Pitching at the Idea Works Competition

Hi guys! How is your November doing so far? UK has been freezing cold...bbbrrrr... and apparently it's going to snow next week. Not sure how I feel about that... Anyways, last Wednesday I pitched about my business idea (my second pitch) at a pitching competition. I didn't win unfortunately but I still walked away really happy. Read on and you will know why.

About three weeks ago I applied to enter a pitching competition called The Idea Works, a competition for food startups, where the person/ people behind the winning idea will win £1000. The competition was organised by Compass Group, a British multinational contract food service and support services. (Compass-group.co.uk) A week later, I received an email from Compass group saying that I have been shortlisted to pitch on 13th November (last Wednesday). I'm glad I did because it pushed me to work faster on my business idea for instance getting the product together as I wanted to have something to show to the judges during my pitch.

I had two weeks to get the product ready and prepare for the pitch. I learnt a lot during the two weeks, I will write about it later on in this post. I want to talk about the exciting part first. :D I only started preparing my pitch the last three days.

Below is a photo of me pitching; there were 4 judges, a small audience and a camera man- I think parts of the competition will be up on their YouTube Channel, I will look for it and show it to you guys soon.

There were 4 presentations including mine. Each candidate only had five minutes to present followed by ten minutes of Q&A. We weren't allowed to have power point or any sort of presentation visual aids as they want us to think outside the box and make our presentation entertaining and engaging. This was my first time presenting without any notes or slides and I think I did quite well. I'm impressed! I was the first one to present and I'm glad I was because I hate waiting during a presentation. I just want to get it over and done. I don't usually get nervous during presentations but this time I was shaking a little and my mouth was drying up (Lol!). My timing was perfect. I finished a few seconds before I hit 5 minutes.

So why was I so happy even though I didn't win?

I was truly happy for the people who won because I did like their idea as it's something similar to what I had in mind before and its related to healthy food. The feedback from the judges made me really happy. The judges were really pleased with my pitch, they said it was well thought- through and they really like my idea. I was actually the only one who covered every crucial aspects of the business in my presentation. I guess I had the advantage of having a master's degree in Technology Entrepreneurship as we were taught how to do a elevator pitch. Although I didn't win but Compass group is happy to help me by introducing some of their suppliers to me and one of the judges is a nutritionist, she is keen to help me with the nutrition part of my idea. One of the judges, is a business advisor at UCL Advances and she has offered to provide ongoing help. She also said to me personally at the end of the event that my pitch was the strongest! *Massive smile on my face*

So why didn't I win if I was the strongest?
Compass was looking for a food business idea that can be used inside the university, the winner's idea can be used for catering and lunch services. But Tudi Foodie is an online monthly food subscription service so not something they are looking for. Compass will help them set up a pop-up store in university so I'm looking forward to have my healthy lunch from them.

What did I learn during the preparation of the demo?

I did lots of research for packaging companies and calling them up for quotes and samples. I phoned up ten companies for a quote of a postal box (I wanted a particular size) and only two companies got back to me with a quote. Luckily I found a packaging manufacturer near me and they have samples for people to take away. They didn't have the exact size I wanted but I asked for a sample anyway as I needed a box for the demo.

Below is a photo of my product demo, not bad right? What do you think? The box worked out quite well, I might stick to this size.

The more I tried to look for the packaging I had in mind the more I realised that it's not easy to get your ideal packaging if you're on a budget especially for a startup. I also learnt that an entrepreneur can become too emotionally attached to their idea and then won't be able to accept any criticism. I have become so emotionally attached to my idea that I almost forgot about all the frameworks I learnt in my TE course; Lean startup, business model canvas, customer development, etc. I'm glad that I have my boyfriend to help me and reminding me to think about my budget. He gave me advice based on his experience when he had his own business a few years ago. Although he hasn't studied about the lean startup and Cust. development methodology but his advice made me think about those frameworks. I reminded myself that the initial product is a demo/MVP/prototype and that doesn't need to be perfect. I need to be using very little money and time to create the demo and make changes to whatever my early subscribers don't like or suggest. The build-measure-learn cycle.

I'm hoping to do a beta launch in January or early 2014 so I got lots to do before then. I will keep you updated! Thanks for reading. 

My Start up progress

Hiya, its been while since I blogged about my start up journey. I can say its not easy and there are lots of logistics but the biggest tasks I've done so far is registering the business and creating a landing page- signup.tudifoodie.com. Please check it out :) and sign up up if you want to receive updates.

Before creating the landing page, I had to create a background image for the page. Initially I thought I'll just google some images. I couldn't find anything I like or represent Tudi Foodie so I decided to create it myself since I have so many exotic ingredients at home- we Chinese people tend to have loads of it, half of our kitchen cupboards are filled with a variety of beans, herbal products, dried fungus (yes fungus lol but they are really good for you ), and many other dry ingredients. Here's a print screen of my landing page. The landing page is powdered by Launch Rock, a really good website to help you build your landing page. Launch Rock was recommended by my course and other mentors.

