#it3r4

Even though it wasn’t me that presented in front of the panels, I greatly felt nervous and anxious for the presenters. Even when the screen monitors drew a boundary between the pitcher, the panels, and us the audience I still felt their nervousness through the screen as I heard their lowkey shaky voices. Compared to us though, it was more of a general sense pitching since it included offline products and even the trendy ones and easy to gain customer ones - food.

Throughout the presentation I’ve heard different positive criticisms and advices from the panelists, ranging from their data to their customer gain traction. What caught my attention the most though is how particular they are about the investment that the pitchers ask from the investors. There were times were the price was too small, or the price was too big. It really depends on the scale of the product that you want to release... that wouldn’t have been a problem though if you had a good grasp and research on the real prices of the labor and materials that you need when starting a business - which again makes me realize how the education on accountancy takes a very huge role when taking on this class.

For our meeting here, we didn’t have formal classes but we were allowed to attend the opening (days 1 and 2) for a pitching competition event held in USTP - CDO. There, we learnt a lot from the opening speakers.

What stood out to me is the idea of Social Entrepreneurship. What I’m aiming for in a different subject actually kind of leans towards this subject more. It’s the idea of promoting donation to even the less privileged ones... I’ve had this notion that my idea was kinda bad since it doesn’t necessarily require payment and can’t gain much income with how it’s designed, but after being enlightened by last time’s session, I became motivated to get more geared towards what I was thinking of doing.

What followed then after was a memorable sharing of experience by a speaker of her experience as someone who worked for Amazon and Google. It was inspiring and a fun talk to listen to. I’ve been really demotivated for the past few weeks, especially that I’ve begun to lack the resources needed to finish my activities. Although I can’t say I’ve been totally encouraged and inspired to work harder, listening to her experience made me hopeful at least... and it did help me slightly. She actually did a game afterwards and rewarded the winners with either a google mini or an echo dot, which the winners can choose from. Unfortunately for me, I transferred to the FB live since my phone’s storage was full and lagging so I wasn’t able to answer in the Zoom session.

For this meeting we had an example given by our instructor to give us a brief view and importance of testing our assumptions. It was really encouraging ud to put out our idea to the open as fast as possible - basically formulating hypotheses and testing them out via what we call a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). I already previously searched about this one and was encaptured by the thought of doing MVP that involved making a video and gauging out random people's reactions and responses as to whether they'd be interested enough to check it out and sign up for a registration. But after the breakout session I figured out to do it much later when our initial ideas have already been tested out.

What's assigned to us for now is to have people try out our prototype (which should be as minimal as possible and only showcases the most important parts of our system). Our group member has already started on the prototype via Adobe XD and it's just a matter of a hurdle how to make the random respondents try it out without having to go through so much hassle. I guess we can search for an online tester that caters to Adobe XD's file type.

It’s already the 5th week and I’ve said this again and again but I always learn and reflect something new each week. I knew that to succeed you do have to experience failure... but when trying to open your own mind about it and practice the act itself, it’s really hard. I have to give props to these business-minded people - they endured and risked a lot to reach where they are now. I think for us to incorporate that mindset unto our lives, we have to experience it ourselves... but of course right now since we aren’t forming our idea into motion just yet, the right course of action is to practice to steel ourselves of whatever may come. Yet again, although we must know how to persevere, it is always a reminder given to us to know when to pivot. That’s when it becomes hard. You have to have the intuition, strategic thinking, and guts to know when to pursue, modify, or completely change ideas.

For our project, I’m still 50-50 about it. Honestly speaking I am not sure whether this is a good idea to pursue or not... My mind leans on towards the negative side more than on the positive side. But nevertheless I’m trying to work hard and motivate myself. I don’t know though if I’ll receive a big blow if we fail or I’ll be able to take it calmly. Right now, I really think I’ll panic for a new idea if we fail... especially since this is an academic requirement in a limited timeframe, which is only up until the finals. Given that 5 months is already a short period for preparing a start-up, if you fail midway, it means you have to work 2 times harder to catch up to be able to present your product during pitching.

Everything I learned today has resonated within me so much as well. In this 3rd week of validation, we did some online forms for survey again to gauge out how many from the population experiences the problem we have pinpointed. The problem is... contacts. It was mentioned in the lecture that it is a very important aspect when doing a start-up and I can say it really really is even from the initial brainstorming phase.

To hit the target audience that you plan to cover, you need connections - connections to interview these people and then add more ideas to your product. Personally, we are very lacking in that aspect. We need to be more outgoing for this to work yet another problem I’ve been concerned about is the distribution of personality among our team. Basing from the 16personalities test alone, 3 out of 4 of us are introverts. Although not hugely, it does affect our work. And even if it’s just a minimal one, it can pile up and be a huge hindrance in the future... we do our best to reach out to everyone as much as we can though!

The good thing about our team is that everyone is collaborating, everyone is active, and everyone is motivated towards the same goal. I, personally, am also comfortable working with them. It really helps too that one of our members is really well-versed on the idea that we decided to pursue. Every time we talk, there are new ideas born. We suggest, we question, and we suggest again.

But I think, despite that, we still need more ‘help’. Help in the sense of knowledge - knowledge on the aspects that we are not an expert of. Some I can think of are government involvement, hardware set-ups, and business consultants. This made me realize, again, that we are just the developer side of this start-up. We need connections, and we need more help. We need more people that will compliment us. But for now, we’ll do what we can, and I know my team is doing our best :)

I’d like to focus first on the main idea that captured my attention for the whole session: I learned that there are 3 types of business: B2B - Business to Business; B2C - Business to Consumer; and B2G - Business to Government. As to why this caught me it’s actually kind of a long story so please bear with me...

Actually before this session, I confess that, our group did some random survey to collect ideas of what problems has been directly bothering them that can be solved technologically. A lot has voiced out their concerns about a slow internet connection which is, unfortunately, something we can’t solve as students. We saw some other concerns about fact-checking, garbage collection, issues on flooding, curfew implementations, identity authentication, etc. Among the above mentioned, what caught me most was the garbage collection issue. Personally, for the past years, it has been bugging me how amidst segregation ordinances being put forth, this problem still persists up to this day. It makes it seem like those potential direction has gone to waste (pun not intended).

What I learned from today’s lesson was that it’s a good starting point to derive a business idea from a personal experience, which the topic I just talked about is obviously a plus. However, the instructors have advised against planning for B2G business ideas. Though just for this semester, it has discouraged me from pursuing the idea - especially since I want to plan for a long-term idea and implement it, not something done on a whim or something that would end along with the semester.

I’m not sure if it’s exactly a B2G type of business to do something about waste segregation or garbage collection but since it’s something like a service to the government, then it probably is. I understand though that it’s hard since it will undergo through a lot of processes before being implemented... which I don’t think one sem could cover, sadly... but it really is sad that I can’t do something about it, for now.