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[oldmanhom-blog]

Lil’ bit of Progress day by day...

Progress is being made in the fourth week of Startup Summer Tech and this post is going to include what happened in the third week too. These past two weeks have been interesting. The team and I finally met our mentors who were from Warby Parker! I’m thrilled to currently have this team set up with the right people specializing in each area of our jobs. I think that without the mentors, we would not have been able to reach the progress as we would have been able to prior to meeting them. For the most part, I’m pretty cool with how our mentors are chill and it doesn’t stress me out. But I could say it can get a little bit fun!

Even though boot camp was finished and I’m left with so much “free-time”, I still find myself tired from planning the path for Dap. Unfortunately, it sucked that I didn’t even have internet for three days and it definitely set a, if not, minor set back which prevented me from writing much of the survey. So far just recently though I thought that a lot of progress has been made for the app. This applies to the business and the app functionality. As of today, Alex actually managed to have the NFC working partially which shows much success on the developer’s end. Kudos to him!

Moving forward, I personally think that for Dap to continue growing steadily we’d have to understand more of our business and I think even though it’s been almost a month, until now we’re struggling to understand our target market. It doesn’t really work out for me to throw in survey questions to find out who our target market is b/c essentially that’s only for when we want to continue our company in the future and avoid biases. However, the issue I don’t get with my team was finding an alternative to sending the survey out to other people of an older age group. Whereas I want to focus on whether the business can be a success in the long run or not.

I guess that if the team and I can work things out, our business plan will be clear not only for us but also towards people who want to view Dap.

[oldmanhom-blog]

Finish Line!

Finally made it to the finish line after a stressful, yet productive week of boot camp. I’m amazed at how far along the journey I have reached and I never would have thought that I would be able to see myself change. My team has definitely helped me through this week to provide our product and prevent me from tumbling down along the track. Despite our sometimes hilarious moments, our collaboration was amazing because everyone gave it their all! What can I say? We killed it at the presentations and we did our best. If not, our presentation was probably the best out of all the teams and I just feel really proud. Though at the end of day, through the grad music and tearful speeches, there had to be kudos given to the TA’s, Matty, Ron, and Sade for providing us with excitement and with a different learning experience to truly think and become an entrepreneur. I definitely felt more confident in talking to a larger crowd, but I am open for more improvements! I’m looking forward to the next few weeks of GenTech and hoping to do an exceptional job for dap!

[oldmanhom-blog]

In the Making for Fame, Money, and Learning

Starting the first week of Startup Tech, I was already preparing myself for long lectures from teachers and such. However, what I found was something totally unexpected! I was beginning to learn how to become an entrepreneur and to think like one. I found the program to be unique because unlike other programs that I’ve participated in, Startup Tech made me work with different participants each time to work on multiple products. I think that in a way it forced me to slowly learn more about the people who are in the same program as I am. I’m able to continuously share my feedback, collaborate with members, and understand what sort of product we wanted to reach for customers if we were to sell it. Despite the hard work and constant presentations, it reminded me of how school can be fun (of course if you’ve got awesome people in the program :) ). It meant that I would drop dead, sleep, and do homework until 1AM. My favorite sessions were definitely learning the mindset of becoming an entrepreneur and improving products. From understanding the concept of A/B testing, pivoting, persevering, and BML loops I’m excited to learn more! But I got hyped enough to work with a team on our company FacePic which definitely has a solid foundation and I’m confident it WILL win us that 500 grand. I’m ready to release our products to be tested to gain improvements and feedback. I think the only issues that concern me are insufficient data to see any micro problems in our product as well as being unable to complete our product in given deadlines. So far I LOVE GenTech. It’s a new experience for me to learn new lessons. I think that in reality it will help me understand the decisions I make ahead of time and how it would affect me in the future.