After the mini photo shoot, the clearing up went a bit disastrous. I went to grab the big container of black rice but didn't realise the lid wasn't on properly and the rice had fallen everywhere. Luckily its dry ingredients otherwise my mum would kill me for messing up her carpet lol. 

I've also set up a Facebook page (facebook.com/tudifoodie), Twitter account (@Tudi_foodie) and Instagram @tudi_foodie, please like and follow :) 

My next step is to get a logo, I'm going to use CrowdSPRING, a crowd sourced logo design website. I'm currently working on the designs of the packaging.

That's it for now! Thanks for reading! 

The End and the Beginning

Hi lovely readers! How's your weekend been? Mine has been pretty good.
Some of you may wonder what the title of this post means. Well, Friday was officially the last day of my Technology Entrepreneurship course so that's the end and the beginning refers to entrepreneurship. Read on and I'll explain. I'm going to rewind back to Wednesday.

In my previous post I mentioned that I will be doing a presentation on my dissertation and maybe pitch to investors if I get picked. So I did the 10 minutes presentation and it went pretty well, went quite smoothly. But not sure if my content was good enough though. I wasn't nervous at all, I guess because its my idea and I've done enough research so I know what exactly to say.

So did I get picked to pitch? 

Yes, I did! Initially I wasn't sure if I wanted to pitch because my business idea is still at a very early stage and I was a bit scared lol. Also, I didn't know this pitch was for the Bright Idea Award which means that there's a chance to win some funding towards my business even if investors don't invest in my idea. The Bright Idea award was later in the afternoon on the same day. I had do to a 5 minute pitch in a room full of people; investors/judges, viewers, other pitchers and lecturers. 

So what happened?

The pitch didn't go as well as I wanted it to, because I was running out of time and I had to rush to the end. And the faces of the investors said it all, they weren't interested. So I thought I'm not going to get any investments, but at least I did it and got some experience. But....

I won the Bright Idea award!!! Well I was one of the winners. I won ££££ towards my business!!On top of that UCL is providing an office for free at the Hatchery in Shoreditch and also free mentoring. You know I actually didn't think I would win. One because I've never won anything and two I felt my pitch didn't go too well. I am so happy!

Fast forward...

On Friday,  I handed in my 15,000 word dissertation. When I handed it in I didn't feel excited or relieved, not sure why. It didn't feel like the end of the course either. But I am so going to miss it and the people. No more deadlines, no more emails from Uni.

So what's next?

As I said, its going to be the beginning of entrepreneurship. I will be pursuing my business idea. I really hope I will succeed. It's kind of scary though because I'll be doing it all by myself. Self discipline is very important now, I will need to set myself strict deadlines to meet my goals.I will try my best to follow the customer development, lean startup methodology and monitoring those key metrics lol.

I will carry on blogging about my journey, the startup life began at 24!!!

Disso progress: A chance to Pitch to investors

Hello people! Today was has been an extremely productive day, I've been working on my dissertation for 12 hours almost none stop and am now on 12k words. I was really focused and was just in that working mode from 9am listening to some relaxing/yoga music, I actually downloaded them today to keep myself focused and it actually worked. Oh btw well done to those who got their GCSEs results.

So what's been happening in past 3 weeks, I think it was three weeks ago since I last blogged. Anyways, here are the highlights:

• I contacted 2 healthy/food bloggers to test my MVP
• One of the bloggers  introduced me to her sister and her friend who is a massive foodie and a food blogger to test my MVP
• I also gave one sample to another class mate and to my mentor's fiancé
• I've completed all customer interviews, finally!

I really hope I will get a distinction for dissertation as this is the final chance to graduate with a distinction!!! Some of you may think does it matter what you get if you're considering of doing your own business? True the grade doesn't matter, but the fact I paid £10k for this course I would like to aim for the best. I remember in semester one, one of my lecturer told us not to stress about the courseworks because they are JUST courseworks. Lol.

The dissertation is due next Friday, seriously where did the time go?!! I know I keep saying that lol. Before handing the dissertation in there's a presentation on Wednesday which I think is 10% of our final mark. We will be marked by our mentor and supervisor. And that's not it, since this is an entrepreneurship course we get the chance to pitch our business ideas to investors on the same day. But... only 10 students get to pitch. During the presentation the mentors will decide who can pitch.

Initially, I wasn't sure if I should pitch because my business idea is such at an early stage. But my supervisor insisted ( she also pointed her finger at me) that I should pitch. Even if I'm not raising money, I will need to tell them I would be in the next few months. Exciting hey? I'm usually fine with presentations but I'm actually quite nervous already about the pitch, I think it's because this is the first time pitching and it is the real deal. Ok, I know I haven't even been picked yet. Actually this isn't the first time, I pitched at the E-challenge when I was doing Share N Wear.

Anyways, that's it for now. Thanks for reading. Good luck to you if you're also working on your dissertation.

Disso progress: A/B split testing

Hiya,  I cannot believe its August already! Holy Moly! My dissertation is due in 4 weeks but I have 3 weeks to write it. EEEKKK!! The last week will be the polishing part and preparing the presentation. I've started writing last week and have written 2500. But that's very little because the word count is 15,000. I got to push myself. I'm setting myself a target that will need to be met by Thursday and that is have written at least 6000 words. I've written out a schedule, finally, I've planned what I'll be writing and how many words on each day. Hopefully I will follow it.

