’t professionals yet. This lecture gave us a run-through of product ideation and the tools to use for each step of the phase. I only remember a few of the tools like Microsoft Team, Slack, and Monday - I’ve heard of these from lists and YouTube ads too! Slack is something we’ve experienced using because of the subject also. They seem really efficient to use especially now that we can’t meet face to face, but it’s a disadvantage to be a yet-earning person as we can’t pay for a monthly subscription on our own just yet. I’m glad we have the free-to-use ones. Though limited in features, it’s able to make do for our team. But if I have to be honest, those other tools really work differently and more efficiently as I’ve witnessed in the demo advertisements. For meetings we use Discord; for casual updates we use Messenger; and for surveys we use Google Docs. I was hoping there’d be some kind of tool or platform for finding and searching for the right target audience too since it’s the hardest thing to grasp as of the moment. I do remember coming across those surveying platforms that returns money to the survey-takers. It seems really good to get data from, but again we’re still students so we still don’t earn much for ourselves.

An update for this week is that we finally got the consent to interview our possible partner for our product and got to do the interview a day later. We’ll be working on the analysis and further dissection of the information we acquired for the rest of the week.

[technofgxm]

5th Meeting - The Other F Word

It’s already the 5th week and I’ve said this again and again but I always learn and reflect something new each week. I knew that to succeed you do have to experience failure... but when trying to open your own mind about it and practice the act itself, it’s really hard. I have to give props to these business-minded people - they endured and risked a lot to reach where they are now. I think for us to incorporate that mindset unto our lives, we have to experience it ourselves... but of course right now since we aren’t forming our idea into motion just yet, the right course of action is to practice to steel ourselves of whatever may come. Yet again, although we must know how to persevere, it is always a reminder given to us to know when to pivot. That’s when it becomes hard. You have to have the intuition, strategic thinking, and guts to know when to pursue, modify, or completely change ideas.

For our project, I’m still 50-50 about it. Honestly speaking I am not sure whether this is a good idea to pursue or not... My mind leans on towards the negative side more than on the positive side. But nevertheless I’m trying to work hard and motivate myself. I don’t know though if I’ll receive a big blow if we fail or I’ll be able to take it calmly. Right now, I really think I’ll panic for a new idea if we fail... especially since this is an academic requirement in a limited timeframe, which is only up until the finals. Given that 5 months is already a short period for preparing a start-up, if you fail midway, it means you have to work 2 times harder to catch up to be able to present your product during pitching.

But really, I’ll try not to be panicky. I’ll continue to put into mind the lessons I learned today.

[technofgxm]

4th Meeting - Team Formation

Everything I learned today has resonated within me so much as well. In this 3rd week of validation, we did some online forms for survey again to gauge out how many from the population experiences the problem we have pinpointed. The problem is... contacts. It was mentioned in the lecture that it is a very important aspect when doing a start-up and I can say it really really is even from the initial brainstorming phase.

To hit the target audience that you plan to cover, you need connections - connections to interview these people and then add more ideas to your product. Personally, we are very lacking in that aspect. We need to be more outgoing for this to work yet another problem I’ve been concerned about is the distribution of personality among our team. Basing from the 16personalities test alone, 3 out of 4 of us are introverts. Although not hugely, it does affect our work. And even if it’s just a minimal one, it can pile up and be a huge hindrance in the future... we do our best to reach out to everyone as much as we can though!

The good thing about our team is that everyone is collaborating, everyone is active, and everyone is motivated towards the same goal. I, personally, am also comfortable working with them. It really helps too that one of our members is really well-versed on the idea that we decided to pursue. Every time we talk, there are new ideas born. We suggest, we question, and we suggest again.

But I think, despite that, we still need more ‘help’. Help in the sense of knowledge - knowledge on the aspects that we are not an expert of. Some I can think of are government involvement, hardware set-ups, and business consultants. This made me realize, again, that we are just the developer side of this start-up. We need connections, and we need more help. We need more people that will compliment us. But for now, we’ll do what we can, and I know my team is doing our best :)

As for the work we’ve done this week, so far it’s going good. The responses for our survey are exactly what we are searching for. What’s more there’re even new information we can utilize! It’s a common problem among us Filipinos so we’re having more of a wider respondents now than before. I think we hit the mark this time!

