The Creative Founder — Lessons Learned.

How it all started

When I first decided to take the Creative Founder class, everyone had told me that it would be one of the most rigorous classes that I would ever take in California College of the Arts. In spite of all the comments and recommendations for other classes from the former students of the Creative Founder, I decided not to switch the class. It was the best decision that I have ever made this semester. All the lectures, all the Minimum Valuable Product testings, and all the acquisition experiments, all the pivots, and all the collaborative effort along with my team Glo -Up were worth every single sweat. Spinning Class.

What we have done

Among several things we have all participated in class, the most memorable experience was the MVP testings and acquisition experiment. For the team Glo — Up, it was particularly hard for us to move on to the next steps since we had way too many ideas at first. Even though we were able to narrow them down into one idea, we always had to pivot this and that little things to adjust the user needs. However, no matter how fresh or new the idea was after a long discussion, our MVP testings always gave us new insights and valuable feedback for us to grow off of.

Acquisition experiments were conducted with our final idea of branding emotions tracking the wearable device. It was quite surprising and interesting to see how the product that we have all worked for a whole semester was seemed interesting to the real crowd. Also, the fact that one of the panels came up to us after the pitch to let us know that she is interested in investing, made us realize that none of our sweats and blood were wasted.

No idea is good enough to launch right away

After riding a bumpy “Spinning class” rollercoaster for a semester I realized that there is no idea in this world good enough to launch right away. No matter how brilliant the idea it is or how many customers could be attracted, all the ideas should be tested, validated, and iterated. None of the ideas we had were bad ideas. Some of them were just better validated and seemed interesting to the crowd and us more than the other. Starting a startup does indeed starts with an idea, but the actual service or product could come into the real-life after tons of iterations and validations.

Furthermore, even with a great validated idea, if the business side does not support the company, Startup can not be successful. Since we can’t start a business ourselves, key partners, activities, resources, cost structure, value proposition, customer relationships, channels, customer segments, and revenue streams should be declared for a well rounded solid startup. The validity and the possibility should be shown to the venture capital for support. Without it, we would just be infants throwing tantrums for a lollipop.

Next Step…

As I have already mentioned, one of the panels who came to the final pitch day showed tremendous interest in our idea. Our next step would be to check in with the team for our further actions not as a class group but as a novice startup attempting to take off for the first time. We are the team Glo — Up and we are here to help you recognize stress and regulate them.