As mentioned in my last post, I've been giving out the samples, the MVP, for people to try. I've sent out 5 so far but they are all to people I know. My other goal is to find about 5 strangers who are healthy food experts to test my MVP. So if that's you or know anyone will be interested PLEASE PLEASE leave a comment below this blog or tweet me or message me on Facebook.

A couple of my friends have sent me photos of their food using some of the stuff that I gave them. I'm so happy and excited that they all enjoyed it and sent me the photos. =D

My friend B made a pasta salad with the gluten free pasta and pumpkin seeds I gave her.

Here's another photo of her breakfast with some of the ingredients I gave her,baobab powder and chia seeds. 

The photos below are chocolate spelt pancakes which was a recipe I gave to them on try.

This one looks like a chocolate crumpet lol but its actually the chocolate soya spelt pancake. 

The feedback I got so far have been quite useful and positive. I've become more confident about this idea now. The best thing I've heard so far is that my friend went to Holland & Barratt straight away to get the full size of the products I gave her.  This reaction has validated one of my hypothesis!!! 

That's it for now.

Are you a healthy expert? Or do you like eating healthy? If you're interesting in testing my service, my business idea, MVP, whatever you want to call it, PLEASE PLEASE contact me! It doesn't take up much time, promise!

That extra mile to do my competitor analysis.

Hi guys,

Today's post is about my dissertation progress. This time I will talk a bit about how I'm doing my competitor analysis. 

Normally people will do a competitor analysis by researching on the Internet, conducting SWOT and/or PEST analysis. I have done those but I also became their customer to get a better view and understanding of their service and product. 

Last week I subscribed to one of my closest competitor and today I've received my first box through the post. I paid £10/ month. The box was small enough to fit through the post box which is quite convenient. 

Simply Cook is a startup that aims to make cooking easier by supplying "hard to find 'taste ingredients' and simple instructions." And to be honest, I actually like this idea lol. 

Inside the box was 4 other boxes that contained 3 'taste ingredients'. 

Each box contains a small pot of oil, stock and herbs/ spice.  

As mentioned earlier, there are 4 recipe cards. 

I haven't tried it out yet as I only got the box this morning, but will definitely try one or two recipes this week. I'm kind of excited to be honest. Lol I've basically just marketed them to you lol. But it's ok, sharing is caring. And every startup should support each other. Hehe 

I hope my effort will get me a distinction for my dissertation! 

How's you're dissertation going on? How are you doing you're competitor analysis? 

MVP created and testing

Hi guys, 

I am so excited about the MVP (minimum viable product) I made for my business idea/ dissertation. 

Here they are. I'm doing a A/B split test, as you can see I wrote A on one bag and B on the other. I've given it to 4 people so far! This photo was taken when I was in Pizza Express with my friend hence the menus lol. 

I spent about £50 on 9 items. Why so expensive? Well because they are all from planet organic, and you know organic products are always expensive. Why did I buy organic products? Because that's what my business idea is about. It was the chia seed that cost me the most, £14.99 for a big pack. But anyways this is just an MVP, in time I will look for a cheaper way to do it to increase the profit margin. 

When I gave them to my friends, they were all so excited. =D I'm giving them a week to try them out, then I will do a face to face interview with them to get feedback. 

I'm still looking for people to do the test. Anyone interested? :) 

Goals for next two weeks

Hi everyone, hope you're all enjoying this lovely hot weather. And for those who's also doing their dissertation, how is it going?

I just had a look at the calendar and counted the number of weeks left and OH MY WORLD!! 6 weeks left!!! I have very little time left. I haven't even written ONE word. Lol. But to make myself feel better, our dissertation is different to other dissertations. We have to do a lot of market research and tests before writing. Well that's an excuse really. =p

I was supposed to fill in a progress report on Friday, but totally forgot about it. I just did it though lol

Anyways, my next step is to do a demo of the service (MVP), A/B split test, create a landing page, and starting selling- as Rob Fitzpatrick, one of the mentors, has suggested. I almost forgot... and update my lean canvas!

The next goal is to get feedback from at least 5 people who tried the demo and maybe make £20 in the next 2 weeks? Lol. 

I also need to do some work for literature review, and start writing something! Researching is actually quite tiring. I spent 2 hours in the British Library last week and it wasn't easy. One because there were too much stuff available so you don't know where to start. Two it's just draining. 

That's it for now, thanks for reading. Blog later! 

Validated Initial Hypotheses

Hello people! Thanks for taking the time read my blog. The weather here in the UK is lovely, but can be a bit too hot to work on my dissertation. I haven't done much since my last post, I've just been sending out the survey and researching about the details of my competitors. I TRIED to do some reading on the customer development, the Steve Blank's book, Startup Manual Guide but didn't really happen. It's just too hot to work, my brain hasn't been working properly. Every time I sit by my desk, I just feel like 'can't be bothered, I'll do it later'. lol. I'm not making excuses. lol.

Anyhow I have managed to validate some of my initial hypotheses though.

