Excited and Ready!

This week was mainly used for preparing our final presentation for the showcase. When our group originally went about doing our pitch, we found ourselves way over the 5-minute mark, almost close to 10. When looking over the videos we had recorded in class, we struggled to look for topics that were extraneous or unnecessary. Everything seemed important! That's when we went back to the drawing board. Viraj remembered that the first thing we saw in class our first day of lecture was Tal and Rick's categorization and importance charts of a pitch and how to create one. Here was when we saw what we were missing, a story that gave urgency to our problem. We decided to go about a story pitch as this gives an urgency that our product/company solves. This gives our product an emotional aspect to it, as VCs and investors are able to see the type of emotional impact it can have and how that can translate into a number of sales as well. Furthermore, we decided to split up our presentation into sections and condensing each section to the most valuable three points possible. This was extremely important, as it allowed us to filter out any information we may have thought to be useful when in reality it wasn't as useful as we thought. This gave structure and made our presentation a lot more concise, with less filler in it too. Overall, we're still finalizing and touching up presentation skills, hoping to perfect our pitch by a day before the showcase. We think our start-up has a proven value and showing that through our pitch is our highest priority as of now. Excited to present!

Practice Presentation

Here is the link to our presentation minus the slides. It's almost time to present.....so get excited!!!

Group Blog 4

Examining our Patent

This week, after contacting the UC Davis IP department, we were able to receive more detailed information about our wearable technology. As the patent is currently pending, Davis researchers could not provide us with all of the information surrounding the emotional-feedback device. Regardless, they were able to send us material they developed for presentation at the International Textile and Apparel Association conference earlier last year in Vancouver, BC.

Background

Following with the steps recommended by Professors Lavian and Rasmussen, our first step was to analyze the intent and inspiration behind the patent. In a short abstract from the Textiles conference, the researchers from Davis described our current understanding of the issues facing individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and the research they conducted on how wearable devices could help improve their lives. Understanding the necessity of our wearable technology and the process by which it was developed is important for us as we develop our Value Proposition, providing us with a more nuanced understanding of the problem and market the technology was developed for.

As described by Inventors Koo, Rivera, Gaul, and Pan in this paper, the costs associated with ASD are expected to increase to $200 to $400 billion within the next decade. Individuals with ASD often have difficulty gauging both others and their own emotional states, providing a backdrop for the tech in this patent. According to research done by the inventors, 25% of surveyed individuals with ASD (IASD) were currently using Wearable Technology to help with their symptoms, while 40% of parents of children with ASD reported that their children were utilizing Wearable Technology for various uses. However, 100% of parents and 86% of IASD responded saying that they would benefit from a Wearable Technology that may help them increase their emotional awareness in social situations, which they may experience as stressful and embarrassing. 

Upon finishing their initial research, our researchers at Davis found that ASD individuals would prefer Wearable Technology predominantly either in the category of an unobtrusive accessory such as a watch or bracelet, or in the form of a garment like a glove or sock. Among polled inviduals, the most important design factors were flexibility, portability, and accuracy. Additionally, individuals found it most useful to view their data on a smartphone, on device, or on a webpage. Lastly, the preferred cost range was between $100 to $200 (USD), though many parents of ASD individuals mentioned usefulness was a more important factor than cost in their decision to purchase a device.

Technology

In accordance with the research detailed in the previous section, researchers at UC Davis developed a wearable glove that integrates various sensors into the device in order to provide wearers and parents with real time interaction with their emotional responses.

The device measures Galvanic Skin Response, Heart Rate, and Heart Rate Variability in order to draw conclusions about an individual's emotional state. GSR measures skin-resistance due to sweat, a bodily factor influenced by the sympathetic branch of the Automatic Nervous System. The technology places these sensors at the fingertips of the glove, sensing the three variables by taking measurements at their placed location. Data from all the sensors is sent to a Microcontroller that may broadcast the data to an iOS mobile application built to receive sensor data. 

Summary

This information about our patent is immensely beneficial for our project moving forward. Research down by the inventors helps us factor in form factors for our own product, while providing ball-park numbers for how much consumers may be willing to pay. Furthermore, details about the technology itself are quite helpful for us as we solidify a business plan. The Conference briefs provided to us reveal that the technology's sensor array can be used to gauge any individual's emotions, allowing us to continue considering a business application in the Content Feedback realm or for the general population. 

Group Blog 3

Market Research 

When considering where to use this wearable technology, we came up with 4 equally exciting options:

1.Mental Health – The Davis patent was originally developed to help autistic children and their physiatrists better understand and monitor the child’s emotional instability. When considering this I talked with my friend who was a startup in the tech healthcare field. He told me that he did not like working in that field and urged me to pursue the consumer market. We decided against this for this reason and also because we do not have experience with this industry.

