|
By Anna Radachy  Perhaps a bit of a dramatic blog title, but illustrative nonetheless. After a year and a half of employment with the University of Akron Research Foundation, I will be leaving at the end of the year. To be completely fair to many readers though, you most likely do not know who I am, and that is totally ok! I am the administrative and research intern, and most, if not all of my work, is background work that happens behind the scenes. I have read an inordinate amount of market research firms and customer interviews, both are part of our I-Corps program, and scheduled hundreds of meetings. I have sat in and heard about dozens of new start-up ideas (some amazing and a few not so much!) I have sent hundreds of emails under the pseudonym of “UARF I-Corps Site Administrators”, but I have sent even more with my own signature and position, which has honestly meant a lot more to me than I ever expected it to.
0 Comments
 By Nick Glavan
Every cohort of I-Corps, we assign the participating teams a worksheet to help them think through their overall market opportunity. We ask them, “If every person who experiences the problem you are trying to solve bought your product or service, how much money would they collectively spend?” This is just one way to think about how big an opportunity a startup business has in their industry. Here are a few common tips I share with early-stage founders taking their first crack at deciding what number is right for them: There is no one right answer! No matter how hard you try, there is no exact way to determine how much your future business revenue will be. It will always involve some form of guesswork or assumptions, so don’t stress yourself searching and searching for the one right answer. There are quite a few acceptable estimations. Most reviewers and advisors acknowledge there is some level of uncertainty in determining these numbers, so no need to panic. Share your rationale in making your assumptions. Because there isn’t a singular right answer, you will want to explain how you arrived at your number. If the explanation makes sense, the numeric values will too. Many reviewers are more interested in seeing how you got to the market size number than the actual number itself. If you used sound assumptions that seem logical in determining your total, addressable, and target market values, you will convey that you as the business leader can make sensible decisions in other aspects of the business. On the other hand, if you are giving overly optimistic or unsupported rationales, you may appear too out-of-touch with the realities of your market.  By Elyse Ball
You wouldn’t go swimming alone, lift heavy weights alone, or work in a lab alone. Most of us won’t even go to the movies alone. But when it comes to starting a company, a surprisingly high percentage of us are willing to go it alone. Finding other entrepreneurs to start a company within Northeast Ohio has always seemed particularly tricky to me. There aren’t that many people who want to take a risk of becoming an entrepreneur and even fewer of them are interested in working on someone else’s idea. However, you don’t necessarily have to find an official co-founder to reap some of the rewards, like accountability, competition, honest feedback, and emotional support. Instead, consider creating your own entrepreneur “buddy system” with a few other entrepreneurs you trust and respect. You can do this by:
As you interact with other entrepreneurs, think about who you’d like to continue to strive alongside and the kinds of outcomes you can achieve with a little help from your friends. Advice and interview from I-Crops panel 2021. Prabaha: I’ll try to put my experiences and my journey in the form of a story. Hopefully it helps the graduate students, postdocs, or maybe an aspiring faculty. So the technology or the product which I’m going to talk about was based on the I-Corps site program is an inner body fusion cage, it’s a medical device. I’ll briefly describe what the product does.
Many of us in the U.S. suffer from back pain, so when the back pain is excruciating we visit a spine surgeon. If it's a tremendous back pain which cannot be rectified by physical therapy or exercises, the surgeon suggests you do a spinal fusion surgery. Basically what happens in the spine is a surgeon inserts a spinal cage, it's like a spacer between the two vertebrates which otherwise slides onto each other. That’s when you meet the team, and what happens is the fusion cage is inserted between the two vertebrates and a solid fusion of bonus created that is structured so that the whole junction is kind of immobilized. It becomes one solid section or a joint and it does these moving parts, the moving vertebrates do not move which is creating the pain. I came up with a material formulation when I was ending my Ph.D., which can help accelerate bone growth in that area. All the existing cages right now in the market are not capable of doing so. I was not much into pursuing this formulation further because my advisor was not interested in working with this material. What I did was I kept that formulation at the back of my mind and I developed a skill set which is greater to the clinical application of these medical devices. Because I went to University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine as a postdoc, I developed and I saw how these medical devices are surgically inserted in rodents and all kinds of in vivo studies which are required if you want to successfully translate your project from an in vitro standpoint or from a preliminary study to the next stage on grounds of a medical device. I had the aspiration to learn because I wanted to see the next step of the applications of the medical devices which I was developing on a bench top. So I got that skill set, and then I was lucky enough to get a position at Cleveland State as a tenure track assistant professor and ‘boom’ I had the independence to pursue what I actually left off at the end of my Ph.D. I had the independence now and I made the best use of it by pursuing that and during my first semester at Cleveland State. I was introduced to UAkron’s wonderful site program and it was, trust me, it's like a story. It was a fine monday morning when Brian Davis, our associate Dean, and I was forwarded an email about the I-Corps site program. Before that, I did not hear a word