Hypothesis #1

Not everyone one knows about all the benefits of the food they eat

Hypothesis #2

Some eat certain healthy food for the sake of eating healthy but are not sure the exact benefits

For hypotheses 1 and 2 I asked people 'Do you know all the benefits of the raw and dry ingredients that you add to your meals?', they had an option of;

- No, but I know they are healthy

- Yes, somewhat

- Yes, I know them very well. 

No one picked the last answer. 7 out of 13 chose the first option and 6 out of 13 chose the second. Thus it shows that my first two hypotheses are true. Only 13 people answered this question because I deleted this question later as some people said the survey was too long. 

Hypothesis #3 

When following a recipe there’s always at least one ingredient they don’t have because it’s uncommon.

Hypothesis #4

They always end up buying the uncommon ingredient and will only use it for that particular recipe or not often.

Prior to the survey, I actually interviewed two people with slightly different questions. Hypothesis 3 and 4 were actually my very first hypotheses. I asked them what problems they have when following a recipe and both said having all the ingredients you need. There are ingredients or equipment you only need for that recipe and won't be using it again. Another thing, both of them loving cooking and baking. But I'm not sure if that will be my customer segment.

Hypothesis #5

find healthy products are more expensive than unhealthy food

Hypothesis #6

 7/10 people would like to have smaller sizes of food products 

In the survey I asked 'What annoys you or frustrates you the most when you're food shopping?', and quite a few people have mentioned healthy food is more expensive than unhealthy food. Yes, bingo! Some people also mentioned about the size being too big if they are cooking for 1 to 2 people. Yes, bingo! So both hypothesis 5 and 6 have also been validated!!

That's 6 out of 14 hypothesis that has been validated, the rest I haven't tested them. That's my next step, I need to test all my initial hypotheses and then create new ones. I also need to define my segment and start building the MVP (minimal viable product). 

That's it for now. Update you later!!

My New Dissertation Idea aka Business Idea

Hi guys, in my previous post I mentioned that I've changed my dissertation topic to my own business idea. Why? What was wrong with the startup? Nothing really, I just had a eureka moment. However, it's not entirely original, it's a clone of another business but with different features.

Before changing it, I of course spoke to the head of department, Dave and my supervisor, Itxaso. Dave said its not too late but I probably won't be able to do lots of interviews. Itxaso loved my idea! That was a relief. Lol She told me not to waste my time on the startup and should do my own idea and carry on pursuing it after uni is over. I will as I've always wanted my own business.

You often hear people say turn your passion into a business. So based on my passion on healthy/well being and food I came up with an idea. It's a clone of Nutribox, Graze, Glossy box, Birch box and other product subscriptions business model. I haven't come up with a proper name yet, but our initial idea was 'Good Munch' but for the sake of SEO, my mentor Jack suggested the name should contain at least one key word that will inform people what the business is about in 3 seconds and appear in the top of the list in search engine. Anyway, I'll refer it to Good Munch in my blog posts for now.

So what exactly is it? I won't go into detail yet, hehe. You will know soon.

It's been about 2 weeks since I've changed the topic and so far I've sent out surveys, drawn canvases for Good Munch and the competitors and written out the initial hypotheses. A couple of people have said my survey is a bit too long, I cut some questions out. The reason it's long is because I'm doing it the short cut way, don't have the time to do face to face interviews. So I'm trying to get as much as I can from the surveys.

To encourage people to do the survey, I decided to give out 2 £20 amazon gift voucher. I will pick 2 winners at random on 22nd July. One of the voucher was given to me when I volunteered for TEDxUCL, lol. That's one voucher sorted lol. And guess what? I'm such a donut.  I forgot to add a field box for people to enter their email address or even a name for them to be entered for the prize draw. LOL. So I sent a message out on my Facebook telling them to give me their email address. But I've added it now. Here's one of the gift voucher.

The more research I do the more competition I find lol. But they aren't exactly the same though. I've found out that there a lot of healthy food online subscription businesses. All aim to provide convenience, save money and time. I found most of them through some of my favourite fitness blogs. As well as finding my competitors, I also learnt that each blogger is a channel to bring customers to the business. 

Changed my dissertation topic

Hi everyone! Just another update on my dissertation progress. I have changed the topic of my dissertation, I am going to work on my own business idea. I will talk about that in the next post. This post will be a highlight of the last few weeks with Glow and probably the last time I will be blogging about them.

Glow
In the past few weeks, I've been going to the mentor and supervisor sessions every Wednesday evening as usual. I've been doing a lot of interviews and I've been travelling a lot, well just around London. The furthest I've been is Heathrow airport terminal 5. 

About 3 weeks ago, I decided to change the customer segment, well not change but narrow it down. The decision was based on the feedback from professional working women (most saying they will not use mobile beauticians). So I thought of women with young children and women who lives in the suburb. My assumption is that women with young children would have to go through a lot of hassle and stress when going to the salon because they got to dress the children, put them in the pram, pack bag, push the pram into the salon. When they are in the salon, the children will get restless, cry and scream, etc. You get the gist. Basically no peace and they can't relax. If a mobile beautician was to go to their house, at least the mum don't need to dress the children, etc. Women living in the suburbs probably don't have much options in terms of salons and beauticians. They probably have to travel a distance for certain treatments. So it would be convenient for them if a mobile beautician visited them. 

