Becoming an Entrepreneur
My thoughts, fears, expectations and impressions of the first three months.
Be aware: This article is personal. This is not a guide like thousand other guides about how to become a entrepreneur in seven steps. I assume you have already read all of them. As a student, I would like to share my thoughts, fears, expectations and impressions to become an entrepreneur within three months. 10 years after my first graduate degree as an engineer for information and communication technology, I decided to resume my education in applied computer sciences and took the chance to discover the key principles of IT venture design and entrepreneurship.
Expectations
Honestly, I had no idea what to expect in this course called IT venture design. Since I was curious and heard a lot about successful as well as unsuccessful start-ups my expectations were high, anyway. After the first lesson, I was very surprised about the type of such workshops nowadays. It was new to me that the professor sat in the same row as the students and talked like a colleague about his experiences. I assume the reason is the high communicative and agile startup-scene, where a proactive handling in a pleasant atmosphere is usual.
Introduction
During the workshop we discussed about successful entrepreneurs among others highlighting here Elon Musk, the founder of companies such as Tesla, SpaceX and PayPal, or the co-founder of Apple, Steve Jobs, who excite million of people with technical solutions. Indeed, Apple was not the inventor of mobile phones, but the great ideas and the idealism of Steve Jobs led to the worldwide breakthrough of smartphones with the ability to take the internet easily with you.
Such ideas inspired other people and future enterpreneurs as well, so with our skills in computer sciences we could do the same. The possibilities to change the world with information technology have never been better. Especially the so-called deep-tech opportunities have the potential to drive significant disruption to the market. These are often driven by Big Data, used as an input source for artificial intelligence (AI) with it’s subsets like machine learning (ML) and augmented reality (AR). Big data is also used and generated by all kinds of services and devices, i.e. Cloud Computing and the Internet of Things (IoT). Blockchain technology is integrated in multiple areas and has its primary use as a distributed ledger for cryptocurrencies. Keep in mind, that all technologies could interact with each other and there are no rigid barriers. During our workshop we analyzed the main fields of the machine economy for deep-tech solutions with high potential to drive significant disruption and finally deliver opportunities for new markets as following:
Everybody has its own strengths and weaknesses, so we individually identified our main scope of interest and knowledge in a deep-tech. The next step was the ideation phase, focussed in this deep-tech domain.
Ideation
Ideation in reference to this topic is the creative process of brainstorming and generation of ideas which could solve problems or optimize processes we expect. Primarily, I focused on IoT and got an initial idea to develop a smart door phone indoor terminal without the need of changing the intercom connections to the bell. I thought it might be a nice feature to get the door bell smart, even in an apartment where old terminals are installed as it was usual in former times. Benefits could be to receive push notifications on your mobile device, or to give direct voice instructions to visitors or the postman, where to put the parcel, even when you are not at home. As far as I know, there is no such solution for pre-installed door phone indoor terminals, and I could imagine, that it would be technically possible to adapt the intercom connections in-house with an innovative indoor terminal.
Rejection
After discussion and evaluation of potential markets it crystallized out to be a non-profit idea. End-users are inhabitants of appartment buildings and potentially just a small number of people are tech-oriented like me. The mass-market has no need for a smart indoor terminal, so the potential customers like property managements tend to avoid an investment as long the old devices satisfy the basic needs.
I think the experience to discuss such non-starter ideas increases the understanding for analyzing potential markets and identify the pain-points for future customers. It is eminent important to determine the needs and interrelations a customer could achieve with your idea and consequently the product. I could imagine how participants must feel at Shark Tank where potential investors, the so called sharks, who consider offers from ambitious entrepreneurs seeking investments for their business or product.
Ideation II
Well, first idea was rejected, no matter. Further discussions about potential markets and the possibilities of deep-tech led to an new idea to assist people in the kitchen preparing food. The imagination was to address the pain-points of unskilled kitchen personnel, such as cooks in education or kitchen helpers, by giving them detailed instructions and enhanced overlay objects on ingredients in the real-world. Applying this, cooking would be much easier and feasible for everybody, even without previous knowledge. The advantages of AR assisted glasses in the kitchen are free-hands and more space in the kitchen, because there is no further need for cookbooks or tablets alongside the food preparation.
Benefits for large-scale catering establishments could be a reduced training period to educate frequently changing personnel, or to get familiar with new cooking recipes. Additionally, beside saving time, there is a possibility to reduce waste by cutting the ingredients more precisely along the enhanced overlay objects. In fact, all benefits would finally help to reduce costs, which is the main pain-point for every kitchen operator.
Second market for AR assisted glasses could be their application in education institutions and cooking courses to support the learning people step by step by preparing the meal.
To be honest, I was a bit skeptical about the prospect of success to get the idea accepted and the product on the market. Nevertheless, I thought we should give it a try, since we have nothing to lose.
Market analysis
With this idea in mind and the potential product specifications pegged out, we investigated the current proposals for similar products which address the same pain-points in kitchens.
There are some prototypes with virtualized cook-instructions and AR. One of the closest match found was an abstract of the master thesis by Vivian Bardosi called Guided cooking with augmented reality. The thesis based on Apples ARKit and assists the cook by enhanced overlays of virtual instructions during the cooking process. With the help of AR the user gets step-by-step instructions through a cooking-recipe, while the virtual overlays are displayed in the real-world, where locally needed. The user can interact with the cooking guide by changing the orientation of view, so hands-free operation is proofed as well.
There are other competitors like Auxi, another student project for interactive, personal cooking, based on a Microsoft HoloLens and further cooking-tutorials for HoloLens bei Holocooking. At an Hackaton event another group built the so-called Sous-Chef, which displays cooking-recipes on different panels inside the HoloLens. Foodbot is another project, that detects ingredients based on augmented reality and recommends a suitable recipe for a meal. The main competition they described, was the fusion of recognized ingredients in accordance with machine learning algorithms.
Finally, we figured out, there are other solutions to assist the user by food-preparation. However, nobody distributed an easy-to-use and don’t-make-me-think AR glasses we considered, until now.
Pitching Time
When it comes from an idea to a potential product, it is fundamentally important to double check the acceptance of the market. Prospect customers need to be involved and their pain-points should be addressed directly to get an immediate feedback from the target audience. The main goal is to achieve avidity and total conviction for your idea, or rather your final product.
A high-concept-pitch is limited to one sentence, summarizing the whole business idea to an essence. An elevator-pitch is limited to 30 seconds. Several times, we practiced the strategy of an elevator-pitch, in front of the professor, other students, as well as in front of a mirror. After many pitches, it was time to get in touch with real prospect customers, so I called four different institutions and pitched our idea to get feedback from the target audience. Most cooks were initially interested in this technical utility and committed curiosity. Nevertheless, fundamental needs were not awakened, because the audience were not really able to imagine a case scenario for their applications. Simultaneous we developed a prototype product with a demo-recipe, but at the end, the initially claimed willingness was no longer present at the prospect customers, so we did not continue this business.
Conclusion
Overall, my experiences about this course to become an entrepreneur are valuable. It is fundamentally important to have a firm conviction of your initial idea and rather your product.
My initial fear to found a new start-up is gone, but since I have limited time ressources alongside this master study it is not an option for me, currently.
