Nurturing entrepreneurship is central to our mission at SeedSprint. One way we achieve this mission is through our Startup and Technology Ambassadors for Recruitment (STAR) program for undergraduate and graduate students in STEM. Through the STAR program, interns learn about technology transfer and commercialization by researching and engaging with science-based startups, research institutions, corporate R&D leaders, and incubators and accelerators. One of our STAR interns, Hannah Polk, is an undergraduate Natural Sciences and Communications major at the University of Pittsburgh and took a course last semester called Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Technology. After taking this course, Hannah has five tips for budding entrepreneurs, and especially, scientist-entrepreneurs, new to the world of innovation!

(1) Research. Research. Research. An idea, no matter how groundbreaking it sounds, is only as important as the problem it solves. When developing your product or service, conduct market research and user research to ensure there is a market for it and people who will use it. The best way to conduct user research is by interviewing your prospective users or customers. Do your prospective customers need your product, or would it just be nice to have? 

(2) Always be ready to pitch your ideas. You are the expert on your ideas. Your ideas may have the potential to disrupt your field, but you still have to convince others, too. Having a well-rehearsed elevator pitch that you can deliver with confidence and passion will go a long way. 

(3) Grow your network. Take advantage of networking opportunities at conferences and events and through personal introductions. Even spending 5 minutes chatting with someone can lead to a valuable new connection. The person you are speaking with may know someone who would be an asset to your team or may know about a new product that competes with yours. He or she may even become your mentor. You never know how another person can help you achieve your goals, so always be networking!

(4) Manage your time. Keep a calendar broken down by day, week, and month. You may prefer to separate your business and personal schedules, but either way, keep work-life balance in mind. Set and work toward short and long-term goals along the way — you will feel good knowing you are always accomplishing something! 

(5) Adopt a growth mindset. You may reach a point where you become stuck, but moving forward is what matters. Frame your challenges as opportunities for learning and growth. Learn to acknowledge your weaknesses, accept feedback, and adopt a growth mindset of continual learning and improvement. 

So, how can you put this advice into practice? Here are some easy ways you can get started!

Develop user personas. Before you dive into interviewing your prospective users, develop user personas to guide your research. User personas are semi-fictitious representations of your target users. Many marketing thought leaders like Hubspot and CleverTap have great resources to help you take the first steps!

Sign up for Seedsprint. Our platform is free for startups, research institutions, and nonprofits and is available to corporate subscribers at a flat fee. Our profile templates help you tell your startup’s story clearly and succinctly and our messaging feature enables you to connect with industry partners!

Attend a virtual conference. As people practice social distancing, virtual events happen weekly. These events are usually more affordable than in-person events and are still great for networking, so register for one…or five!

Set one goal per day. Set just one goal per day to help you stay productive, organized, and motivated! You can even add the goals to your calendar to help you stay accountable.

Take an online course. Want to improve your project management skills? Don’t know enough about marketing? Many universities offer certificate programs and courses that help you build new skills in just about any field! 

Good luck! You got this!

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Earlier this month, the seedsprint team attended the Inside/Outside digital design symposium hosted by NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering and held at their Makerspace: two days of discussion about digital design and 3D printing. Day one, Inside, focused “on medical uses and how to communicate and prototype around the very small.” Day two, Outside, focused “on built environments, working with scales greater than 1:1.”

One of the Inside presentations that’s given us a lot to think about was Amy Hurst‘s talk on developing assistive technology for individuals with disabilities. Hurst is an associate professor of Human-Centered Computing at NYU and Director of The Ability Project . She researches accessibility challenges and her primary focus has been developing DIY design and fabrication tools so that others can “DIY’ and build their own assistive technologies.”

In her talk, Hurst explained that she wants to overcome the idea that designing technology is an engineering practice–identify the problem, provide an engineered solution. Hurst notes that this approach has historically resulted in uneven uptake by end-users. The products were the wrong color, the wrong size, the wrong material, the wrong shape. Instead, designers and technology-developers should focus more clearly on each individual user to better understand their needs and preferences. And in fact, today’s digital design and fabrication tools allow designers to do that. The process Hurst teaches encourages designers to more carefully consider user needs, and they involve the end-user throughout the design and production process. The result is a more user-focused technology and an end-user who has been empowered by participation and who is more invested in the resulting technology. That empowerment, Hurst says, ultimately leads to greater acceptance and use of the assistive technology.

Hurst’s research into DIY takes this end-user focused process further. What could be more empowering than DIY tools and technologies that allow people to create their own assistive technologies?

For us, Hurst’s talk was an important reminder that our focus should always be on the users of our platform. Are we understanding their needs? Are we providing the right tools and capabilities to help users meet those needs?

To close her presentation Hurst identified a handful of lessons she and her colleagues have learned while teaching digital design and fabrication, several of which will seem familiar, whatever your field:

• Time is the most expensive resource. Specifically, people’s time is expensive.
• Design with familiar tools. In Hurst’s courses, students create technical drawings and models in clay before moving to digital design and fabrication.
• The learning curve is steep. Students often have difficulty conceptualizing the digital fabrication process.
• Equipment matters. Production tools like 3D printers should generate products in forms end-users want or need.
• Size matters. Prototypes should be the same size as the final product. If not, end-users can’t give effective feedback.
• Materials matter. Similar to the size rule, prototypes should use the same materials as the end product, so end-users can effectively evaluate it during design consultations.
• Communication with fabricators matters. The professionals who operate the fabrication tools have specific information needs and designers need to learn how to provide it.
• Promote collaboration and open communication. Projects that feature open communication and strong collaboration among everyone involved have been the most successful.
• Peer-learning works best. In Hurst’s courses students matched with similarly qualified peers gained skills better than students matched with more advanced students.

