Entrepreneurs spirit

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It has been not a long journey with ME2062 — technology-based entrepreneurship, but it indeed has inspired me a lot about entrepreneurship and innovation. Besides all the materials, business models and strategies covered in the course content, what I appreciated more is the idea sharing from different real startup companies.

Many startup companies from different industries have shared their experience and inspiration with us during the lecture. Those startup companies were from different industries, Fashion, Music and many others were involved. Although the products and services they deliver might vary from different industries, but they shared many common values along the journey. And I would like to conclude those values as — Entrepreneurs spirits.

Here I concluded the 5 main characteristics of Entrepreneurs spirits as below:

  1. They are in-tune with their passion.

Passion is definitely the most important attributes for start up companies. I can see the passion behind from every startup companies shared with us. I can see that they are passionate with their ideas, with their product or services and with exactly what they are doing. Passionate people know what it is like to dive deep into a subject and completely understand it. When people are genuinely passionate about the problems that your company is trying to solve, they will be energised by any challenge that stands in their way.

  1. They are always questioning how it can be done better.

Mark Twain once said, “Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.” Those with the entrepreneurial spirits always consider how ordinary things can be made better or improved. They are continually questioning why things are done the way they are and aren’t afraid to go against the majority to make changes.

  1. Optimistic about all possibilities

To be entrepreneurial by nature is to be optimistic. People with the entrepreneurial spirit don’t spend time thinking about what they can’t do, but instead ask themselves, “Why can’t I?” Always be optimistic and be positive to challenge oneself and to seize for all possibilities and opportunities are also key attributes for entrepreneurs to success.

  1. They take calculated risks

In addition to optimism, entrepreneurs are predisposed to a high tolerance for risk. But it doesn’t mean they jump blindly into action, it’s instead the opposite. Those with the entrepreneurial spirit make calculated moves while understanding that there are never any guarantees of success. It’s also the ability to work autonomously and be decisive. The playbook is not always clear, so it is ideal to be able to say agile and adapt in a high degree of ambiguity.

  1. Above all, they execute

Only idea is actually meaningless until they are acted on. Those with the entrepreneurial sprit realise that execution is everything when it comes down to success or failure.

Last words

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Technology based entrepreneurship has been a very interesting course. I chose to read it on top of my mandatory courses because it is closely related to what I do for a living as well as it being a big interest of mine. I have learnt a lot of things, many of which I will probably, and hopefully, never forget. What I found most interesting was probably the procedure of approaching the market with a new product. Looking at unicorn companies, one seldom think about the struggle that they have been through, it’s easy to focus solely on the success stories. At the same time, I think that it’s important to know that being an entrepreneur is not just fun and game, it is a struggle and it’s all about tweaking and prying an idea until it matches the market demands.

Overall, the course covered more than I thought it would, it has given great insights in both theoretical concepts as well as practicalities. From my own experience in startup I could recognise a lot from the course theory, this made everything even more interesting because it someway added another dimension to it.

The guest lecturers were a true asset, it was interesting to listen to such a diverse group of entrepreneurs. They were all active within the technology sector but their products differed a lot from each other. I found Bill Schacht from Orb Industries to be most intriguing, he presented a very cool and interesting product and his high level of enthusiasm could not go unnoticed.

As previously mentioned, the course covered more than I expected so I cannot think of anything to add in the future.
To summarize, a fun and interesting course that I surely will recommend to my fellow students.

Thanks!

Low-fi prototype and cargo cult design

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This blog post is about prototyping and more specifically about low fidelity prototypes, what does it mean ? How useful it can be and what are the limitations ? I would also point out brief discussion on the importance of feasibility study on designing prototypes. These are some concepts I learnt while studying about prototyping on some previous course and within this course and I think it’s worth sharing with you.

