Pack My Lunch prepares for another week of work

As we progress further towards the deadline of our pitch, "Pack My Lunch" has moved further towards initiation. As Harrison passionately works towards creating a prototype app (our minimum viable product), Brandon and Adam are advertising the product to possible users. This week, we hope to taste test some of our possible products with lower school students while also spreading the word of our app. With a twitter account, email, and other advertising techniques, "Pack My Lunch" is hoping to become associated with the idea of healthy lunches. Here is a picture of Brandon working furiously and fearlessly.

Midpoint Reflection - Pack my Lunch

Now that we've reached the midpoint of the semester, I can say that the project so far has been going well but it can go better. I have personally met with the director of Flint Hill Middle School who has agreed to allow our business to taste test with the school's kids for our product. This was a huge step forward and these are the types of things I wanted to do. However, this was only a small step and other attempts at talking more about the business haven't worked out so well. I stood outside of the South Lakes Safeway with a "booth" (hastily put together sign) promoting Pack My Lunch. I didn't get much interest. However, moving forward I do want to do what I did earlier with the Flint Hill Middle School, promoting and pitching our product while simultaneously getting a chance to get major feedback from kids who might benefit from our product.

Midway

We are now half way through the semester and I have learned so much about what it takes to start a business. My group and I really do work on majority of the work together because we find that we come up with the best ideas and accomplish things better that way. We came up with a potential company name which is "Mama's Meals". We have created two separate survey's, one for college students and one for parents, to gather feedback on how much they would pay for our product and how much interest they have in our product. I have personally sent the surveys to the people I know and have asked them to send it to as many people they know as well. We will continue to gather feedback because we think it is important to hear from our potential buyers. This past week we created sketches for our logo and will continue to work on and perfect them in these next few weeks. I downloaded adobe photoshop and adobe illustrator on to my computer and have begun a few electronic sketches. In the next week, we wish to put together our prototype and send it to a college student so we can see what changes will need to be made to perfect our product. We have to purchase a box to ship, containers to hold the food products, the food itself, and an ice pack if the food needs to be kept refrigerated. We will see what works and what doesn't and adjust things if needed.

Midpoint Reflection- Stumfort

As we reach the halfway point, I believe I have learned a lot about the process of creating a start-up business through my endeavors with Stumfort. Tasks such as the elevator pitch, the business canvas, and the overall level of planning that my group and I have put into the company have all taught me lessons of perseverance and innovation. We have currently created a Twitter, a company gmail account, and a logo; our next steps are going to be marketing our product and getting our MVP (a prototype of a Stumfort product) set up.

I believe that Simon Sinek's Ted talk on creating the "why" of a business is definitely the direction the business needs to head in. We need to figure out why we do what we do. I think that the "what" and "how" are covered (we know what we make, and we know how we're roughly going to do it), but I think that crafting a nice mission or vision statement as to why Stumfort is creating these fashion products is something we as a group need to work on.

We're going to visit a thrift store after school in the next week in order to collect materials to create a prototype. Once the prototype is built, we can consider different avenues of marketing the good.

Midpoint Reflection - Stumfort

The class is halfway done and I feel that Stumfort has made solid progress. We are not where we need to be yet, but we can get there. Our company did not start off too fast due to us switching ideas earlier in the class. However, we have made solid progress. We came up with a logo for our company the other day, as well as a Twitter account. We still have a few things we need to get done as soon as possible. Once we create our prototype, my team and I need to find a student that would be willing to test our product in school. Their feedback and how well it goes can help us grasp what we need to work on or what is already good about the product. The goal for next week is that we make our prototype and find someone to test it. This weekend I will get the snaps from the store that we need to make our product. I will also try to make a website for Stumfort sometime next week.

Midpoint reflections

We are halfway through the class and I feel like we have made major progress. We started off a little slow, however, we had moved very quickly recently. We have developed a twitter, a gmail, a logo, and are very close to making out first prototype. I see a bright future for Stumfort and we will be very successful very soon.

Small Business Midpoint Reflection

It is now officially the half-way point in the semester and I am very happy about the progress I've made with developing my business. I've not only learned so much about starting a business, but about myself. Before the year started if you had told me that I'd come up with a product idea that I would actually enjoy working on and other people would consider buying I would not believe you. In the last couple of weeks I've come up with HydrationSmart as a tentative name for my business and have come up with an idea on how to make the technology of the SmartBottle work. I've also started designing my minimal viable product (MVP), which is a website and blog. The website will present information about all the HydrationSmart products as well as allow people to subscribe to an email list, so they can keep up to date with the SmartBottle's progress. This next week I'd like to continue developing my website and contact the alumni office at Flint Hill as well as my mother's alma mater and the school I attended for my first two years of high school, Emma Willard to get into contact with some engineers. Since I have an idea for how I'd like the SmartBottle to track individuals water intake, I'd like to see if my idea is feasible and cost efficient. In a perfect world I'd also love to come up with a basic 3D printed version of the SmartBottle before our final pitch.  