I asked my mentor's opinion and he thought they are good especially the latter. I told the founders but they weren't too keen on the latter and suggested women who travel a lot around the country. I told my mentor that they weren't too keen in women living in the suburbs, and he said to me "Keep an open and objective mind.  I think your segments are legit. The purpose of customer development is NOT to prove your hypothesis true (many founders do this).  It's to DISCOVER where your product fits in the market the best. "  

I have interviewed one mum and one women who travels a lot but not women who lives in suburb. Haven't got round doing it yet- well I won't be now, as I'm doing my own idea.From their feedback it seems mobile beauticians isn't a popular option at all. The mum said she wouldn't book a mobile beautician because she still wouldn't have peace. Her kids would still be running around. The women who travels a lot said she wouldn't need to book one while she is away because she will be getting her treatments done before her trip.

I've done about 17 interviews with professional working women, 1 mum and 1 women who travels a lot. 14/17 have said they won't book a mobile beautician as they like the salon experience. Therefore, according to the Lean Startup the founders should pivot because the problem is not big enough to be solved.

That's how I felt LOL.

Last week, I went to the supervisor session. I told her about my findings and she told me to tell the founders to abandon the whole idea of booking mobile beautician. (She wants me to tell them that!! See the facial expression on left) They should corporate with salons and get them to  integrate an express make over method in their menu. Glow will then create an app for women to book their appointment. Apparently there's an express make up service in Bank and its always packed at 5pm with professional working women.


On the same night, I emailed the founders and told them exactly what my supervisor said to me. I was a bit hesitant because I'm basically saying their idea sucks. Lol. Well, it's not a bad idea but maybe they haven't found their niche. One of the founders wanted to speak on the phone about it, so we did. She said she won't pivot because she wants some concrete evidence that shows this idea won't work. And they have spent a lot of money and time on the app (they've got mock ups), and it will be a waste if they abandon it now. They will release the app and if it doesn't work then it doesn't. Then they will pivot. The thing is, I thought she said she follows the Lean Startup and that is going against it really. Unless she meant they are going to release an MVP to test it then that makes sense. However, if 14/17 have said they won't book a mobile beautician then the founders are probably building something that customers don't need or want. It probably will end up being one of those apps that just sits in the screen and will be used once every 3 months or less often. Also, my supervisor is an investment analyst, she is good at identifying business opportunities so she may be right...

Nevertheless, I have learnt a lot from working with Glow. The interviews were good experience. I am more comfortable talking to people at different level and from different background- not that I was shy talking to strangers before but I am better at building rapport. I also learnt how to refine my question and prompt them. Also, I want to thank the founders for giving me the opportunity. I want to thank those who filled my survey and those who participated in the interviews. Many many thanks!

That's it for now! Thanks for reading. =)

Disso Progress: Interviews

Hi everyone.
I know I said I would try to write about my dissertation progress every week but failed to do so. Since my last post back in May, I have been doing interviews with end-users (professional women) and paying customers (beauticians).

These interviews are a lot harder than I thought, the hardest part is not interviewing them or finding someone to interview (I thought finding someone would be the hardest) but its arranging a time and day. I email them back and forth a few times and sometimes it can even take a few days to get a day and time arranged. I haven't really been looking for beauticians to interview, I've been focusing on end-users more and fortunately one of the founders is looking beauticians for me as she wants to do the interview with me too. That's good, founders should listen to the feedback themselves. So far we've only interviewed 1 beautician and I've interviewed 8 end-users, all of which are either the founder's colleagues/ friends, my friends, and my supervisor's friends. Some of these interviews were done in person but some were over the phone/skype.

In the first couple of weeks many of the interviewees suggested doing it on the phone as it was more convenient for them. My supervisor said I should suggest travelling to their work place so then maybe they would be more willing to meet. So I did and yes I was able to meet with the rest in person.

So far from the interviews with the end-users, most of them have said they don't use mobile beauticians and wouldn't use them unless they know them or recommended by someone. This is because of trust, inviting someone to your house is quite personal so you have to trust that person. Most said they go to salon for the experience and want to feel pampered but if they come to your house you don't have the experience. Some said they would only book a mobile beautician for a special occasion like hen party.

As well as doing interviews, I've also sent out some surveys to some Facebook friends. I don't really like this but I guess this is another way to get feedback. I don't like it because you can't prompt them and they may not understand the question. Some people have skipped most of the important questions which is really annoying. I'm not sure if its because they don't understand it or they can't think of any answers. Last time I checked, 7 people did the survey and 5 people skipped majority of the questions! Not good.

Anyways, I got another 2 interviews this week one with an end-user and another with a beauticians. Thanks for reading.

TEDxUCL 2013

Hi my lovely people! The title says it all. This is a post about TEDxUCL, my day and experience as a volunteer for the event. In my previous post, I mentioned that I'm a blogger for TEDxUCL and have been blogging the week prior the event. On the day I had to sat through all the talks and took notes for blogging. That was a good role because I know other volunteers who were in charge of catering couldn't stay and listen to all the talks.

