After months of toil, brainstorming, building up and tearing down, we have finally hit the double digit weeks, and what an eventful week it was. We started off with a Monday Masterclass bootcamp lecture on Zoom, followed by a reunion of sorts in NTU on Tuesday. Here was how the week went.
On Monday, we attended yet another Masterclass session conducted by SJ, joined by the teams from ideasinc veni. This session was more of a recap session, with SJ going through the main pointers that he had taught us over the past 4 lectures, whilst still adding in trinkets of knowledge .
Some of the key revisions we did were:
- Finding the right fit: business model fit, product-market fit and problem-solution fit. Only understanding the problem and establishing a solution can we validate qualitatively and quantitatively, which ultimate enables us to optimize the business model to make it work for us.
- Understanding customer’s personas and archetypes. Many times, we fail to distinguish between who are the users, customers and partners — all important segments of the consumer market that we may fail to differentiate and hence fail to optimize.
- Setting clear business hygiene, such as (i) having a vision, (ii) quantifying goals, and (iii) measuring goals.
- Business Model Canvas & Value Proposition Canvas: the ongoing cycle of (i) Hypothesis Development, (ii) Test Problem Hypothesis, (iii) Test Product Hypothesis and (iv) Verification, iteration and expansion.
For the second half of the day, SJ shared some practical advice about the SG Founder Grant, and walked us through the minds of investors and assessors who would ultimately be judging and critiquing our pitches and products. After this insightful elucidation session, SJ then made time for teams to practise and refine their pitches.
The next day, we came down to NTUitive for a physical meet-up session with our mentors. It was refreshing to have everyone down in the same venue, as some of us had not seen some teams for a long time. Our session focused on creating & internalising the Business Model Canvas (BMC) and Value Proposition Canvas (VPC) and presenting them to a third party (outsider). It was both a challenge and insightful experience sharing to friends who had little knowledge about our product and service, and it once again shed light on the importance of making effective pitching and presentation to get our story across.
Outsiders will not be able to understand as much as us who are the one internally working on the business, products, and solutions. Sharing the stories and scenarios to my other co-workers, that has not been working on the coating project, gave Vanessa — my core teammate for Coating — and I, a deeper insight on what we have missed that we definitely could improve on. Likewise, I do believe that my other co-workers have benefitted the same experience as me. — Hanson
Tuesday also coincided with NTUitive hosting Mr. Png Cheong Boon (Chief Executive Officer of Enterprise Singapore), who had come to pay a visit to ideasinc.veni, NTU’s Venture Building programme under the enhanced Startup SG Founder programme.
Mr. Png visited 3 lecture venues and witnessed the enthusiastic teams in the heat of their fervent pitches and business action plans. He even joined in remotely to 1 session being conducted on Zoom, as participants shared with equal enthusiasm despite sharing from home.
We were all rejuvenated by this exciting week, and our growth as people and entrepreneurs continues. Peter shares his insights on effective communication below.
The decision to evoke change can be one driven by raw emotion or it can be a conscious, rational effort that invokes feeling through thoughtful process. Either way, we need to get from the head to the heart before we can create movement and proscribe for ourselves genuine transformation. Perhaps that is the holy grail to effective communication. — Peter
For others, new liaisons with vendors and laboratories boded good prospects for the future.
As for our project, we met up with TAU this week. TAU has pretty cool tech that has potentially countless applications. Our job now is to find out how to make good of the tech TAU has provided us. — Marcus
In the meantime, we were also very excited for the investment game next week.
Next week, we will have am investment game on Friday, where the pitch deck we did this week would help us with the tough questions being thrown our way. Excited for the new experience! Honestly, our team members are slightly introverted so to step out of our comfort zone to speak up is tough. But that’s what’s exciting about it; being able to grow from the experience. — Vanessa
Until next time, this is VB18 signing off!