Personal Reflection ---- Sean Zhou

    Currently we are halfway through the class, and I personally have achieved a lot form our attempt to start a business. After watching many successful examples of entrepreneurs, I learned so much more about business. I am currently trying to figure out what our purpose of creating Go Kart is, to make a prototype with basically no money, and to put effort into improving our website. Below I have attached the link to the website that I created for our app.
    I do realize that in order to make Go Kart work, we need a small amount of starting fund. I will continue to work on the app, and figure our why I chose this idea to work on and what our belief is about our idea.

http://szhou5.wixsite.com/gokart

Go-Kart Continues to be Developed

Our app, Go-Kart, has come a long way over the first quarter of the school year. Recently, we have worked on our Minimum Value Proposition. For me personally, this was a totally new experience, I had never thought of the value of having a minimum value proposition. Previously, I believed that a business should shoot for the stars from the start, and not hold anything back. After working on our own Minimum Value Proposition, I recognize the value of it. It is important because it minimizes risk, and more importantly cost, when first getting our business out there. Our Minimum Value Proposition would be a design of our app through photos what would detail the way it would work, and design a website. Currently, we have a very basic website that is basically a place holder for the future. Here is a link to our website: http://szhou5.wixsite.com/gokart. The app photos would allow us to help people make sense of how the app would work, so they can potentially give us money so we can hire someone to develop the app. 

Over this quarter, I feel personally I have learned a lot. I now recognize the importance of planning extensively when working on a business. 

First Quarter

Mama's Meals has come very far over the past quarter. The idea of having easy and healthy meals delivered to college students seems to be needed. As a group, we have figured out most of the little details, such as how much we will charge for the first box and our business name. However, we still have much to do. We still have to send our prototype and get feedback. Sending our prototype will give us an idea of what we need to improve on. Our logo is still in the process of being made, and we are deciding between two. Making the Canvas helped our team determine the main problem we were solving for college students is. So far it has been a productive quarter!

Plans for Mama's Meals

The beginning stages of our business have been very successful. We have accomplished many tasks, such as, coming up with a name, Mama's Meals, figuring out our MVP, and have just started coming up with options for our logo. I have drawn out three ideas for our logo and went around asking people which one they thought was the best because we want to choose a logo that stands out to people, so getting their opinions was an important part in choosing the correct one. Hopefully in the next few days we can complete our logo. Once our logo is complete my team and I will be sending out our first prototype box to one of our friends. I have been absent for a few of the classes, so my teammates had to do a few things without me. We hope that this positive trend continues!

Development!

Over these last few weeks, we've continued to hone our plan, identifying markets we want to appeal to the features our app will need to do so (with some intermediate debate over what to name the company. I'm partial to "Klunch" but the rest of the team isn't on board. "Pack my Lunch" is our working title)

Anyways,  my main priority is getting a prototype of the app functioning. It's been awhile since I've programmed in Objective-C (the language used to create iOS apps) and there's a bit of a learning curve to come back to. Using square brackets to call functions? (Actually, 'send messages' is the proper term in this language) Delegation instead of subclassing? Not to mention, programming in an IDE like Xcode is a little strange since I've doing all my recent work (C, C++, Python) in Vim, straight on the command line. While the tools an IDE offer are nice, I'm missing my stance-based text editor, and there's a certain lack of elegance to such a clustered interface. Oh well.

Technical talk aside, progress is coming along nicely. I'm warming up to Objective-C again and have a strong idea of how I'm going to map out this app. Our MVP (that is, minimum viable Product) version will be able to generate a list of five lunches, from which the user will be able to view the recipe/ingredients needed for a specific lunch, and a 'grocery list' detailing everything they'll need to the whole week's lunches. It's not a particularly complicated project, and I'm sure I'll be able to have a functioning product by the mid-point of November. From there, it's just more convenience features (like being able to pick a specific lunch for one day, or browse through a list of lunches instead of having them picked randomly), some nice new design elements (we'll have to pay a graphic designer to make UI elements for us) and we'll be set to launch!

Midway Point

We have reached the midway point in our class, and our group has made a lot of progress. I have really enjoyed working with the team. It has also been very fun to learn about all these different techniques in order to get our product off the ground. Our group is on the verge of creating our MVP for our App GoKart. We are planning on making screenshots of what our app will look like in addition to our website the we are making now. Our goal is to be able to let people get in and out of stores quickly and efficiently even if you are not familiar with the area or have ever been to the store. All in all, I have learned a lot more about working on a business in that team and also how important it is to pull your weight in that team.

At the moment of this blog post, I believe that we are currently in a good position. We have created our Minimum Viable Product, a website that explains who we are and what we do (and soon, why we do it). We have received feedback from a form that we sent out to my Mom's work, and more than half of the participants said that they would use the app or know somebody that would. We were very happy with this feedback as it shows that there is a potential market for an application such as ours. I have created the initial startup screen and store selection (The screenshot that we have included in our blog post before) using my knowledge of photoshop. During our lean-stack start-up canvas activity, many of my ideas or models were used in our final piece which I thought was great. We are on the right track to our final presentation of our product and I look forward to doing so.