How many of Hurst’s lessons do you recognize from your own process of designing products that best serve your end-users?

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One of the greatest challenges that tech transfer office (TTO) and new ventures staff at universities face in commercializing university technology is cultivating business savvy among their researchers-turned-entrepreneurs. TTO staff dedicate significant time and resources to empowering and coaching researchers interested in commercialization to design product features that resonate with the needs of their prospective customers, price their product appropriately, gain the confidence to pitch their product to prospective business partners, and expand and nurture their networks. Investing in university researchers and empowering them to think like an entrepreneur in the tech transfer process is critical to commercialization success.

Our team attended the 2019 AUTM Annual Meeting in Austin, TX in February, where we learned from thought leaders in technology transfer on topics ranging from strategies for forging successful industry-university partnerships, to the benefits of creating funds for early-stage proof-of-concept development, to tactics for helping scientists develop essential business skills.  One of the sentiments echoed throughout many of the sessions was that though the barriers to commercialization are very real, there are methods and resources available for overcoming these barriers. So if you’re a TTO or new ventures professional looking to coach your researchers: what are some key steps you should take when helping your researchers transition from the bench to the business world?

1. Educate your researchers to think of their tech as a product tailored to their customers’ wants and needs.

More startups fail from lack of customers than from product failure. While the tech may provide a solution to the world’s problems, it won’t go anywhere if the market isn’t ready to receive it. Conducting customer interviews is critical to business success. By interviewing the people who will ultimately use the product, researchers can find out what their prospective customers actually want and need.

It’s important to be specific about what the product does and what problems it solves. Researchers should be able to answer these questions to identify product-market fit:

• What specific problems does the product solve?
• What is the specific product or service provided?
• Does the value proposition match what the customer needs?
• How will the future startup get, keep, and grow its customer base?

2.  Once they have developed a product people want, help your researchers develop the confidence they need to cultivate business relationships.

In research, ideas are kept close to the chest to protect intellectual property. This often leads to information silos, which are not conducive to the idea-sharing nature of commercialization. However, in the business world, networking is king.  Companies are looking to collaborate with universities and young startups—sometimes, all you have to do is start the conversation.

3. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t apply—a well-honed pitch is the ticket to forming the right partnerships. 

Prospective investors want specific, measurable outcomes and plans. Vague proposals willlose investors’ interest. Both the product and the pitch have to demonstrate exactly what results all parties can expect. Researchers must look beyond the scope of their immediate work to describe why their offer matters.

With our high-impact, industry-vetted profile templates, seedsprint makes it easy for both TTO professionals and researchers to put technology on display for the right people to see and securely communicate with potential partners. We know how important it is to keep intellectual property secure, which is why we provide encrypted data rooms and NDA negotiation tools.

Educating researchers to think about their tech as a business is critical to transforming it into a life-changing product or service that can make the world a better place. seedsprint is a great first step in helping your tech reach a wider audience and we’re happy to be part of the process!

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So, you’re ready to turn your great idea into a business. Now what? Add these terms to your vocabulary and use them in your business plan, pitch decks, and in your communication with financial investors and industry partners!

The real MVP

MVP stands for minimum viable product. An MVP is a simple, functional version of your idea that can be tested in the marketplace swiftly. It is often essential to establish an MVP prior to industry collaboration so that partners can see your technology at work.

It’s important that an MVP prototype be relatively easy to make or duplicate because you will be testing it again and again until it works. Prospective industry partners are often eager to hear about the status of prototypes and the success they have had.

Before you settle on a terrific prototype, remember to make sure that your focus is on the end-user. Don’t be afraid to be specific! Unlike your business plan, which will no doubt cover multiple outcomes, an MVP can be clearly defined to test the needs of one audience. Be efficient and specific to a single hypothesis to figure out if that hypothesis is viable.

TAM, SAM, and SOM

It’s important to know what your addressable market is when talking to both financial investors and industry partners. While the MVP should be targeted towards one audience, the research you do about any potential consumers will have to be both detailed and broad. This might sound like conflicting advice until you understand the three levels of an addressable market: TAM, SAM, and SOM.

First, any new company needs to consider their TAM, or Total Addressable (sometimes also called Available) Market. This contains everyone you would like to reach with your product or idea.

Following close behind is your SAM, the Segmented Addressable Market or Served Available Market. This is the subset of your TAM you will target first, most likely using the great new MVP you just created.

SOM, your Share of the Market, is the realistic portion of your SAM that you can reach, usually in the second or third year of business. Understanding your SOM forecast in and out is a great way to attract both financial investors and industry partners.

Is industry collaboration part of your startup’s development strategy? SeedSprint may be a good fit for your goals! You can learn more about seedsprint for startups here!

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