The Start of a Startup Journey

Week of 9/21 - 9/27

This year has been the year of the unpredictable for everyone as the COVID-19 pandemic has put our world at a stand-still. The pandemic has led to a downfall for many but for some, has sparked up a new opportunity. It is no doubt that I have faced challenges in school and out of school during the time of the pandemic but, the pandemic also lit a path for me to find opportunity.

During this past summer, I took a unique opportunity to intern at a business accelerator called "iStart Valley". IStart Valley’s mission is to turn ideas into a functioning and successful startup business. Every Saturday week, the accelerator holds a meeting in which they discuss several topics that are important to a startup’s success. Along with weekly meetings, we are required to do work outside such as read articles, write blogs, and read business-related books in order to accumulate hours that can help us receive awards and achievements.

Throughout the first few weeks of the internship, I learned many aspects of being a successful entrepreneur and the importance of working with a team. One of the aspects was identifying a problem in today’s society. This was amongst one of the greatest challenges I faced throughout the internship as I had many things to consider before even pitching my idea but, eventually I came to a conclusion after hours of research and analysis. Soon enough, I pitched my idea and organized a team around it. This marked the beginning of my startup journey.

From August up to this day, my team and I have been working on a Lean Canvas for our startup in order to collect the necessary data we need to begin developing it. In the Lean Canvas, we must interpret the problems our startup fixes, the solutions, customer segments, cost structure, unique proposition, market share, metrics, and revenue streams. As we have progressed, we have started adding more problems and solutions to our Canvas that has caused us to iterate and pivot our idea. This pivot opened us up to many new ideas and features that we hope to incorporate into our product. In terms of customer relations, we are creating surveys that will help us identify the need for our product in the market.

As for my goals for the coming weeks, I hope to push out the survey created by my team so we can receive and analyze the feedback and results given by our potential customers which will help us determine where our product stands in the market. With these results, we may also be forced to iterate our product so that it can meet the needs of the market. Reaching customers presents a big challenge to me as it is harder to reach people during the times of the pandemic but, with the creation of a survey, I hope to expand my reach towards potential customers that can yield results that can greatly impact the development of our product.