"Pack my Lunch" continues to sprout towards success

Now halfway through the process, "Pack my Lunch" has expanded from a basic idea into a a plausible business. Int he past few weeks, I have continued to generate a coherent business plan. From speaking with lower school officials to beginning the process of taste-testing some of our healthy lunch ideas with children, I have worked diligently to progress the business towards launch. While we have not settled on an official name ("Pack my Lunch" may be only temporary), I believe that our mission statement of "making the lives of working parents easier and providing children with nutritious yet healthy lunch ideas" is a truly displays the business's goals. I hope to continue to increase our brand-name, possibly outside of the Flint Hill community, as we continue to march towards initiation and a full-scale business.

 
A possible idea for a lunch

ParkMePlease

I have once again changed my business. This time (hopefully for the last time) I am going to start an airport valet service. Airport parking rates are just too expensive. They cost hundreds of dollars a week. parking at the metro or having a friend pick you up and drop you off is too much work and takes way too much time. With the airport valet service, the rates will be much cheaper and is the most time efficient option. Instead of standing in the cold, rain, snow or even 120 degree heat, enjoy the air conditioning while we retrieve your car for you.

Business Start Up Post 2

October 7, 2016
We had our pitch this week which we thought went really well. I was really proud of my team because we came prepared on the pitch day and all of our time we put into research and brainstorming had finally paid off. Considering that all three of us fear public speaking, we overcame that aspect and nailed the pitch. Although some people may think that the fear of public speaking is a bad thing, it actually helped motivate us to know our company’s plans, ideas, and information front to back. We pitched the idea for our start up company to a panel of faculty members which they then could ask any follow up questions. We explained the overall concept and gave a brief description about how exactly the company would be run. We are still figuring out what our ideal prototype would consist of, our company name, and our company logo.

This week we have a lot on our agenda. We plan to finalize our company name, create a sketch for our logo, receive final feedback on our parent survey, and to start filling out our purchase requests.

- Kristen, Elli, and Lauren

Smart Bottle Week Three

This week I've had some successes and some set backs. I now have the support of over 800 people, but have yet to receive any emails back from my competition. I recently re-emailed the companies who did not have phone numbers online asking for their customer service numbers so that I could reach them that way, but have not heard back. This week I'm hoping to call the numbers I do have as well as order another one of the competitors bottles so that I can show it to my future customers and start researching how much it would cost to make one of my smart bottles. I am also still trying to come up with a name and a logo, so I'd like to make progress on that. Below is the link to another one of my competitors, comment what you like and dislike about it.

https://www.h2opal.com/products/h2o-pal

Week 2 Successes

The previous week we have focused and refined our pitches, working more on how we are going to present Pack My Lunch to the public. The initial pitch on Tuesday to some of the faculty of Flint Hill School went very well and it has helped us work on trimming it down. We have also designed a canvas on Leanstack, which is essentially a layout of what our product does, who we are selling to, and how we will gain revenue. Moving forward, we will focus on getting the programming for the app done and we will move to survey our idea at local grocery stores.

Stumfort Week 2- Pitching The Idea

So after mulling things over, mentally designing potential products, and arguing over how we would market our goods, we finally had an idea ready to pitch to the class. We thought our idea was perfect- it would "cheat" the dress code while still appearing stylish and being comfortable.

However, what we didn't know was that our idea was going to be pitched to our class...and Mr. Reed and Mr. Thomas, the principal and headmaster of our school, respectively.

This would have made most people afraid since they're basically speaking out against school policies. However, I am proud of myself and my group for keeping poise under pressure as we presented our idea. Despite some members of the audience questioning the feasibility, look and feel of our products, we were not swayed and ultimately were able to convince the group as a whole that our idea would work out. Mr. Reed even gave us an idea that we had not considered: the possibility of reaching out to the school store in order to market our good.

I believe that in this week, we learned a valuable lesson about being levelheaded while pressure mounts. I think that this quality is very useful not only in conducting business, but in life itself. As a great man once said, "Pressure does two things: breaks pipes or makes diamonds. You want to be the diamond, not the pipe." In this way, my group was able to clearly and effectively detail how our company and product would work without being surprised or fazed by what was going on around us.

Go Kart Week Two Reflection

      The second week of our new business plan has ended. In this week, we successfully completed our first pitch in front of a group of teacher judges. We also worked on our business canvas, which is a thorough business plan for successfully starting up a business. 

      However, we are still facing the trouble of developing the app prototype and contact some stores to get them connected with our app. We also need to receive feedbacks from the surveys that we delivered to a lot of people.

      We will keep working on our business idea and try our best to prepared for the first official pitch, which is significant if we want to further develop our idea.

      Here is a link that lists out five of the best grocery store apps out there. We will analyze them and try to develop a more convenient app based on the comments on these five apps.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/grocery-shopping-apps-save-time-money/story?id=19715447

Parking made easy

Dear Readers,

I have now emailed park mobile. Hopefully they will get back to me soon so that I can learn more about their situation. I envision a city with parking spaces completely linked. Making the lives of you and your loved ones really easy. I would love to install a reserving system for those users who are in a real rush and a penalizing system to penalize the parking space takers.