The OnRamp Experience: A Student Perspective

Written by Matt Komich
Edited by 99P Labs

Matt Komich is a graduate of Ohio State University and former participant in OnRamp, a corporate innovation idea accelerator. He is currently working at 99P Labs.

“…when I think about positive, valuable experiences from my time as an undergrad, OnRamp takes the cake.”

I’ll begin by saying that I think every Ohio State student should strongly consider applying for the OnRamp program offered by CIS (Center for Innovation Strategies). I took away more in 10 weeks than I did from any class, and when I think about positive, valuable experiences from my time as an undergrad, OnRamp takes the cake.

“Perhaps the biggest takeaway in my experience was learning what to do next after coming up with an idea.”

I applied for the program because it seemed like the perfect extracurricular for me. It was hard for me to find a club or activity I really wanted to be a part of; I was hesitant to join any extracurricular because I wanted to actually be invested rather than joining simply to add it to my resume. I saw an email about the program when I was a senior and applied right away. It seemed perfect for me — the program promised a fun environment, fast-paced schedule, and encouraged students from any major to join and work with corporate sponsors to develop innovative business ideas. OnRamp certainly delivered on those promises and then some.

I was always coming up with ideas for products and services and hoped one day I could actually bring one of them to fruition. Every time however, I would run into the same roadblock — I had no idea where to begin. That’s where OnRamp comes in. Perhaps the biggest takeaway in my experience was learning what to do next after coming up with an idea. It all starts with a hypothesis.

“One thing is certain, after OnRamp you will feel more comfortable asking people for their time to answer a few questions.”

At the very beginning all of us participants voted on hypotheses about industry problems or target markets, given to us by our sponsor, 99P Labs. We ranked what we were most interested in and then we split into teams. Knowing our hypothesis about our customer, we were first tasked with validating the hypothesis; is it true or not? If it was, great. If not, what is true? We validated by coming up with a series of questions on a Google Form. If I can remember correctly we had eight questions. The key point that I learned in this step was to ask open-ended questions to get the best, most thorough answer possible. It’s best to ask a question the respondent can expand on, and then ask follow-up questions for even more detail.

We surveyed about 50–60 people; close friends, family, acquaintances, and strangers relaxing in the lobby of an OSU gym, the RPAC. One thing is certain, after OnRamp you will feel more comfortable asking people for their time to answer a few questions. As daunting as it may seem to some, most if not all people were willing to engage with us.

“More perks of OnRamp: experience pitching business ideas, answering tough questions, and doing so in front of people.”

Once we had all of our responses our next task was to analyze the data — the goal is to find any insights about our customer and see if we can identify any common problem(s). With that, there may be opportunities to ideate solutions to those problems, thus providing value to the customer in a solved issue. We started analyzing the data by breaking down each response into smaller pieces of information, point by point. We then grouped those points by commonality, and when we were done we had a bunch of different clusters of information. A lot of sticky notes were used. Ultimately, we discovered that the hypothesis about our customer was not true, but, we did find a common problem amongst our respondents.

The next step was to ideate an innovative solution to the problem, and it was more difficult than it sounds. It sounds intuitive that you find a problem and should know how to fix it, but our problem was sort of vague. We came up with a few solutions and pitched them to the leaders of the program, the folks at 99P Labs, and everyone else in the cohort — over 40 people. More perks of OnRamp: experience pitching business ideas, answering tough questions, and doing so in front of people. It sounds nerve wracking, and it can be, but everyone in the room ultimately wants you to succeed and it’s nice to know that in the back of your head.

After we got our feedback from everyone we realized our solutions were pretty sub-par. I went back to the drawing board later that night and started brainstorming — adding the feedback we got into the equation. After telling my teammates and the program leaders the new solution, I knew we had a winner. The excitement was visible — after I told the idea to the program founder and director, Christian Lampasso, he started pacing around the room and smiling, jotting down ideas on the whiteboard. He told us to scrap everything from before that moment and put all of our energy into the new solution. By the end of the program, we had a solid slide deck to pitch; we introduced ourselves, went over the questions we asked people, explained our data and resulting insights, and then went into detail on our solution — how it solves the problem, mockups, customer personas, and all.

What I gained from OnRamp

• Knowing what those first few steps are after coming up with an idea
• Public speaking and pitching experience
• Confidently asking someone for their time
• Quality slide deck creation (I should be embarrassed at what I thought was a quality-looking slide deck before OnRamp)
• Concisely explaining an idea — 1 sentence
• Persona creation
• Mockup skills — I never thought I’d know how to make good looking mockups to convey my ideas visually, but here I am. I use an app called Miro, I highly suggest it. (It helps if you have a tablet and tablet pencil)
• Solid relationships
• A job

I will never forget my experience at OnRamp and I thank everyone involved for creating such a great program for Ohio State’s students. I have used these skills ever since, and use them currently in my role with 99P Labs. All because of OnRamp. If you’re a student at OSU and you’re still not convinced, you get paid for your time and you get free food, too.

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