Separated into 5-6 groups to work on business plans formed around a concept, the collaboration of this eclectic range of people make for a fascinating experience, especially for us industrial designers with no prior experiences in business.

The group concepts varied anywhere from website and mobile app services to new products, and we’re looking forward to seeing the progress that’s to come out of these groups by the end of the month.

Lecture Friday began with an international Skype conference with Jonas Kjellberg, who worked as VP head of sales at Skype helping lead it to its success today. He covered strategies, specifically how to maximize ”frequency”, “delight” and “business” in order to mature a healthy, innovative start up, and went into details of business make-up and team structures.

This was followed by a 6-person live Q&A session with founders of Silicon Valley start ups, including CruiseWise, Top Dish, and OVIA.  They discussed the hurdles of entrepeneurship, their failed attempts, and the benefits and drawbacks of starting up in Silicon Valley.

The last portion of class was made available for everyone to personally talk to these entrepreneurs allowing them to ask more personal questions involving start-ups of their own. Good stuff! 

Sunday, June 12:  The program hosted a barbeque-fueled hackathon event at YouNoodle HQ in South Park, where the class continued work on their projects and received feedback from VCs, founders, and tech experts in attendance.  Our group consisted of two designers (Kevin Cheng and Maria Pitallano), an engineering major, and three entrepreneurship majors.  Utilizing classic design methodolgies to assess each of the Spark:Concept entries, the group determined that Kevin’s 2P Portable Restroom would be the most viable to pursue within the short length of time allotted (less than a month!).

Monday, June 13:  Our morning began with Stanford professor Tom Kosnik compressing a 10-week course on business models into an hour-long presentation. Kosnik stressed the importance of customer development to validate business models, as well as the iterative nature of business models (no model survives first contact with customers).  We then spent the afternoon at Yammer,  an enterprise social network that facilitates and revolutionizes internal corporate communications (the Facebook of enterprises).  Adam Pisoni, co-founder and CTO, stressed the importance of product-driven engineers, that engineers should be as interested in product design as they are in technology.

Tuesday, June 14:
Stanford professor Tom Kosnik spent the morning lecturing on IP (intellectual property), discussing methods to protect our ideas and products that possess commercial value.  His presentation focused on how to find, then collaborate with lawyers in order to leverage and defend our IP.  The day was capped off with a company visit to the Founders Den, a shared office space for experienced entrepreneurs.  Two of the managing partners, Zack Bogue and Jonathan Abrams, emphasized the benefits of a shared working space – communal knowledge, energy, and general cameraderie.

Wednesday, June 15:
Drama!  New Directions! Late Tuesday night, our group mates from Tecnologico de Monterrey expressed concern about the viability of developing a business plan for a portable restroom in a three week period, so we met the following morning to discuss these issues.  The task of assessing costs, manufacturing, distribution, and identifying key partners was overwhelming to the teammates, and they wanted to focus on a concept that had a stronger technological component.

Maria led a 10 minute ideation exercise that proved to be fortuitous. The brief exercise generated 10 concepts that brought about a lot of excitement and energy to the group.  Through phases of voting, we were able to agree on the concept we were most excited about and move forward on a bike theft detection and deterrent device. We then celebrated at Axis Cafe, which oddly enough was playing Latin pop music.

At 5:30PM, our group met up with the rest of the class along with some MBA students from the University of San Francisco at Twitter HQ.  Over the last couple of years, the company has grown rapidly from a handful of employees to almost 600. We were led on an office tour, showing us their common area, equipped with a large projection screen, cafe, and DJ booth.

Employees, working on laptops, lounged on white couches lining walls where large windows allowed for a bright, sunlit environment. The other side of the building consisted of more sunlit work spaces filled with many desks and computers occupied by busy employees.  Our class then gathered into a conference room where a quick Q&A session was held about Twitter’s origins, where it’s at today, and where it plans to be in 20 years.
— All Best, from Maria & Kevin, following the yellow brick road!

 

 

 

 

June 20-23:
Kevin was in France for a wedding, while I was away due to a family emergency.  But the Track-It team had a successful first run of the presentation that was presented to a panel of VCs.  The idea of a GPS-enabled theft deterrent device for bikes was extremely well-received – the VCs were puzzled why it hadn’t been already developed.

