IEOR 185: Challenge Lab, S17

The semester is coming to a close, and I have definitely built entrepreneurial skills that I did not have at the beginning of the course.  I entered the class without having taken any business course in the past.  It is impressive how much I have learned from the past few weeks on how to build a business, as well as some basic economics.  This course has also help me enhance my skills in public speaking, engaging an audience, networking to build the start-up, and teamwork.  I especially enjoyed that the class was structured around people from multiple works of life and really modeled a real workplace that would involve people of different backgrounds, work habits, and skill sets. I very much enjoyed the team building activities that we did with the Lego pieces and the plastic box.  The Lego game not only revealed the differing communication method business majors had versus engineering majors, but also allowed myself to recognize that I had to strengthen my co...

For this week, we worked on the pitch deck.  Unfortunately, I was unable to attend our weekly meetings, because of a housing/leasing situation I was in. I understand that our approach is to first present the problem to the judges - we were reminded that Rick had told us to make this as "painful" as possible to the audience.  We want the problem to hit close to home and then provide a solution to that problem.  We will start by introducing the patent and our potential market.  Then, we will explain our target market and present our research regarding that.  We will then move on to heavier topics - our financial forecast and our company timeline.  This builds up momentum to our main goal of the pitch - to request for funding. This pitch deck is attractive, because it first grabs the audience and the judges' attention with the problem presented.  Then, we present the more light-hearted material, while also demonstrating our strength through the extens...

Our group has been making significant progress, and we have been working efficiently and successfully with each other as well.  When we have different viewpoints, we are able to discuss the topic with ease and come to an agreement.  Our team dynamics are great - we had a meeting and went out for ice cream afterwards!  Personally, I have grown a lot from this class - I have never touched upon topics in business prior to this class, and it is definitely eye-opening to be learning how to build a startup in class while actually building a startup. We have changed our initial target customers from small and mid-sized businesses in the healthcare and financial sectors to startups with around 100 to 5000 employees.  We pivoted from our initial approach, because we aim to establish are reputation first within the industry with younger companies who have a high demand for cloud security before pursuing larger businesses.  Moreover, this will lead to a shorter sale cycl...

Our patent is on an ORAM technology that is the first of its kind to conceal access patterns to data on the cloud.  Often, individuals and companies' clouds can be attacked when hackers recognize that a certain data is accessed more often than others - this is an indication of important and frequently used data.  To protect those who use cloud services, this ORAM technology eliminates the encryption of a file and thus conceals the access patterns of it.  This technology will not slow down the system performance or take up extensive amounts of memory.  Most attractively, it is compatible with all the major cloud security providers. The technology is a method that shuffles data between the data blocks that stores all the information on the cloud, as provided by the first claim.  The shuffling of the data between the N number of blocks prevents the data to be encrypted and eliminates any sort of access pattern. The data is shuffled between P partitions within the...

For this week, I interviewed a risk management firm on their thoughts and needs for cloud and data security.  They were definitely interested in our product, as they collaborate with highly sensitive and confidential information from big clients.  However, they were still reluctant on sharing more information about their cloud security with me but were interested to speak further as our product and idea becomes more planned out in the future. Now, we are working on our budget and preparing a rough timeline of goals to achieve before our presentation to the judges.

For the past week, we have continued working on our customer interviews and finalizing the market that we will be targeting.  We are continuing to work on our value proposition. I have tried talking to a contact in the financial industry but was unable to get a conclusive response from her.  I am now awaiting a response from a risk management firm. I understand that it may be difficult to get a response from potential customers through our email and phone call channels, so we are working on finding other ways of contact.  I have spoken to others about new methods of getting a response, and they have suggested networking events or just spontaneous meetings with people around me.