In simple words a prototype refers to a representation of a product. Depending on the details of this representation a prototype can be of high fidelity or medium fidelity or low fidelity. A low fidelity prototype can be just a sketch on a piece of paper or cut and pasted piece of papers to represent the prospective product. Sometimes they are also referred to as paper prototypes. At the beginning of the product design this kind of low fidelity prototypes are very useful to get quick feedback from intended users (customers) and refining the concept accordingly in an iterative manner. Main goal is to involve as many target users as possible to be integrated with the design process (also known as ‘participatory design’) for getting a better product. These low-fi paper prototypes not only helpful to get feedback it also make our job quite easy to explain our idea to intended customers.

iteration

Fig 1: Iterative design process

Now, how it works ? Or how it can be used effectively ? A group of three people along with potential user is perfect to get the best out of a paper prototype. One of the designers or developers should take the role of a facilitator who would be mainly communicating with the user, another person should play the role of a computer (i.e. move the pages when user selects a image of button or do some other action on paper). Another person should take notes i.e. What user got wrong, what was confusing to him/her etc. After collecting feedback in this manner with several users some changes should be made on the paper prototype and repeating the process several times. As it is a low fidelity prototype it can help to do the iteration within a short amount of time and get an overall design of the desired product in an user centered way. However it may not reveal the detailed issues related to product design and development. Still it is very effective at an early stage to begin with.

hci-user-testing

Fig 2: Paper prototype on test

Sometimes being over dependent on the prototypes without analyzing the technical feasibility can be problematic. An idea can sound really promising and may seem to be implementable as low fidelity provides only the proof of idea and basic functionalities through some sort of mimics. For example, if some one thinks about an idea involves context based services it may seem to be doable and a paper prototype will never reveal its actual technical difficulties which will arise while implementing the actual product. These type of prototypes are sometimes called cargo cult design, which seem to represent actual product but in reality they don’t. So, the designers also have to be careful about these issues. Technical feasibility should not be totally ignored even if it is quite early stage of the design.

For enthusiast reader, there is an article called “Prototyping: generating ideas or cargo cult designs?”, available in ACM digital libray:

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1052465&dl=ACM&coll=DL&CFID=621001535&CFTOKEN=33199409

Feedback on Anchr – From business model to user experience

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Anchr as a startup-company has earlier tested their prototypes on international students and collected feedback from them to be used in later prototypes. Rather than presenting a prototype I chose to discuss the general concept of Anchr with a few selected friends with different backgrounds that all fit the demographics of the potential Anchr user. Here’s a a short presentation of the potential customers/friends I discussed the idea with:

Lukas, 24, Engineering Student.

Christian, 24, Business Student.

Adèle, 23, Artist and incoming design student.

Oskar, 24, Management Consultant.

Marcus, 24, Investment Banking Analyst.

How did you find these people?

They are friends of mine. I had lunch/dinner with them on different occasions during the last month or so and, while at it, I took the time to discuss Anchr in an informal setting.

Which feedback did you get from them? 

All of them were really intrigued by the idea of Anchr. Primarily, the idea of being close to augmented reality and having information from several internet information providers in one app were something that all of them seemed to see a need for. However, after that several questions were raised, ranging from the UX to the actual business model. Here are some points that were discussed:

  • What is the appropriate business model?
    • 3 out of 5 were willing to pay a small price for premium features. However, the three that were willing to pay for it wanted to pay around 50 kr maximum as a one time cost. Motivations included that if the price is too high they would rather use multiple apps or search engines rather than Anchr.
    • None of them had any problem with advertisements as long it didn’t distract from the user experience. Instagram and Tinder were brought up as good examples apps with non-distracting ads.
  • What is the user interface?
    • Most of them imagined it to be similar to Google Maps but with more information. Since the UI isn’t set in stone we discussed it further. Lukas brought up the idea of the UI being like reddit, where geographic content nearby gets up/down-voted so you always have a clear view of that’s worth doing.
  • Why has not this been done before?
    • We discussed potential difficulties in collecting information and potential risks with losing access to this information from major information providers.

How do you think how you found these people and who they are influences the feedback you received?

It of course matters a lot. Lukas, Oskar and Markus which all have an engineering background were more tech-oriented in their questions. Moreover, I think that the discussion benefitted from me being friends with them, since it allowed them speak freely and not adjust themselves to any expectations from my part.

Will you change your idea based on their feedback, why, why not?

The general idea remains the same, but there are many things that I take with me in terms of business model feedback and potential risks. Since the idea of Anchr in very inclusive at the moment, I think the biggest challenge that lies ahead is to narrow the scope of the application.