Thesis Concept Development
Value Proposition, Product Cycle & What would I like my next prototype to achieve?
Value Proposition
Option 1
What makes New York City a unique place is their mom and pop shops. The owners of these shops often work alone or with few employees. Due to high rentals and low-profit margins, they wear many hats, which can be overwhelming. Unlike people that work on bigger businesses they usually don’t have anyone to vent or bounce ideas. Collective was created to give them a team in their neighborhood. It teaches small business owners how to connect and work collaboratively to take actionable steps towards implementing an idea that can benefit their businesses.
Option 2
Mom & Pop Collective is a community building platform that provides tools and guidelines to empower NYC small shop and restaurant owners to connect and work together towards solving their business challenges. Unlike other connecting platforms, Mom & Pop Collective teaches business owners on how to collaborate and take actionable steps towards implementing an idea that can advance their businesses.
Option 3
Collective helps small business owners find their dream team. It connects you with other business owners and provides tools and guidelines on how you can work together towards solving your most significant challenges. The meetings activities are designed to facilitate conversations that help you feel comfortable to share your problems, give and seek advice to other business owners, and brainstorm solutions together.
Possible outcomes:
- Exchange resources and knowledge
- Cross promote each other’s businesses
- Solve problems in your neighborhood
- Do events together that can bring more exposure to your businesses
Offerings:
- Free download of meeting activities and tools online
- Find teams and meetings near you
- Get inspired by other teams
- Build a community and share your ideas with other businesses
Product Lifecycle
What does it look like for the first 10 users? Consider which features provide the core product value?
- Discussion kit
- Instructions on how to connect with other users and run these meetings
- Search for events and groups near you
What needs to change to scale to 1,000 users? Consider features that will require some user adoption before you can integrate them?
- Continue piloting with business owners to spread the word and measure results.
- Partnerships with Cooper Square Committee and East Village Community Coalition
- A website for people to find meetings and groups near them.
Consider features that will require more substantial resources to achieve.
- Build the website and the app
- Marketing the platform
Note that some aspects can be before/after actual interaction with the product
Share results of the group discussions will only happen after the product is launched. In the beginning, this won’t be possible, but as groups start implementing their ideas and sharing in the website that will build more trust for new users.
Think about what that means and how it ties together
What ties my project together is making it possible for users to share results and the ideas they implemented during their group discussions. This way I can measure the impact of my service and make the tools and knowledge accessible to a wider audience.
Will your product be integral to each phase? Is it weak in any phase? Is it unnecessary in any phase?
The weak part of my project is the sharing results aspect. Since I haven’t been able to test this yet and it can only happen once the product is launched I am not sure yet what would motivate users to report back to the site after they implemented their ideas.
What can you leave out? What is it critical to be a part of?
The website and app could come later. The critical part that needs to be designed is the discussion tool kit. The tool kit and instructions could exist on its own and be distributed at local organizations that assist small businesses.
What would you like your next prototype to achieve?