June 24:
We were treated to a moving and inspiring panel on careers in social entrepreneurship.  Social entrepreneurs are realists w/ innovative solutions to society’s most pressing social problems.  They seek to enact wide scale change through new ideas.  The panel consisted of Tobias Rose-Stockwell of Human Translation, Eve Blossom of Lulan Artisans, and Claire Herminjard of Mindful Meats.

Here’s their story:

Tobias founded Human Translation in 2004, a nonprofit that has developed programs focused on the microeconomics of poverty alleviation, helping several thousand farmers in rural Cambodia double their agricultural income. While traveling in Cambodia in 2004, he came across a group that initially asked him to raise $20,000 for an irrigation system.  Essentially the price of a car, he didn’t think it was an unreasonable request.  It ended up taking five years and $250,000, but the results were immeasurable.  Tobias and his group mobilized a community torn apart by war to help build a dam and irrigation system that now helps them yield two crops of rice.  When asked to explain the key difference between an entrepreneur and a social entrepreneur, he said, “You have this metric for success that isn’t just profit.  I’m interested in building something scalable that isn’t just charity.”

Eve, trained as an architect, uses design for social change through Lulan.  She created a for-profit social venture that utilizes the talents of artisans in South East Asia. How she became involved was through a life-changing experience that led her to what she refers to as “disruptive entrepreneurship.”  At a dinner party in Vietnam, she overheard a male guest boasting to an acquaintance that he had arranged to have sex with a six-year old girl.  Despite contacting the local authorities, she was unable to stop him; the sexual predator had managed to double bribe the police and he even physically threatened Eve. At this point she realized that combating human trafficking on an emotional level would only lead to more failure; she needed to create a business that could compete with it, disrupt it.  Through her work with Lulan, she has not only employed weavers, dyers, and spinners, she has also assisted in benefits, such as education and housing, to improve quality of life in the villages, towns and communities. ” How many times do you turn your back on need?  There is always one day, one point in your life where you can’t turn your back on something.  That becomes your passion.”

Claire founded Mindful Meats, which is focused on making local, sustainably and humanely raised, meat more accessible. Claire views social entrepreneurs as “impact drivers,” explaining, “I’m coming to hate the term social entrepreneurship.  It doesn’t adequately describe the work, resourcefulness, scrappy nature of people in this space.”  Combining her public policy background with the skills gained working in tech, she began researching a market need and model for her own food business, to which she developed a curiosity and concern over the meat she consumed.  This led to the marriage of her belief in expanding consumers’ awareness and choice of meat with her career goal of being part of a business with a mission of tracking impact beyond profit.

Monday, June 27
The entire class boarded a shuttle to Stanford to visit the campus.  The hour-long ride was a great opportunity for our team to regroup and hammer out next steps to prep for the final presentation, as well as talk to other classmates about their projects.  Some of the feedback from the VCs was that 1) we needed to explain the obstacles that have prevented others from developing a GPS-enabled anti-theft device 2) articulate the benefits and delights of the device, and 3) identify what makes the product different from products/services out there.

Tuesday, June 28
Crunch time!  Tuesday was a working day, with all of the groups meeting separately to work on their final presentations.  We met at USF to finalize the device’s features, decide on whether to market to directly to bike manufacturers or to bike shops (bike shops won; our cyclist interviewees unanimously chose wanting to have this as a stand alone device rather than something pre-installed), and further assess current and future competition.  Kevin also made revisions to the device, lengthening the device, adding the technology, and materials changes.
–MP

June 29 – Final presentations were Friday!  In our last formal class, we presented our  concepts and business plans to not only our instructors, but several guest entrepreneurs and venture capitalists as well.  Our 10 minute presentations included a sports sponsorship app, a social advertising website, vaccine stabilizers for farm life, individually-tailored children books, a bike theft device, and a mobile image recognition app with each presentation followed by a Q&A.  Everyone did a great job and not one group came out of the program empty handed. To celebrate, everyone convened at Starbelly restaurant (16th and Market St.) where we shared dinner and had drinks. Many people gave speeches about what they’ve learned over this last month while toasting the program.