Feedback on startup idea

[hyt]

Would like feedback before I proceed any further.

In a nutshell: a digital platform where brands and companies can engage university students to work on live projects such as customer acquisition, business development etc.

University students can get class credits or a small stipend for working on these live projects which they can then include on their resume.

Brands and companies on the other hand can crowdsource the ideas and talents of the future workforce while engaging and preparing them to be work ready.

While some universities have shown interest in participating in the program, none of the companies I've reached out to seem to be interested in engaging university students to work on small live projects.

I'd like to know what I can do differently to get them on board or how I can approach this better.

[Hugh Mason]

On Tue, 19 Mar 2019 at 10:17, hyt <hayya...@gmail.com> wrote:

While some universities have shown interest in participating in the program, none of the companies I've reached out to seem to be interested in engaging university students to work on small live projects.

Sometimes the silence is deafening. And shouts what you need to hear, even if it's not what you want to hear. Congratulations on doing the right thing by reaching out to key stakeholders to do this research. Most people burn a lot of time and money before they find that the default response to most innovations is indifference.

You might want to take a look at https://qlc.io/new_campus

QLC.io was all about connecting students with corporate-sponsored projects. They gave it a run for a couple of years after a lot of hard work, have just pivoted away. I will bcc one of the founders on this message to see if he wants to add more.

Hugh Mason

[Carl Coryell-Martin]

Harvey Mudd College has been running a clinic program where companies sponsor a year of student research for a team for the last 40 years or so.

I was involved on both sides of clinic projects.  It’s very difficult to find productive work for students and it’s difficult to support that for the university.  The end result was outstanding for both sides. Recruiting for access to real problems is a great trade. And companies were willing to spend 10s of thousands of dollars (I’m not sure what the current pricing is; I know it was north of 30K USD for the year.)


Good luck.  

Carl C-M

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[hyt]

Update: 2 companies have expressed an interest in joining. Would this be enough validation to go forward?

[drllau]

Dear Hvt,

I'm not in Singapore (same timezone Perth) but one approach I use to get my clients to rework their tech offerings is to ask them whether customers/clients consider what they do as ...

a) aspirin

b) vitamin

c) insulin

d) vaccine

Basically it then forces them to create product-market fit to increase either the urgency of adoption or value of the offering. Naturally investors also like the insulin model for recurrent software subscriptions but it does need to solve an underlying chronic problem. One good example is basecamp. If you are fostering a two sided market, then you need to figure out the assymmetries and how to balance supply/demand (eg always more startups seeking funding than investors). So look at the lens of the above medical analogy to figure out if acute/chronic/episodic and whether it needs the tech equiv of opiates (FedEx tracking), dopamine hits (eg gamification) or sophorific (eg Netflix as escape mechanism from work-stress).

Don't be fazed if it doesn't fit within investors expectations (which sadly are too fad-driven) ... you can still make a nice lifestyle business by catering to niches and long-term markets might change (think Guitar Heroes). Sometimes it's a matter of getting the right customer ... take the example of Kaggle which hit on data scientists (admittedly good timing). In the end, remember that everyone else (including me) are just expressing opinions. YOU are the founder which means you need to make the calls based on your best judgement and available data within your long-term vision.

And Hugh is right, sometimes too much tech is a distraction from the core value (one headache of translational researchers is that they are too wedded to their ideas as every nail they see needs a blockchained IoT 3D-printed titanium hammer. The classic example was the Yanks spent millions coming up with a positive pressure ink-pen for space operations whilst the Russians turned up with pencils. Customers are interested in 1/4 inch holes, not power-drills.

Lawrence

http://www.linkedin.com/in/drllau

[Teh Gary]

I have been using the “jobs to be done” framework to assess how critical specific tasks are for the stakeholders. 

Usually a successful outcome of the process leads me to identifying a set of environmental/situational triggers that cause a lot of adrenaline/anxiety/fear in the subject I am interviewing. 

Once you have identified that triggers, the easy thing to do is to build the metaphorical button (your solution) subjects can press on to alleviate their anxiety/fear and in the process release some dopamine.

Based on past experiences building out GetData.IO, the simpler the button (ideally a BIG RED one saying PRESS HERE) the better. 

This lessens the level of cognitive load and time required to trigger off some dopamine in their brain. It’s also very conducive for habit forming purposes.

From a technical stand point, simpler solutions are cheaper to build and less of a nightmare to maintain. It means you don’t have to pay a tonif money to hire a rockstar engineer and can easily find a regular (or even entry level) engineer to deliver the solution. It also means scaling up your engineering team becomes easier later on as the recruitment criteria does not need to be as strict. 

Some related materials you might want to consult:

- Pavlov’s Dog, Ivan Pavlov

- Hooked, Nir Eyal

- The Fogg Model, BJ Fogg

- The nature of technology, Brian Author

- The buyer personas, Adele Revella

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