[technofgxm]

3rd Meeting - Talking to Users

It’s amazing how I have something to realize each week. Apparently for the past week, and for the questions that we we’re planning to ask during our interview this week, I’ve been thinking wrong - in some parts. At least we were right about not asking any leading questions to the people we interviewed nor mention anything about our product... yet I think we weren’t really able to gauge out their core problem, but instead, ask them a certain topic we’ve thought on and their problems regarding it. If you think about it that way... they aren’t really the intended audience for it, are they? They’re just random people we imposed the topic on, it’s not necessarily the problem that affects them ‘daily’. But I don’t think we are entirely wrong either for coming up with the ideas we came up with... As mentioned before, we did some survey to document the problems people have been experiencing, and we selected those that we think we are able to work on. Yet this meeting did make me realize that we have to select a certain demographic when conducting these interviews - to really get the answers that we want. I’m still confused on the right way to go about it especially that we’re in quarantine but I’m setting down deadlines and meetings with my group this week. So far we have good chemistry and we are able to put our own insights on the table. The 3rd meeting definitely raised new topics to be discussed within the team.

[technofgxm]

2nd Meeting - Business Types, Models and Such

I’d like to focus first on the main idea that captured my attention for the whole session: I learned that there are 3 types of business: B2B - Business to Business; B2C - Business to Consumer; and B2G - Business to Government. As to why this caught me it’s actually kind of a long story so please bear with me...

Actually before this session, I confess that, our group did some random survey to collect ideas of what problems has been directly bothering them that can be solved technologically. A lot has voiced out their concerns about a slow internet connection which is, unfortunately, something we can’t solve as students. We saw some other concerns about fact-checking, garbage collection, issues on flooding, curfew implementations, identity authentication, etc. Among the above mentioned, what caught me most was the garbage collection issue. Personally, for the past years, it has been bugging me how amidst segregation ordinances being put forth, this problem still persists up to this day. It makes it seem like those potential direction has gone to waste (pun not intended).

What I learned from today’s lesson was that it’s a good starting point to derive a business idea from a personal experience, which the topic I just talked about is obviously a plus. However, the instructors have advised against planning for B2G business ideas. Though just for this semester, it has discouraged me from pursuing the idea - especially since I want to plan for a long-term idea and implement it, not something done on a whim or something that would end along with the semester.

I’m not sure if it’s exactly a B2G type of business to do something about waste segregation or garbage collection but since it’s something like a service to the government, then it probably is. I understand though that it’s hard since it will undergo through a lot of processes before being implemented... which I don’t think one sem could cover, sadly... but it really is sad that I can’t do something about it, for now.

Despite the discouragement, this has actually led me to think that other derivations could be done from that problem itself, and not just exclusively for government service. Learning that starting from pain points, especially from own experiences, made me think broader. It made me think more outside the box. I personally think this session has helped me grow a bit, maybe on the innovation side? I’m really happy that each session is fruitful.

[technofgxm]

Took the Berkeley Innovation Index (https://berkeleyinnovationindex.org/) and my initial result is at 57.5 out of 100. Hope to have an increase by the end of the semester :)

[technofgxm]

My personality type is INTP-T! I often took this test in the past and got different results most of the time (only differs on the T/F and J/P aspects though), but I think right now it’s starting to settle towards INTP... but as they said, it can change over time :) I’ll most likely be forever an introvert and intuitive though!

Oh I took the test here btw: https://www.16personalities.com/free-personality-test

Great thanks to the admins!

[technofgxm]

Self-Assessment - First Meeting

Our first class has just ended and the introduction to the course and to the whole world of technology entrepreneurship itself was pretty friendly, with easy-to-digest information. Because of that, I think I can motivate myself throughout this course - meaning I’m pretty interested to the idea of delving into this world even after the end of the course. But I know this is just the start, the real world of business is much harsher - but I am confident I have a pretty much strong mindset to face these. Knowing myself though, I’m reclusive and avoidant of jumping into opportunities, so I’m hoping within the span of this semester, I can change myself for the better and be more proactive on stuff that can help me in the future!