How we discovered our “HeartBeat”
As our 6th semester began this year, we had no idea what a challenge our course “Startup and Entrepreneurship” would be. The subject was to create our own innovating startup based on radio and audio. This project’s target was to evolve the audio and radio industry and to bring forth a business that could fully adapt to reality.
My team’s, Overachievers, reaction at first was “NO WAY” “That can’t be done!”. We had so little information to start on and such little experience as well. What we had to do sounded impossible! Thankfully, Betty Tsakarestou, our teacher and extremely helpful supervisor in this difficult task was there to spread the light in our darkness of unawareness.
Without further ado, the brainstorming process began. No lying: it wasn’t at all easy! However, after all the tiring hours of brain melting suggestions that where just not working, there it was. The birth of “HeartBeat” arrised and once it did it made so much sense to us.
What is HeartBeat?
You will wonder what “HeartBeat” is: HeartBeat is an innovative product that focuses on costumers well-being through music therapy. It consists of biometric earplugs that count your pulse and translates those beats into emotions. Thanks to the “HeartBeat” application those emotions and your personal music interests are saved to the platform and all you need to do next is to press play. By pressing play and depending weather you are happy/sad/angry/tired/ anxious etc. at that moment HeartBeat suggested the music that you are most in need. That’s right! Your heart literally tells you what you want to hear and when you want to hear it! HeartBeat’s main focus is on helping to decrease bad psychological states and mental illnesses standing by it’s customers to enable them to truly “listen to their inner sound”.
Considering that all members of the Overachievers team are huge music lovers, we thought it was a huge step in the audio industry. However, the day of presenting our idea to our classmates and our teachers was arriving and we were anxious to hear what their impression of our business was. Domnika Skreta and the Ant1 team were our classes guests and we were extremely surprised to have such positive feedback from both her and her team and our teachers. But the class was not enough. In order for our idea to be realistic we had to reach out to our possible users.
What did people think of HeartBeat?
As a team with a goal , our next step was to make customers understand what we offer them . We needed to make sure they would understand that our platform is specifically designed for each one of them, individually. Our offer is beyond any competition because our future customers will be provided with devices that would be adapted by them for them. They feel something and our gadget “feels” the same way. It is like a personal mirror that reflects emotions , but then , at the right moment, our product becomes a solution, a tool , a friend in need. It starts playing songs or sounds that you like according to your mental situation. The music that you need without even realizing that this was what you needed. Music taste is not the same for everyone, so we want to make it easier for you. We are one step ahead, taking care of people.
The results were amazing! We executed a quantitative research addressed to our future users. The questionnaire showed that from a sample of 118 respondents 86.3% of them listen to music during an intense emotional state (happiness, anxiety, anger etc.). 89.3% believe that music is a very important method of therapy and 75.5% found our product extremely interesting. What this feedback showed us was that our clients actually do get the point of our product and, of course the most encouraging result of them all, their interest in buying what we want to offer them.
Business to the making step by step.
Betty Tsakarestou also found our results encouraging and pushed us towards our next business steps, which was a careful study of our business model canvas, a research of our competitors and our long run plan and analysis.
Value Proposition Canvas is a business tool that can help you create, design and implement value propositions. It helps startups and organizations design compelling products and services that customers will buy.
Value proposition canvas has two sides: the customer segment who you intend to create value for and the value proposition which will help you attract customers.
1. Value Propositions
Heartbeat’s application and Earplugs are convenient and easy to use. It fulfils customer’s needs, and it provides personalized music playlists & tools to use. The application is of course free, and the earplug devices are individually designed for each person.
2. Key Activities
Heartbeat’s Key activities are very specific. Of course the 1st reason is entertainment, since music is an essential way of having fun and be relaxed. It also provides medical needs for people who suffer from anxiety, bipolar disorder, etc. with playlists made specifically for their needs. Finally Heartbeat is a health center-monitoring program, which means it provides a presentation of well-being.
3. Customer Relationships
People will support Heartbeat because it is really entertaining. Heartbeat not only tracks their heart rate, but provide music according to their beat. It has easy, convenient tools, and it provides a good psychological state of mind.