My TEDxUCL tshirt

Reception 

Other Volunteers

Prior to the event, I was quite excited to be part of a TEDx event but on the day  I didn't have that excitement but it was still a good experience. My top 2 favourite talks were by  Julie Hall who spoke about The Rise of Micro Entrepreneur and Mark Brill's Emerging and Future Mobile. They were good in different ways. Julie Hall's talk to me was very motivating. She encourages people to start their own venture and if you're unemployed don't sweat just create your dream job! 'Don't wait to be chosen, choose yourself. Make a difference.' Those were the exact words Julie used at the end.

Schedule

Mark Brill was talking about mobile in 2045. The technology he showed us were really intriguing. I was really looking forward to Talhal Timol's tallk about the Return of a Bow Tie. The programme indicates he will be talking about the fashion industry which is of course something of my interest. But I was quite disappointed. Majority of his talk was about his business. I was expecting something like how to be creativity, how to differentiate yourself, etc. Anyway more about this if you read on.

A few of the speakers I knew. Charlie Jackson is my class mate. It's weird seeing him talking lol. Daniel Hulme and Blaine Landis have both taught me. In fact Jeff Skinner taught one of our lectures, he was covering Keith's lecture for a week. Met Timothy Barnes during E-challenge. And the MC, Ahmad Bahkiet is also my class mate. I know I'm name dropping a bit here =p lol.



As a volunteer, I got a certificate to prove I was part of it! Other goodies we received include; amazon gift voucher, polo T-shirt I was wearing during the event, key ring with TEDxUCL engraved on it and a bag.

Apparently this year the food was a lot better. Last year, there were complaints that the food (catered by UCL) was bland and boring. So this year they served sushi from Wasabi and sandwiches from Pret a Manger. For tea break, croissants and pain au chocolat from Paul's. The croissant were so big! I've never had anything from Paul's, I was told their hot chocolate are amazing. Unfortunately, there was no hot chocolate. lol. I of course had a bit of everything considering I love food.

Ok moving on to something less positive. During the day, everyone (volunteers, guest and speakers) is encouraged to tweet with the #TEDxUCL. I of course tweeted, even if they didn't tell us to tweet I would have done so anyway. When the event ended  a couple of the organisers told me that they received complaints from a couple of speakers about a couple of my tweets. I'll tell you exactly what I tweeted.

"Is Mark Ronan giving a history lesson? Interesting....#tedxucl"

"Talhal Timol's talk isn't a TED talk its a pitch!'

"Good "pitch" @velscvoir @ttvelsvoir." (That's also for Talhal Timol)

Mark Ronan was speaking a lot about  history and I just couldn't grasp the essence. I felt like I was in a history lesson and so I tweeted my thoughts. Talhal Timol's talk as I mentioned earlier was basically about his business, more like a pitch. He just ended with a sentence about how important appearance is. I was actually really looking forward to Timol's talk because its about fashion But was disappointed. So I tweeted my thoughts again. (I did tweet some positive tweets about other speakers because I did like them)

The president of Enterprise Society told me to delete those tweets. Ok so I did out of respect. But thinking back he had no right to tell me to do that. Ok fine, those weren't entirely positive comments about them but:

1. I was tweeting from my PERSONAL twitter account. So I can tweet whatever I want.

2. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. People either like what the speakers said or they don't. Those were my own opinion.

3. I did not use any negative words, nor did I saying anything explicitly insulting. (I admit I was being sarcastic)

4. I was not the only one who tweeted criticism. Some were more harsh than me.

Yes, I was a volunteer so shouldn't have tweeted something like that which is what put me in the disadvantage. But as mentioned, I was tweeting from my personal account. What if I was a guest and I tweeted that? Are the organisers going to find me and demand me to delete them? I mean how did the speakers know I wasn't a guest, or did they?

Anyhow I tweeted with an apology (not tagging the speakers) after. Fair enough the President was probably really stressed as this is a big event and then receiving complaints probably freaked him out. But still he had no right to delete them and I did not appreciate the way he spoke to me. I'm not going to mention about that, its enough.  This is my PERSONAL blog.

Thanks for reading.

Volunteering for TEDxUCL

Hiya readers, my university (UCL) is organising a TED event, TEDxUCL. It will be taking place this Sunday, 2nd June at the university. Unfortunately if you are thinking of buying a ticket for this event, it is sold out now.

I have volunteered to write blog post for them. Please check them out! =)

TEDxUCL is back: http://tedxucl.org/ted-x-ucl-is-back/

What Will Our Speakers be Speaking about?: http://tedxucl.org/what-will-the-speakers-be-speaking-about/

Another Sneak Peak: http://tedxucl.org/another-sneak-peak/

Student Speakers: http://tedxucl.org/student-speakers/

Dissertation take off!

Hey bloggers, readers, colleagues, friends, and everyone else.
I am going to try and blog at least once a week on the progress of my dissertation. In fact Itxaso did recommend blogging to keep track of the progress. In my previous post I mentioned that I'm working with a beauty startup called Glow for my dissertation and because they haven't conducted the customer development I will help them do that for my dissertation.