2.Media and Content Feedback – You may have heard of the Nielsen company, they record consumer feedback on television, gaming, and other media. Take a look at their website here. The description here fits exactly with the value proposition of our wearable. What information would be more valuable when evaluating millions of hours of content than exact emotional response. We have been trying to contact people in this company and similar but we have not had success.

3. Private Industry Mental Rehabilitation – There has been a significant increase in the general population's demand for user focused mental habitation and assistance. Teenage males and females are attempting suicides more and more often. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention estimates that one million people attempt annually. This tragic circumstance is leading to the rise of billion-dollar companies like Telecare. The CEO of Telecare, Anna Baker, came to Berkeley last week and Emily and I had the pleasure of listening to her speech and then talking with her after the event. The conversation lasted around 10 minutes and I got to ask her about her thoughts on our device. She was very interested and definitely could appreciate the value this device adds. She also noted how other people have been talking to her about similar concepts.

4. General Population Emotional Wellbeing – We also considered making this device available to the consumer at large. We then had to decide if we could carve out our own wearable market share, or sell this patent to companies like Fitbit or Apple who already have significant market share and demand for new features.

As a team, we are still trying to decide on which exact market we want to enter. The research we have done could have pulled us further away from making a decision because we like and see opportunity in both the media feedback and healthcare markets. We will continue researching /interviewing and will make a decision within the next week.

We did research and created a mock Profit and Loss statement. We found that it would be very hard to estimate the costs of production, packaging, research without more specific information from the inventor because the wearable differs so greatly. We still generated an excel file, but we designed it with the intention of replacing the info with more accurate info at a later time.

We are a little behind, but it is because of exciting problems. We would love to hear what feedback you have about which industry we should pursue!

Team Blog Post 2

Hello all,

As we mentioned in our presentation during the last class, our team has finalized our project idea - we are combining two patents (from UC Berkeley & UC Davis) in order to create a wearable tech device that will track the body's responses to various stimuli and events throughout the day and then provide the users with "recommendations." In this blog post, we'll go over some of the specifics of what our team has accomplished in the past week, and what our plans for the upcoming week are.

During this week, we spent a lot of time coming up with a more concrete, specific idea of how to design and market our product. Some of the ideas we discussed are a b2b vs b2c product, which group to introduce this product to, and how to best assuage customer concerns. It seems like a solid way to get market penetration is to begin by targeting individuals with mental disabilities, depression, PTSD, etc. These individuals would be in more dire need of such a device, and would be more likely to buy - this would also create trust in the brand and in the product, assuming the technology works as expected. Once we have fostered some level of consumer trust, we can then market the now proven technology to the average consumer, and market it as a lifestyle-improver, as opposed to a cure for a specific affliction. In the process of thinking of the consumer, we began to draft ideas for what kinds of questions we want to ask in our customer survey. Our goal being to get enough data from a diverse set of individuals (different ages, different experiences with wearable tech, etc.) to see what kind of product would fit the needs of the average individual. We will formalize and roll out the surveys this week, as well as attempt to finish our value proposition canvas.

In terms of future plans, by the end of next week, we should have all our customer surveys done and begin drafting a more specific product description & marketing/branding plan. In addition to the customer surveys, we will also be conducting outside research & case studies on similar technologies (we have already begun looking into companies like fitbit) in the wearable tech space, to see what product design/marketing techniques are successful, and which are not. This way, with a combination of direct customer information as well as external research and empirical evidence from case studies, we have a swath of data to use when creating our final plan and pitch.

That's all for this week!

Team Blog Post 1

Hello all,

This week's post will just be a short one, detailing how our team is doing and what stage we are at in this project. We have now firsthand learned the lesson that you must always be ready to embrace change as an entrepreneur - in the last week, we made the big decision to step away from our selected project, CRISPR, and begin looking for other options. Ultimately we decided that, the technical struggles of working with the CRISPR professors and the patent complications, coupled with the fact that it isn't ready to put out a business-facing product without many years of R&D and massive sums of funding, together offer enough justification to turn to a different project. Our new goal is to select a patent that is potentially less technical and more ready to be converted into a product that can be built and sold now. We are considering the Earthquake/Natural Disasters Early Warning system, as it is something that would be cheap, feasible, and very very easy to market. But we are leaving this week open for more exploration and discussion, and we hope to select a patent soon. Another idea on our radar is a wearable tech device - looking into a sweat-reading technology as well as device that records physiological changes to stimuli, in order to give a user a "recommendation" for how to lead a healthier life. Last weekend was a nightmare for all of us, work-wise, but this weekend we plan to meet for a full day and really hammer out a large part of the project - deciding our roles, creating a more detailed value proposition, and extracting conclusions from customer surveys. We are definitely in a stage of flux at the moment, but I'm excited to see where we go from here.