My Journey Into Entrepreneurship

ALL BOILED DOWN TO THIS DAY!!!

All the hard work we did, all the effort we put, all the stressed we overcame just for the Final Day, Pitch Day. On Sunday, I stayed awake the whole night, my brain kept thinking on how it's gonna happened, how to bring the best, what's the next step, along with nervousness and excitement.

We gathered all the material we need and met up at 9am on Monday morning to practice for the pitch. Although there a few changes recommended by Isaac, we were able to apply those in the pitch to make it stronger and be ready for the presentation.

Coming to class, I thought to myself that this is the last class of my journey. I love this so much that I didn't want it to end. The feeling was mixed as I couldn't comprehend what's gonna be but I know for sure, I'm going to pursue this path for the rest of my life.

We didn't expect that we were the last to present, maybe Isaac save the best for the last, Maybe?! that's what our group thought. Hahahaha! (I know you reading this Isaac, is our assumption correct?). Anyway, We got the chance to listen to other groups' pitch and judges's question that constantly grilling them on the spot, which was a good thing for being last that we can observe and prepare for upcoming queries.

After 7 pitches, it was our time. We went there, set up the slides, and the show began. ......... ....... ...... ........ ............. ........... ......... ............... ...... .

WE DID AMAZING!! the pitch went so well, everyone was exciting. The judges liked the presentation very much and asked us a few questions regarding the slides, features, personalisation technique, the psychology of procrastination, and gave us valuable and meaningful advice. This could went on forever but Isaac cut us off as time progressed, I wish we could hear from everyone.

My peers also liked the presentation and mentioned that my part was very interesting as I jump in and surprise everyone. It was funny tho, the reason I do this is because I followed the three pitch rules, Be interesting, Be interesting, Be interesting. So, that's what I did.

Gaining confirmation and advice really heart-felt for me, I didn't know that I would come this far and pursue this after graduating. I always know that I don't like working for someone else, I always came up with ideas and wanted to implement back in Cambodia, but this journey with MWL317 taught me many things that otherwise I would never know. Thanks Isaac for the amazing journey and lessons. Thanks everyone for giving me a great experience.

From this point on, although it is the last class, it is not the end of my journey. IT'S A BEGINNING.

Before the Record - The prototype went great! We've validate that our features were desired by them differently since they have their own preferences. Followed up by a feedback survey, we discover that those who responded will use our app while 1/3 of them are willing to pay. Amazing!

During this week, we run our work that we've done so far with Isaac and hopefully gain some advice and directions. We showed him everything from the business model Canva, revenue stream, journey mapping, the prototype, the response. He liked what we did and gave us some confirmation that we are on the right path and are in a strong position. This is what we need, my team took this to their hearts and boosted their confidence. Getting some advice on how to put the strong foot forward in the pitch, we continued to discuss after the meeting with Isaac, and work on how we want our slides to be, what we wanted to talk, and what are the information we want to show. I created the initial pitch structure and divided into time slots for better navigation. We split our way and work on each assigned part over the week before meeting up on Monday, the pitch practicing day.

Breaking the Record - Who on earth thought that pitch practicing, wouldn't be pitch practicing. That was us and apparently most of the class, Hahaha!

Struggled, we ran to the second floor and started working on the pitch. Sarah and I worked on the slides, Fiona and Nhung worked on the script. In 25 minutes, we came up with a fixer-upper pitch that is usable. Yay! We broke a record! Hoooofff!

Given an extra hour, we use the time wisely to polish the slides, finish the script, and practice practice practice. Coming back to class, we were able to deliver a good pitch and Isaac provided some constructive feedback which would put us in a better spot.

After the Record - we took the advice and change the pitch accordingly. On Wednesday, we decided to meet up again and work on the pitch before sending another run through. We sent 2 videos over the week while each of them are getting better and stronger.

My favourite class got postponed...