I am actually quite excited because all the theory and tools I've learnt from this course I can apply them.  So I will try to apply every single step and tools; customer development process, lean startup (build-measure-learn, canvases, etc. However, I won't be posting the canvases every week because I don't think the girls would like me exposing their business strategy or structure on the internet like this lol. I will mention some results of the hypotheses, what I've been up to and what I've learnt.

To start off this dissertation I will be using Ash Maurya's Lean Canvas to distill the essence of Glow onto one page. I chose the Lean Canvas instead of the Business Model Canvas because Ash Maurya adjusted his canvas for startups before product/market fit which is the case of Glow. This step of mapping out the hypotheses onto a canvas is also the first step of customer  that Steve Blank's ruled out in his 'The Startup Owner's Manual', except he mentions using the Business Model Canvas.

After mapping it all out, I will be discussing it with my mentor. Then I guess the next step is to write out a script, using the Ash Maury's guidelines, for interviewing potential customers. And yes, I will get 'outside the building' as Steve Blank strongly emphasizes. Okie dokes, that's it for now. I'll be back! Thanks for reading.

My Dissertation topic

Hi guys! It's been a month since I blogged here at Startup at 24. I have been revising...or shall I say TRYING to revise for my exams coming up in May. I've written a timetable to make sure I fit everything in, I hope I will follow it lol. I have 4 exams so that's not too bad and the good thing is they are spread out.

Anyways, the main thing I wanted to talk about is my dissertation topic. I have sorted it out! Itxaso is a well connected person, she has tonnes of contacts from different industries. I said I want to do my dissertation on health or beauty and she helped me find a beauty startup called Glow. (Its a mobile app that connects beauticians and customers - won't tell you the full details yet) She made an introduction for me via email to the founders. They are two girls, Thais and Kaska, who previously studied at Imperial college for their MBA (I don't remember the exact name of the degree, I think its Innovation entrepreneurship), and Itxaso was one of the guest lecturers there which is how she met them.

I've met with Thais last week to discuss about the stage of their startup and what I could do my dissertation on at the same time that could help them. They have developed a mobile app MVP however they have not gone through the customer development; testing hypotheses, interviewing customers, etc. She said Imperial does not teach the same methodology as UCL- Imperial doesn't teach about the lean startup- so she doesn't really know about the customer development process. Therefore we both decided that I could be working on the customer development side of their startup. I will be meeting Kaska this week, didn't get to meet her last week as she was away.

I am actually looking forward in working with them because I am working on something that I am passionate about lol. Everything I'm doing at UCL is just 10 times better than at Westminster! I'm not talking in terms of reputation, its obvious the reputation is a lot better lol. I'm talking in terms of the things I'm doing. I didn't really enjoy studying Criminology and Economics, I only studied it because I went through clearing and didn't know what else to study. I only enjoyed half of the modules we studied back then. My dissertation topic back then was although my choice but wasn't my biggest passion, I did something about the music industry. But fingers crossed hopefully I will do well in this dissertation and will earn me some big opportunities after I graduate.

Thanks for reading, I'll be back very soon!

Semester 2 is finished- Dissertation workshop

Hi guys, second semester has finished! We are on Easter holidays now, then its exams and then dissertation. The year has gone way too quick! I don't want it to end =( I'm going to miss the time at university and the time spent with the friends that I made at university...well not that I won't be seeing them after University. (I used that sad baby picture because it describes how I feel. lol)

Last week we had a dissertation workshop and most of it was a waste of time. We have three choices for the dissertation, we either have to write about our own business idea, do our dissertation on a startup's idea or with a big company's project.

On Monday we went to Google campus to do our BFP presentation. We had to present the problem our business idea aims to solve, our solution,  3 important issues for our business and the 3 minimum features that will cover those issues. As well as the presentation we had to present our MVP made from Wordpress.

I must give myself some credit for doing the presentation slides lol because they look really good. Simple and sweet lol. Basically my style is no words just pictures to represent what is going to be said. I just don't like seeing too many texts on slides, it's very distracting. In fact I learnt this technique from last year finance classes. Itxaso said investors don't like seeing slides with too much texts. The slides have to be kept simple, clear and concise. Benjamin was the one who presented so credits to him for presenting so well and being able to understand my slides lol.

My colleague Bryan did an awesome job on the MVP. The demo page looked amazing, so much better than I expected. To be honest, I didn't think he was able to produce something like that, lol =p. You must be curious, go check it out here.

At the end of our presentation, Itxaso and Magdalena (our mentor) didn't have any questions for us. Not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. However, Itxaso did have a big smile on her face and said that our video is really good. Awesome! (The video is an explanatory video of iEducase which I blogged about in my previous post but I've included it at the end of this blog).

On Tuesday, Dave our lecturer invited two people in to talk about dissertation. Sorry not invite... he paid them to come in. We did some silly activities like writing down our feelings about the dissertation on post-it notes.. I only stayed for an hour because I wasn't feeling well but it was boring and waste of time anyways. Seriously, Dave wasted his money.