4. Customer Segments
Heartbeat’s Customer Segments is first of all the whole music funbase, and the music industry (producers, musicians, etc.). It also will target on the Research Field, athletes and people in need of psychological tools’ support and guidance.
5. Key Partners
Heartbeat’s Key Partners will be Antenna Music, Medical institutions, Research Labs and Entertainment Agencies.
6. Key Resources
Key Resources will be needed on our staff, the eternal partners (developers, designers, psychologists, psychiatrists, etc.), and Research.
7. Channels
Channels will be Tech Stores, where people will be able to by the Heartbeat Classic Earplugs, and Pharmaceutical Companies where people can buy the Heartbeat Medical Earplugs.
8. Cost Structure
Our costs will be needed on paying our staff, the promotions to make our brand recognizable, the Technical Equipment, and of course the music Copyrights.
9. Revenue Streams
Finally, we will get the revenue streams from our product, the Heartbeat Earplugs, and the Sponsorships
HeartBeat Medical
After analyzing our Business Model Canvas we came to the conclusion that our product could actually become two products. As said earlier, our teams goal is to decrease bad psychological states and mental illnesses. In that manner, we thought of introducing our second product under the name of HeartBeat Medical. This product targets people who are in need of special musical therapy meaning states of depression, autism and many significant medical issues that are in need of cautious handling. The sounds that are exposed to those who constitute this target group are carefully chosen in order to prevent the psychological state in which they find themselves.
Our Competitors
Concerning Heartbeat’s competitors they have many features which, however, Heartbeat combines it all. To take a closer look to Heartbeat’s competing companies. Let’s start with Intel which have launched heart-rated earplugs which have a heartbeat tracker but they don’t offer the choice to personalize the music that you’re hearing like Heartbeat does, neither have a music platform. Next up are the Glow earphones which are known because they have laser lights which pulsate to your favorite music. These offer this specific feature and have also a heartbeat trucker but they are not used for medical help as Heartbeat is planning to do. Also, Spotify which is a streaming-on demand service combines personalized music with the easy usage of a music platform like Heartbeat does, but doesn’t have a Heartbeat trucker which allows to Heartbeat to better understand your music tastes and become helpful ,not only in what concerns your entertainment but helping medical problems to be identified and solved too. All of these services are very easy to use, so Heartbeat considers it very important and aims to create an ideal friendly user service.
Our future plans, goals and the big road ahead of us
Our Market plan provides the Heartbeat earplugs which are intented for basic use in the price of 180€. As regards the Heartbeat earplugs which are intented for Medical use the price comes up to 250€. After our advertising and promotion campaign and our first samples of usage we set a goal of 2.000 users in the first years of the service’s launch which according to estimates will yield us approximately 360.000€-500.000€ profit.
Last but not least, comes the roadmap of our idea of bio metric earplugs into becoming a real life product.
At first, we wanted to establish a trusting relationship with reliable professionals as to share a common need to create something unique and especially people as psychologists, psychiatrists, musicians, music producers, web designers etc. . In order to succeed to inspire our customers we conducted surveys to find out who would really be interested in buying such product in real life. After doing this, we would like to launch the HB bio metric earplugs and the web application which is completely free to download.
As for our goals, our first one is to reach 2000 users within a year and manage to create a strong brand name and increase brand love. Later on, we are planning on increasing our users globally in order to reach our final and most important goal: to highlight the importance of music in people’s mental health!
Below you can see a prototype of what we wish our application would look like:
As a conclusion to this long article, I would like to thank the teachers and the Ant1 group for all their enlightening support on this long and tricky journey. What we got to learn through this whole process will bare with us for the rest of our university studies and hopefully through our careers. I would also like to thank from the bottom of my heart my team, the Overachievers. Without them, without their creative minds and their focus none of this would have been done and HeartBeat would just be another “what if we could create a thing like this” idea.
THANKS FOR ALL THE SUPPORT AND KNOWLEDGE!
Overachievers: Maria Griva, Maria Kall, Antonis Katsis, Eva Constantinou, Nickos Pan, Thanasis Papadopoulos
