✍️ Interview: Habidatum and Cornell Tech Product Studio’s Challenges

For the past three years, Habidatum has been working with the Cornell Tech Product Studio, a cross-faculty studio involving Cornell Tech students responding to the most thought-provoking product challenges.

Our journey began with the focus on improving retail operations and forecasting using location data. In the second project, we explored the ways data helps minority-owned businesses rebound post-COVID.

In the third year of collaboration, in 2023, the research challenge was how to support the most effective and inclusive commercial development in economically disadvantaged areas. Below, we’re gladly sharing with you the interview with the Student Team that has worked on this challenge.

✍️ Your feedback is much appreciated; please share your thoughts!

Introduction to the Project Selection Process

Q1: Can you share how you became part of this project?

We are Cornell Tech students with diverse educational and cultural backgrounds interested in both real estate and social impact. We were honored to work with Habidatum to both research and dive deep into our How Might We project to tackle the problem: How might we support the most efficient commercial development in economically disadvantaged areas? We became part of this project by all sharing a similar interest in the HMW topic brought by Habidatum through multiple viewpoints (real estate investing, proptech data feeds, social impact, and real estate development).

Day-to-Day Involvement and Research

- Q2: What did your day-to-day activities involve during the project?

Some of our day-to-day activities revolve around extensive research and interviewing of both small business owners and large real estate development firms here in NYC and international professionals. We aimed to get a broad view of our HMW to be able to find a significant topic or approach. Since our HMW was very broad, we had the flexibility to tackle different points of views and approaches to the HMW and learn to find feasible solutions.

Our semester progression can be broken down into 4 parts:

1. Industry Research & Interviews

2. Ideation

3. Risk assessment

4. Experimentation

Noteworthy Discoveries Along the Way

- Q3: Were there any interesting findings during your work on the challenge?

Towards the end, we narrowed down our ideas to 2 large opportunities, EVA (leveraging AI to do 3D real estate modeling) and GenPost (leveraging generative AI to assist small businesses). Both ideas aim to tackle the How Might We problem, but the former approaches the problem through larger players in the real estate industry while the latter approaches the problem through small businesses, and we were able to present these ideas to gain better insight on which path we should take that was feasible and impactful. Ultimately, we found it interesting how social media, integrated with AI for non-English speaking SMEs to help them utilize and take advantage of social media and their presence to gain more attraction.

Insights from the Final Project

- Q4: Can you describe the final project you delivered?

After careful consideration, advice, and research we found that GenPost, our final idea, was the most feasible and impactful idea. GenPost is a generative AI product that aims to help SMEs (initially in the New York City area) that aren’t fluent in English, gain social media presence & marketing knowledge to attract more people, hence tackling our HMW to help economically disadvantaged areas strive as we view small businesses as the backbone of New York City.

Post-Challenge Plans and Ambitions

- Q5: Now that your challenge work has concluded, what are your plans and how will this experience contribute to your growth? Will you continue working on the project?

Naturally, towards the end of the semester, the post-studio plans was a topic that came up among the team, and our consensus on whether or not to continue working on GenPost is 5 of out 10 (1 being least likely & 10 being most likely). In the exploration of this How Might We problem provided by Habidatum, the team came to a realization that we do eventually want to help small businesses flourish in some way as they are important to communities, and GenPost is certainly a potential solution. So ultimately, this semester-long project has strongly shaped our future journey as we remain adamant in solving: How might we support the most efficient commercial development in economically disadvantaged areas?

Tips and Insights for Future Fellows

- Q6: Any advice for fellow researchers based on your experience within the product studio with Habidatum?

The 2 biggest advice we could give to future Cornell Tech students who are working with Habidatum is to:

• Be curious: The people at Habidatum are industry experts with many years of experience in the real estate industry. As a result, we have gained invaluable insights and knowledge by asking questions, and listening to the criticisms.
• Be daring & open-minded: This is a chance to explore your ideas in a virtually risk-free environment. No matter how silly or far reaching your idea may seem, pitch it to the experts at Habidatum. This is no time to be shy. There were ideas that we thought to seem silly on paper, but they turned out to be great ideas that can be iterated upon after pitching it & discussing with the company advisors.

By 2023 Cornell Tech Product Challenge Student Team: Hatsanai Tiangratanakul, Mitch Chalhoub, Chanan Suksangium, Marcelo Paiva dos Santos Pereira