On Wednesday, Chris' workshop was to help us find and define our research question and areas. It was sort of helpful but I wasn't able to think of my research question.

On Thursday, we had to form study groups of 5 and discuss our research area. A few sponsor companies came in to give a short presentation of their company. I wasn't interested in any of them. This day however was useful because my path is clearer, I am thinking of doing my dissertation based on the beauty industry. Lol. Might as well do something you're passionate about, right?

Source from kweekweek.com

On Friday, we had an unconference. This took place at KweekWeek's office that's near Angel station. (KweekWeek is a startup, it suggests events to people according to their tastes and location. Something like that lol)

I don't know why we went there, the initial venue was one of the lecture theater at Uni. It would have been better at Uni as it was so cold there and we could have used the toilets freely and unlimited times without getting dirty looks. Basically, when my friend and I asked the founder of Kweek Week if we could use the toilet, she was reluctant to let us use it. She said 'no not really, but yeh go on.' She knew we were there from 1pm- 6pm. Either she was expecting all of us to be holding it in for 5 hours or she was expecting us to walk down  to the McDonald's that was 2 minutes away or to the pub that was also 2 minutes away.  At the end of the day, Dave introduced her to us as the host of the "event", she was a total different person. Nicer one that is. Lol. She had a lovely smile on the face when she spoke. You thinking what I'm thinking?

Later on we met our dissertation mentor and they were all interesting and really experienced business people. After the mentors introduced themselves, there was a mini networking session with the mentors as we get to choose the mentors. Everyone was fighting to get the best one lol.

Anyways, that is it for now. Thanks for reading and catch ya later!

Our Startup Idea, iEducase has pivoted... Again.

Hiya. I said I will update you guys on iEducase every week but I failed to do so. A lot has changed since the last post. We have pivoted again. In fact we pivoted twice in the last 3 weeks.

We first scrapped the video case study idea because 2 of our lecturer do not see it as a good idea and don't see it will create value or solve the pain point. They also said universities will hate it because its encouraging the students to be lazy. Lol!

However, we disagree as we are students ourselves and sometimes would like a shortcut to reading. We do believe it is novel, lol! Anyways so we then came up with 3 ideas and since we were in week 7 (we have 10 teaching weeks) we decided to test them at the same time.

1. Audio book for case studies
2. Make iEducase into a recruiting platform where companies will post real or made up problems for students and graduates to solve.
3. Make sketch note videos for finance lectures

The audio book idea was suggested by a classmate. To test it, I simply recorded one of the Managing High-Technology class' case study that we had to read for week 8. I read out the whole case study, took me almost an hour. Reading out loud for an hour isn't easy at all, your mouth gets dry and tired. Haha!

I then posted on TE's Facebook group ( our course's Facebook group) and asked my class mates to try it out. But not many did. I tried it out myself, and it didn't work for me at all. I kept fidgeting and kept thinking about other stuff lol. I got the same feedback from 2 classmates.

To test the 2nd idea, Benjamin phoned consultancy companies to find out what problems they have with recruiting, and their thoughts on our idea. None of them were interested. They are what you would call 'Early Majorities' because they wouldn't try it unless some other companies have tried it and have benefited from it.

The third one was suggested by Dave our lecturer, he said Alan our previous finance lecturer has been trying to animate his lectures and is working on creating e-learning materials. However, apparently he isn't doing very well with it. So suggested us speaking to him and use his materials as a starting point and possibly corporate with him.

Week 8.
We had a 3 hour meeting and scrapped all three ideas. We came down with a new idea...again... a much better idea. Well we feel more confident about anyways. It's a one stop shop platform for learning resources. It's not entirely new it's still to do with education.

What is it about?
All universities have moodle/ blackboard/ intranet to communicate with students regarding the learning resources. However, although that is the platform for student to find learning resources but most of the time the resources recommended by lecturers are on another website. So students click on the links, they  get directed to another website. So opens up a new window/ tab. Then maybe they will have to either create a new account or log in. Basically, the problem we are trying to solve is having to navigate to numerous websites to obtain learning resources can be long and time wasting and having to log in to different academic websites is annoying. The solution is linking all the learning resources to one platform which is iEducase. We've created a video for it to explain it, see below.

Week 9
We were more proactive this week. The meetings were more productive. We create a survey and distributed it to students over Facebook. We create a video using scribble book, an App that Ben used for the previous video. And of course I did the voice over, so you will hear my voice again...




For BFP class, we are required to create MVPs for the business idea; a website, mock up of a mobile prototype and a Facebook app.

We've created the website but since we have pivoted we need to modify it to make it look like a one stop platform, that's Bryan's job. I've created a mock up of the mobile prototype using Balsamiq- a software that they suggested us to use as it was created by a UCL alumni- and Ben has created the Facebook app. Scroll down for all these.


Week.10.
The results of the survey has validated some of our hypotheses. And it's great! However, up to this stage we still haven't 'got out of the building' to interview customers lol. Regarding the survey results, many have said that the process of obtaining learning resources is long and time wasting. They would also find it helpful if everything was in one place and only needs one single log in.

Mobile Prototype- just a couple of screen shots of it

Facebook App