We didn't let the time went by, we used the class time to finalised our prototype before heading out to a printer and print out the flyers. It took 3 hours for the flyers to be finalised as we were skeptical with the context. However, after printed 26 flyers (to be exact), we headed out in pairs and approached our target customers in Deakin. It was better than the interview round as we were more confident in speaking to strangers. After handing out flyers, we also sent the link to our friends to try out the prototype. Out of approximately 100 eyes, we got 40 responses which was amazing, and we gained valuable data that prep us for the pitch.

As for the prototype, I created a 24-hour challenge where participants create their to-do list along with their preference and submit through the survey. 18 responses with a list, then, I personally copy their response, put in ChatGPT to generate a personalised to-do list, create each individuals document, before sending back to them. I thought it would took less than an hour to finish the whole process as it was only copy and paste, but instead it took 2:30 hours. What an exhausted process. Then we wait for the result. After 2 days, we received 10 responses back with some feedback which was very very valuable for our business.

After cooling down a bit, we took what we developed so far into a room and start bringing ideas into the document. In the meantime, I contacted app developers to see how much would developing an app like this cost. This was the first time I signed a NDA which everything became surreal.

During this week, we finished building our business model canvas, customer journey, some prototype and survey. Things went together quite well but I was stunned because my team didn't share the same mindset as mine and would picture how the app would be like differently. We argued a bit, things get heated, but in the end, it came together in an acceptable way which all members felt good.

In the class, we learnt about branding a new business from logo, to typeface, to colour and imagery. I have a picture in my mind of how the app might look but couldn't lay it out just yet, so as a team, we were picking colour and fonts, step by step.

WOW, just wow. This is the most brilliant idea that I ever thought of in my entire life. As soon as I hit home, I spent the entire night brainstorming about this idea. I felt my excitement went through the roof and for the whole week I think about this idea for every minute of my time awake. I lost hours of sleep trying to get this whole idea together and talked to so many friends about this. They all love it! I remember between Thursday and Friday, in that 48 hours, I slept 6 hours in total while the rest of the time went to this. Since then, I did so many research and constantly discuss with my group over the week. I get to a point that I realised that this is not a school project, this is what I'm gonna do after I finish Uni in a month.

In class, we learnt how to build a good business model, how to estimate revenue, and journey mapping. As a group, we spent some time after class to work on this and save all our files into microsoft teams. As the idea is good by itself, it made other stuff seems to be easy. When it comes to revenue, I found 5 ways to earn from this app, include subscription model, ad revenue, affiliate marketing, 2-sided market, and in-app purchase which follow the cash cow, small margin, and loss leader model.

Monday 21st: We run both business idea (STU and Buy Cheap) with Isaac after class and he helped provide some guidance on how the business might work. However, we decided to interview more people about Social media and cost of living. The truth revealed. STU is a boring app and Buy Cheap doesn't really solve their problem. With this in consideration, we spent some time to reconsider about the business idea and regroup on Wednesday.

While still choosing University students as our focal customers, we have identified their needs and come up with a few business idea. I proposed 4 idea that can help students get on with their Uni-life easier. My team like 2 idea of mine which related to a buy-in-bulk system for students and a social media app for students. With this in mind, I try to talk with my coworker whom newly started University using questions we came up last week. I found some that his interest toward a social media app for student was not as exciting like I felt when I came up with the idea. He told me his struggle when starting Uni, what he’s looking for, and made a few suggestions. I took note of those for discussing later with my team.

Talking to more people will help polish this idea so that we can start to prototype. On this note, the spaghetti tower didn’t stand. Sad. I underestimated the weight of the marshmallow which brought the tower down. Better luck with the project!

We’ve been holding onto one type of customer - Uni Students and discussed their problems of not being able to socialize due to budget constraint. As for this, we came up with who do we need to talk to, where can we find them, how do we approach them, and what kinds of questions should we ask them. By reading the mom test, it helped us to navigate our questions toward them to avoid mislead answers and false information.

We hear complaints every now and then. This week, we turned those complaints into ideas and the person who complained is our potential customer. Demographic and Psychographic play their role in segmenting the market and characterize our customers but to make an idea feasible, it has to be Customer-Problem fit, Product-Solution fit, and Product-Market fit.