Week 13: My Entrepreneurial Journey

Some of the biggest highlights from this project include how I was able to go out of my comfort zone to meet and talk to professionals. Even though I am not actually developing this technology, I think speaking to them gave me deeper knowledge on the product and allowed me to modify my business model canvas. A lowlight for me was definitely understanding the technology and logistics behind the product. While I understood it was an integrated greywater filtration with thermal regulation, for the longest time I didn't understand the mechanisms behind it. Most customers do not understand what "greywater filtration" is so I think understanding and breaking down the logistics would be helpful for me, customers, and investors. In order to do so, there were some videos and pictures my team and I had found, detailing the process and general overview of the system.

Week 12: The journey is ending...

As the journey comes to an end, I feel much more confident with my product. After doing a lot of research with pricing and customer discovery and practicing pitching in front of the class, I feel more prepared for the final presentation. Right now, my teammate and I are focusing on creating the slide deck and overall branding for the company (color scheme, logo, etc) and this creative part is exciting. As we wrap things up, my group is now focused on putting together our pitch.

Week 11: What keeps you up at night regarding your project?

The biggest concern I have for our project is how we plan to scale it. During our class pitch, we realized there are various avenues we can take when it comes to scaling our business. For example, we could broaden our customer base. Currently, we are selling to new home developers. What if we could sell this to existing homes or even independent contractors? Another method is to expand geographically. We are currently based out of California but we could try to expand throughout the West Coast and beyond. We could also figure out if our technology can be used to develop more products. Based on this, I wanted to figure out what is the best way for our startup to grow.

Week 10: Our Patent

Our patent is a wastewater reuse system for residential and commercial buildings. The product is a set of panels placed inside the facade on the exterior walls of your home/building that is connected to the water system of your property. Those panels are composed of glass surfaces filled with nanoparticles that react with the sunlight to filter the water you are using every day. Besides recycling your water, our panels have the ability to act as a thermal mass. The disinfected water is stocked and heated up by the sun in the facades of your walls through the day allowing our system to control daily temperature swings by releasing the heated water under the slabs of the floor at night.

Ultimately, this patent provides technology for an integrated greywater reuse and thermal control system that reduces water consumption and heating energy consumption. Currently, existing technologies address these problems through separate units but this patent ensures a combined unit.

Week 9: Customer Interviews

This week, we had created a survey for customer interviews. The general trend of our customer's response to our product is that they would not be opposed to this but in order for them to buy it, there needs to be a more convincing reason. For most customers, they are unsure of what our product truly does simply because advanced terms like "nanoparticles" and "greywater filtration" only sound cool but not exactly something they understand. With that, we asked if they would be willing to buy our product so that they could implement this service in their business, and most responded "N/A" --meaning they are neutral about the product. Others responded "Yes." We also asked if they would be willing to have this system in their home if it saves them 50% of their energy and water bill per month, and 50% of the responders said "yes" while the others responded "maybe." We decided it would be best if we broke down our product further and we are glad that no one was opposed to the idea.

Week 8: Progress

This week we had modified our market. After pitching in class, we realized our customer base was too broad and figuring out how we would scale and price our product would be difficult. We honed in on our TAM, SAM, and SOM. Our TAM has shifted from the California population to number of homes, making calculations a lot easier since its based on units as opposed to the number of people per household. We then were able to conclude that we would address 10% of the new homes in California. This allowed us to figure out all the financials for our technology.

Week 7: Progress

I believe this week, I personally saw growth in terms of my initiatives. After contacting and interviewing professors to learn more about the technology, I was able to gain clarity on the overall directionality of our business model. Meeting up with the professor, however, became a struggle as they were not available during their office hours. After following up with the professor,  we decided it might be more efficient to email our questions and they will get back to us. Emailing the professor turned out to be helpful. The key takeaways from the professor's email was that there no similar system in the market that saves water,  recycles water, and generates energy at the same time. The best way to approach the pricing is to figure out the costs of these 3 individually and figure out how much an individual is ultimately saving. The panel uses solar photovoltaic technology and knowing that, we can determine the average cost of a solar panel for comparisons. Overall, this week helped us better formulate the way we plan on pricing the unit.

