Tag: startups

Before this summer I had no clue what a minimum viable product (MVP) was, let alone how to create one for a potential startup company. While we were not able to execute these proposed ideas, it felt as if we were when presenting our ideas to the rest of the class.

Guest blogger: Marni is a sophomore at WashU

The lecture began by watching a video that served as the MVP for the startup turned into the well known company Dropbox. A short video, lasting about five minutes, was the first release of their product and was used to gauge whether there was any interest or need for a cloud-like storage system. It was amazing to watch a video which did not even prove the company had created the technology. Even knowing this, watching the video still made me want to use the product. The main goal of an MVP, we learned, was to see if there is a need for your product and if customers are willing to pay money to implement this product into their lives.

Having Zell applicants help us with this MVP was very beneficial since they had done a similar project during the application process to the program. They really made us focus on what would be the key metrics we would measure and which type of MVP would be the most beneficial for our product.

We ultimately decided on a “Wizard of Oz” MVP in which a website acts as the app and we are organizing all the tasks and sending out reminders by hand acting as the “man behind the curtain.” The goal of our MVP is to learn which features presidents of groups think should be added and how the task management was affected using our product vs. not using our product. We were able to use Wix.com which allowed us to create a website that resembles what we pictured our app to look like. It was really cool to be able to come up with a way to test this product’s validity in the market without really knowing how to code an app.

Epharmix, a St. Louis-based health technology startup created by a team of recent Wash U alumni, including Joe McDonald, MBA’15, medical students and physicians  has raised $765,000 from a group of five investors according to a report in the St. Louis Business Journal, July 28, 2015.

Epharmix creates condition-specific digital interventions for medical care that provide follow up care via texting messages and other contact with patients.

Founders include WashU alumni: Blake Marggraff (CEO); Avik Som (CMO); Evan Huang (CTO); and Joe McDonald (COO and CFO). Epharmix also has a team of advisors that includes Dr. Will Ross, a nephrologist and associate dean for diversity and assistant professor of medicine at WUSM.

We gathered at the Google Campus for Entrepreneurs in Tel Aviv this morning to hear from a founder of Wix.  Wix is a platform that helps average internet users create websites.  The basic premise of the service is that a person goes to a webpage through an easy to use platform.  All it takes to design the website is clicking and dragging on elements such as pictures, text etc. and modifying it on the spot.  Changing the layout just involves clicking and moving components around the screen.  Their tagline is “Easy to customize. No coding.”

Guest Blogger: Jessie is a junior WashU

In 2006, the idea for this website came from two brothers who were accomplished entrepreneurs.  In an apartment on Rothschild Boulevard, they quickly thought of the idea of the webpage.  In 2007, the first investment was made.

A question that investors frequently asked them was “Why are you creating a company for a solved problem.”  In fact, a website similar to theirs existed and was created in 2000.  However, it was messy, unorganized and not easy to use.  This idea is a clear testament that solving a pain point and creating convenience for the consumer can create a great company.

Not all startups have to be revolutionary ideas, and sometimes the best ones just aim to make every day life easier and more efficient. A lot of the backlash, interestingly, came from Israeli investors, and many early investments were made by Americans and Europeans.

As intrinsically motivated entrepreneurs, they kept working on the product.  They followed a very precise, three pronged goal.   First, Wix recognized the need to have a presence as a website.  Creating an easy-to-use platform and in turn having consumers produce great webpages was the goal.  Second, they understood the need for traffic.  Wix has tools to get market for traffic, and allows their consumers to leverage their brand through the Wix user base.  Each site gets about 100,000 exposures per month, and to get that number of exposures through Google ads costs $200,000-$400,000.  Since start ups especially are on such a tight budget, this creates extreme value for a user and incentive for them to use Wix.  Finally, they manage customers through an API that allows companies to be leveraged by each other, and to sell products between small businesses, also creating value.