about I-Corps, I did not know what it was, but I pursued it. I submitted a one or two page write up and was accepted into the program. It was wonderful because it showed me that even though I have a formulation in mind, I know about the applications. In order to find out whether there is a need for this technology or the need of this product in the market was something extremely important. I wanted something that would go beyond the journal papers of the conference publications and see it transition into the market. I-Corps got me out of my comfort zone and had me complete 30 customer interviews, and I managed to pull those off on my own and get the feedback which was very helpful. There's a lot of information which will be given and it’s a wonderful learning experience. Going out and doing the customer discovery and going out into the various parts of your market and talking with different kinds of people. Elyse: How do you build trust to get the person you're talking to who you don’t know very well to make connections for you? By Faye Nicholson  I come from a family of great storytellers. My most memorable moments with my family, especially my elders, were the true stories they told. Some were hilarious, some were sad, some were inspiring, some were from a historical or cultural perspective, some taught valuable life lessons but one thing they all had in common – they were memorable. They were memorable because with mere words they painted pictures in my mind that allowed me to visualize characters, conflict, and tension (the more the better), what was at stake, the time, the place, the plot, and the antagonist versus the protagonist. They were all unforgettable. Stories don’t have to stop within one’s family, you can use the art and the power of storytelling to pitch your idea, your invention, or your startup.  A scientific look at music and productivity  By Shannon Marshburn I am a busy person with a busy mind. When I am working my train of thought often derails and questions of when I need to do laundry and what I should make for dinner float by as I pick the font for promotional posters. This is not too much of a hit on my work productivity, but I am not working at my full potential. One thing that helps fill my busy mind is playing music while I work. This is effective for me, but is it effective for you? I set out to find some scientific back up and here’s what I found.
In a study by Teresa Leesuik of the University of Windsor, Canada, she examined a software company of 56 developers on music and productivity. She found that when music wasn't present in the work environment tasks took longer and quality of work was at the lowest. When music was present, that’s when moods and productivity increased. By Anna Radachy  Stress is something we can all empathize with, regardless of where we are or what we are doing with our life. Every day there are a million things that will stress us out, delivering things to your boss, forgetting your lunch, unexpected news. And then there are days that we will dread, knowing that the event will come and stress us out undeniably. I am notorious for making a mountain out of a molehill, so when I saw the “How to stay calm when you know you’ll be stressed” TED talk, I figured it was meant for me.
The talk, given by Daniel Levitin, a neuroscientist and writer who is affiliated with the Keck Graduate Institute, was part of the TEDxLondon event. He starts off by speaking about how, in the rush of the moment, he forgot his keys and locked himself out. He blames this act on his hippocampus and his spatial memory, which was really good for our ancestors to use to remember where freshwater could be found or where big fish swim but isn’t so good for finding our keys or our phone that moves around constantly. Admittedly, I liked this part, as it in some way absolved me of responsibility the next time I can’t find my keys or purse! By Nick Glavan  Over the past 18 months, I have really leaned into being more of a foodie. In the early days, I was cleaning out my pantry to find new recipes to try to spice up a full week of being shuttered inside. I was binge watching Top Chef and Chopped on a nightly basis, getting inspiration for my masked and socially distant bi-weekly trip to the grocery store to restock. I read cookbooks and subscribed to magazines to learn more about foods I’ve never cooked or tasted before. But one of my favorite discoveries has been the amazing, diverse take-out experience offered by Akron’s NoHi Pop-Up.
NoHi, or for out-of-towners, North Hill, Pop-Up opened its doors in the late summer of 2020. Supported by the North Akron Community Development Corporation, the pop-up restaurant provides early-stage culinary entrepreneurs the opportunity to develop their unique food artistry in preparation for a weekend to showcase their dishes to the public. The kitchen acts as an incubator, assisting Culinary Art Entrepreneurs (CAEs) with menu creation, food safety and kitchen hazard training, promotion, and acting as kitchen support for the pop-up weekend.  Interviewed by Faye Nicholson
Tell me about yourself. Barry: I graduated from Northwestern University with a Ph.D. in chemical engineering. I went to work for Exxon Chemical and spent my entire career for Exxon in the elastomers business including technology, manufacturing, and business management. I lived in Europe for six years. My final assignment with Exxon was bringing Advanced Elastomer Systems to Akron. One of the proud moments of that assignment was to rehab the BFGoodrich rubber plant. We helped to revitalize downtown Akron on South Main Street. I retired from Exxon Chemical and went to work for OMNOVA Solutions. I was the director of corporate technology and, the technology vice president for OMNOVA Solutions for about seven or eight years. How did you get involved with UARF? By Elyse Ball
All throughout startup land we throw around the term “minimum viable product” or “MVP.” The term is meant to signify a simpler, uglier version of a product that customers will still buy. But for perfectionists like me (and many of the engineers I know), it’s hard to commit to making a product that is categorically less than the best we can do. Why would we show customers a product that is only 50% of what it could be when we’re pre-wired to want to give our customers 110%? It turns out there are a few good reasons:
|
RSS Feed