Week 6: Team Feedback

Overall, I am really excited that our team comes from diverse backgrounds, each having a different skill set. I think this helps us out greatly for the rest of the semester because it will be easy to delegate tasks amongst the team members. With respect to our patent, the difficulty is honing in on our customer base. While we have decided how we want to create a business from our patent, our customer base is currently to wide: construction companies, independent contractors, and home owners. With this great gap, it becomes difficult to do more research on how to specialize our product because each customer base has their own needs and modifications. We plan to meet with the inventor to get some more insight on the patent and proceed from there.

Week 5: The Rejection Challenge

This week, we had an interesting task for which we played a game called Rejection Challenge. Each team started with a plastic box and had to make trades to see what people would trade and can we end up with something of more worth. The Rejection Challenge was very interesting because I was curious to see two things: one, what would people be willing to trade and two, over the course of the one hour, how valuable of an item can we get. I was impressed to see that we ended up with Girl Scout cookies, a Hydroflask, a faculty permit, and a Starbucks gift card. We also had offers for class notes and chapsticks.

It's interesting to see how value of items is subjective as it changes from one person to another. Our team's strategy was to split up after receiving a few boxes of girl scout cookies so we could maximize items within the time slot.

Week 4: Market Needs

I believe we need to approach a new market with our patent options because the minimum viable products we have brainstormed for our patent ideas do not line with any existing markets.
For our patent on the Greywater Filtration System, water stress is becoming an imperative issue that is in the process of being addressed through various environmental initiatives. This patent accounts for both a filtration system as well as a heating system. Currently, these two units are sold separately. These units are to be solid to home builders and construction companies who would implement it into new homes in developing communities. Our second patent has to do with producing biofuels using cyanobacteria. Currently, many cities are taking eco-friendly initiatives and are finding ways to increase renewable energy. This generates biofuels in a cheaper way, making it more appealing to our client base.

Week 3: The Lego Game

The lego game was very interesting because at first, for me, it seemed more of a competition to see whether engineers or business majors followed instructions better; however, each lego bag contained different items so most groups just deviated from the instructions for the most part. I found it interesting that even without instructions, the teams were able to creatively make equal, if not better, models of helicopters and race cars. I thought it interesting because when we didn't follow the instructions, it gave us the freedom to creatively put together what we wanted to, without any restrictions but also achieve a similar end product. Similarly, by not having the right pieces, we were forced to be resourceful with what we did have and we managed to successfully create a helicopter. Overall, I found this activity to be a great segue into our startups because we got an intro to team dynamics, collaboration, and startup expectations and realities.

Week 2: What excites me? Who do I want to work with?

I am really excited to learn about what it's like to create to a startup with a team of diverse interests. I'm eager to see how our different minds and ways of thinking can be used to accomplish one goal over the course of this semester because of everyone's various strengths.

In terms of our project, I am interested in creative ideas/fields, particularly involving technology and software as that is where I have the most knowledge from past internships and it's a constantly developing area to jump into (although, I am very open to seeing what others have in mind). I am hoping to develop something that can truly have an efficient & sustainable impact. Ultimately, I would like our project to reflect our strengths, interests, and creativity in a unique manner. Lastly, I would like to work with people who are equally driven so that our collaboration, effort, and quality can be easily displayed in the final product.

About Me

Hello! My name is Varsha Sundar, and I am a first year intending to major in Business or Economics. I grew up in Pennsylvania, and about 4 years ago, I moved to Irvine, California before coming to Cal. I am a full-time lover of Netflix, crossword puzzles, hiking, and going to concerts. After interning with a couple startups, I became interested in further exploring startup culture, specifically towards the social media marketing strategies ventures employ in order to reach a larger client base. One day, I hope to have a startup of my own that is driven by current technological trends, creating a sustainable, meaningful impact. With IEOR 185, I am excited to get a glimpse of what developing a startup is like. 

For this class project, I am interested primarily in technology and how that is applied to industries such as healthcare, automobile, etc. although I am very open to hearing other ideas. Because technological trends are always growing and evolving,  I am curious to see how ventures implement their ideas based on these trends and ultimately, scale their business from there.