Needless to say, this concern should have never existed.  The path to success did not come without obstacles, though.  Throughout the time the website has existed, it has pivoted at least 20 times before finding out the best version of the product.  Today, Wix exists in 19 languages, has over 60 million users and creates websites that millions of people are exposed to.  Our speaker stressed that small changes are made every single day, and on average a change is made every 9 minutes.  This innovative mindset confirms why Wix had an IPO in 2013, and continues to grow and improve every single day.

This program has forced me to analyze the definition of success many times.  Various people have told us that if your end goal is to make money, then entrepreneurship is not the career path to take.  Instead, the idea of making a change in the world seems to be the goal for many “successful” entrepreneurs.

Guest Blogger: Jessica is a junior at WashU

We currently have an assignment that requires us to meet with a Zell graduate, and to learn about their entrepreneurial experiences.  The business man who I chose to interview started a marketing company, and it has been open for around four years now.  It seems as if the company has gained a lot of traction, and they have formed partnerships with huge publishers like Fox Sports.  It seemed to me as if the company could be defined as successful, but when I asked him if his company is successful in his opinion, he responded no without hesitation.  He said that until an exit, IPO, or close had been reached, he wants to keep expanding the company. However, he said there are moments where he is extremely proud of his company, and a temporary milestone is reached. When his favorite basketball team, the Miami heat, started using his program, it was a redeeming feeling.  However, the billions of users of his survey service do not constitute a successful ending to Bitz, his company.

This answer reminded me a lot of the mindset of the start up that I worked for last summer.  It was a jewelry company that had products picked up by huge retailers such as Free People, ShopBop and Bloomingdales.  However, they still did not define their fashion line as a success.  I have learned that this mentality seems to be a trend amongst entrepreneurs, and perfectly depicts why money cannot be a driving force.

The ever-changing and dynamic of the start up world makes it addicting to these people, and they are emotionally invested in making their company as good as it can be.  No matter what the worth in capital is, a true entrepreneur is never truly satisfied with their product, and always wants to make improvements. If success is never reached in their minds, they are consistently working at their product, and are making the product as close to perfect as humanly possible.  The work ethic proves for the eventual success and prosperous futures of true entrepreneurs.

Forbes reports on businesses in St. Louis that are vital to the startup community. They call them angel vendors, “companies that, independently or through incubators, offer area startups services ranging from legal work to hosting to marketing on a pro-bono basis. The idea, for these firms, is to improve and expand the St. Louis entrepreneurial “ecosystem” – and maybe find some clients or investments in the process.”

Working on our start-up, we’ve been gradually adding elements to create value and really work through the steps that real entrepreneurs go through. Today’s lesson consisted of learning about the lean start-up method and the business canvas. We took all the topics that we learned about and exercised those methods on our own product. The business model that we worked with was very similar to the tasks that we did in Management 150 at school first semester, but the difference here was, instead of doing the whole process over the course of a semester, we did everything in a fraction of a day.

Something I learned today is that we all have so much more potential than we think. Instead of second-guessing oneself, it’s important to just try things even if failing is an option. We had to work together in our teams with people we may not have interacted with before this summer and we had to get a lot of work done in a little amount of time. After seeing that we are capable of this, I got a surge of confidence. It sounds like a cliché, but if we put our minds to it and really put in the effort, a lot more than we think can get done.

It’s also very inspiring to see the works of others. In this class, we are presenting everyday our new findings and updating the class. This introduces a type of healthy competition to the groups. Instead of doing the bare minimum as many students do in some group projects, each student is striving to do their best so that their group and their idea looks good in front of everyone. The ability to be the one advertising your product makes you put so much more of yourself into the work behind it. I can now better understand the ways of entrepreneurs since I now understand their connection to the products. It really is their baby. We want people on board, we want people to give us feedback, and overall we want them to use it when it’s finished.

One thing that really gave me satisfaction in the work that we’ve done today, was hearing people talk about my group’s product. Having our peers say how useful it would be or how perfect it would be in a certain context is motivation in a sense. Knowing that it is a viable product drives me to do so much more with this. And who knows, maybe we will be able to take this all the way.