Saturday, March 28, 2015

Entrepreneurship in Action


I am in an Entrepreneurship class in which I am learning a ton.  In the course of the class we have learned many of the basic steps to come up with a business idea, validate it, and then take it to the market.

The first step is to identify a pain point, something that is an irritation or pain to customers. A big pain point that one of the members of my group mentioned, is scrapping off the ice on your windshield in the mornings.  So we ran with it.  We came up with the idea of a car cover that would prevent ice from forming on your windshield, preventing one from staying out in the cold scraping ice, freezing their hands off.


My team after doing basic market research (asking people).  We found that for people to be interested in such a cover, it would have easy to put on and off.  After thinking of many possible solutions, and adjusting those ideas we came up with two models.

                   The Sheet Model                            &                      The Accordion Model        

  

Both models use magnets to cover your windshield. The difference is in the putting on and taking off of the products.  One can be wrapped up while the other is folded.  

The thing that I have learned the most from the class is that any business it is all about your customers and what they want.   Too many companies spend millions of dollars in resources and time, in developing products that people don't want.  They could have known if their product would have satisfied their customers if they would have done one simple thing - ask them.  

Most businesses fail, but if you fail fast and fail often, you will eventually find your golden goose.  
That is what I learned the most from this class.  

But hey? What do you think?  Would you rather use the sheet model or the accordion model?

I am probably not going to take this idea to market, but I would still love to hear what you have to say, so click on the link and tell me what you think.


2 comments:

  1. Cameron,

    I am glad you are enjoying your entrepreneurship class--it sounds really interesting! I think that your group's idea is a great one; in fact, I actually purchased a product very similar to it (the FrostGuard Winshield and Wiper Cover)! I completely agree that the premise of entrepreneurship is identifying and addressing a common pain point for customers. I really liked the golden goose metaphor, because it is a great reminder for all that failures are a regular and important part of lives--failures teach us how to improve and re-innovate ourselves.

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  2. The customer is always right, this reminds me of that great presentation that group did on Comcast. Companies need to be able to cater to their customers for sure since that is their source of income. It's a win win, companies make more money because customers actually get what they want.

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