ABOUT WATTSASACK

The class comprised of three startup idea projects. Wattsasack was my third startup project with Victor Rodriguez '14. The third project included answering the 10 essential questions in building a startup, interviewing people to get feedback, and creating a video to advertise the startup. The answers to ten questions were presented in the presentation above, which includes aspects from our interviews. We talked to 6 people including sales clerks at potential places where WattsAsack could be sold, random people on the street, and people born and raised in a developing countries. I worked on the storyboarding of the video with my partner and then I edited the video above in Adobe Premier. The product was never actually prototyped. The goal of the project was to go through the steps of how the product would be implemented, understand the constraints, and gain experience creating a video to advertise a product.

 

For reference, the ten questions are:

1. The Founder(s) – Who are you and why are you the one to run with this? You can discuss co-founders (if any) you would ideally like to work with.

2. The Idea - Tell the core story of your idea, and articulate it clearly so it captures people’s imagination

3. The Product - What is the product? How is it unique? Does it work yet? If not, why not?

4. Who Cares - Describe (a) an individual customer for your product; (b) ways you’d calculate the total market size; (c) the "product-market fit" describing the suitability of your product for a certain class of customers; and (d) ways in which you'd get the attention of people who are in your market.

5. Competition - Who is your competition? How will they react? What’s your ongoing advantage? (including Intellectual Property)

6. Who Pays - What is your business model? How do you make money?

7. Keys To Success & Risks - What factors contribute to your success and which of these can you directly control? Why could you fail? What do you worry about and how do you mitigate?

8. Key Milestones - What are the key milestones for your company? When will you have de-risked something that is critical to the business, and how will you have enough information to decide?

9. Financing Requirements - How much money do you need? Over how much time and in how many chunks? Where will you get it and how will you spend it?

10. What’s missing - What skills or other elements are missing in your team? Who will you need to hire?