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Written By Nick Glavan  UARF is preparing for the latest I-Corps cohort. While the application is quite short, there are a few pivotal items that we look for in a stellar applicant. For this week’s blog, I wanted to highlight three ways applicants can stand out and show us that they are ready for the 7-week customer discovery program.
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 Written By: Elyse Ball The first few weeks of 2022 have been invigorating for some and agonizing for others. 2022 promises to be the kind of year that yet again reminds us that there isn’t and probably never has been a “new normal,” that there are innumerable parts of the status quo that can benefit from being shaken up, and that creative people working together can accomplish extraordinary things. It’s also the kind of year that forces us to think not just about what we do, but why we do. For UARF, our North Star has always been to generate value for creators, innovators, researchers, and problem-solvers through quality entrepreneurship programs and startup support services. In 2022, we’re putting some specific goals and numbers to that aim.
Our goals are:
What does this mean for you? By Elyse Ball  This time of year, we’re all thinking about new year’s resolutions. In fact, I’ve already been asked about my new year’s resolutions – or lack thereof – three times in the last three days.
Rather than making up a few vague vanilla resolutions that we’ll forget by March, like “exercise more” or “drink less caffeine,” let’s make 2022 a year for great goals! These are goals that are specific, quantitative, and challenging, so they drive us to learn and accomplish more. What makes a goal great? By Faye Nicholson  Everybody at one point in their lives asks the question, why am I here? What is my purpose and what do I want to be known for? Organizations ask those same questions and answer them in the form of mission statements, vision statements and value statements. These statements help form the culture of the organization.
Your mission, vision and value statements are much more than a sign on your wall or a placeholder on your website. These statements communicate to your stakeholders your sincere beliefs that guide your organization. They share why you exist, where your organization is going and what your organization stands for. These statements also help your organization develop strategies and ideas that build your startup’s identity and foundation. Let’s talk briefly about each one: By Shannon Marshburn  The winter holiday season is my favorite time of the year. I love participating in family traditions, the cozy hot chocolate and movie marathon nights, and I love to give the people around me gifts that create smiles and memories. My least favorite thing of all is the holiday shopping season, and that is why I vow to have my shopping done before December begins.
I am not alone in this shopping trend, as Black Friday traffic at retail stores are down 28.3% from 2019, according to preliminary data from Sensormatic Solutions. With retailers operating with reduced hours and the pandemic hanging around, many shoppers stayed home. You may think online shopping is taking place of these in-store shoppers, but even the online retailers are seeing a decrease. 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.
 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.  |
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