We have started to fill out the Value Proposition Canvas and identified key points such as our target customers, our customer relationships, and our channels for reaching out to potential customers.  We found that it may be easiest to reach out to mid size firms that need our cloud security technology and those who have recently established their own local cloud-based storage.  After we establish these relationships, we may develop our technology to involve customers at a more personal level (e.g. app for a personal computer).  Moreover, we will develop a closer relationship with our clients by providing customer support and an online forum for them to discuss any shared problems.  We are in the process of reaching out to potential customers. Our group dynamic is great - we have been working well together!

I believe our team is coming together quite well!  Especially after the Rejection Game, I observed that our team works well together: from brainstorming different ideas to obtain the biggest return to collaborating with each other achieving the goal.  Moreover, not only were we able to collaborate efficiently and collectively, our communication with each other was another important value we found.  We were able to swiftly allocate tasks for the two presentations we had to prepare in the past few weeks and finished in a timely manner.  While we were project-focused, we would often communicate with each other beyond the scope of the class and create more personal relationships with each other.   I am excited to continue working with this team, and I believe the values that I already observed between us will bring our end product to success. 

During our last class, we played the Rejection Therapy game.  Our team went out and first discussed which places would have the capability to trade with us (we targeted stores that were family owned or non-franchises, since we assumed the people working there would have the authority to make trades with their merchandise).  We had contemplated about putting flowers in the plastic box to give more value to the box; however, we saw that another group had already done that, so we changed our strategy to expanding our resources at a career fair on campus.  We gained free admission ($15 per ticket x 5!) into the career fair after explaining our purpose to the coordinators.  We walked around the career fair and explained to the company representatives our game and gained a plethora of water bottles, flash drives, flashlights, et cetera. Using these new resources we gained, we went around to small businesses to make our trades.  We first explained the game and asked ...

There are four steps we will need to consider to draw up a compelling value proposition.  First, we need to decide whether the problem is worth solving.  For example, we should ask ourselves whether the particular problem we are trying to solve is unavoidable or urgent.  A more unique and feasible solution will attract a larger crowd of consumers.  The second question we should consider is whether the problem is blatant, latent, aspirational, and critical.  Does it match up to our social needs at this time and place?  If so, it may be a suitable problem to work on.  Moreover, we have to evaluate whether the breakthrough is unique and compelling.  We have to analyze whether the breakthrough solves something from an untraditional point of view and whether this will produce a profit in today's market.  Lastly, we need to measure the potential customer adoption.  How much will the customer gain by using it and how much is the pain for the cu...

I really enjoyed the Lego game, because we could really observe and experience the dynamics and collaboration between our team members.  For the first part of the game, we decided to break down the drawing into smaller portions so not only was it easier for us to describe the drawing, it would also act as a visual guide for our other team members to follow and build.   For the second part of the game, it was interesting to observe how, upon realizing that we did not have the correct pieces for the described object, we just move on to the generalized form of the object.  Nevertheless, we had tried to read through the descriptions and provide pieces that best matched them. The one feedback that stood out to me after the game was the question of why no one thought to collaborate with other groups in finding the right pieces for their object.  We could have traded with each other and everyone would potentially build a close version of the car; moreover, everyone r...

I am excited about new technology designed to improve the safety and efficiency of our lives.  I hope to explore new, innovative ideas surrounding this basis with my team and to speaking with patent owners of interest soon. As a civil engineering major focusing on transportation, I hope to work with people with similar passions in designing transportation-based systems to better society.  Nevertheless, I am open to other ideas as well!  I hope to work with a diverse team that could bring multiple perspectives to the table and those who are passionate about transforming our ideas into reality.

Hi everyone!  My name is Jannette Choi, and I am a third-year, civil engineering student.  My focus is on transportation.  I am interested in sustainability and building safer and smarter cities for the communities around us. In terms of the class project, I hope to solve a transportation problem with the use of a patent.  However, I am very much open to the ideas my peers would have as well!  Moreover, I am excited to collaborate with people from all walks of life, which will contribute to more diverse and innovative ideas.  I hope to be able to learn from everyone around me and thus gain insight and sharpen my skills from the various backgrounds I will be interacting with.