Continue to refine and develop a detailed income statement for your venture for two years (at six month intervals). Explicitly state the assumptions that underlie your financial model.
Identify two SPECIFIC funding sources for the design phase of your project and two SPECIFIC funding sources for the dissemination (implementation / distribution / commercialization) phase of your project.
For each funding source, explain why this is a good fit for your project, and what SPECIFIC aspect of your project might the funding source support.
- One funding source for the design phase of our project could be Greg Reihman at LTS. We are hoping to market this Living Space to institutions such as Lehigh, and as the director of Library and Technology services at Lehigh, he would have a stake in this project and potentially be interested in helping the project be pushed through to fruition. We would hope to receive some type of grant to help us buy the materials we need to prototype the space and do research.
- Another funding source for the design phase of our project could be the Venture Well E-Team Grant Program. Venture Well gives out grants to “early-stage student science and tech startups who are on the path to launching innovations with a social, health, or environmental impact”, which is what Living Spaces will be. Again, we would hope to receive some type of grant to help us buy the materials we need to prototype the space and do research.
- One funding source for the dissemination phase of our project could be a venture capitalist that specializes in sustainability, such as SustainVC. SustainVC funds “early-stage companies creating meaningful social and/or environmental impact.” We would need funding at this stage to buy materials to build the physical wall, pay for marketing, as well as pay for salaries of anyone involved.
- Another funding source for the dissemination phase of our project could be partnering with a company that would have the resources already that we might need. A company such as Knoll, who creates study spaces and has different types of furniture that would be appropriate for an institutional setting could potentially be interested in partnering with us and helping fund our venture such as buying materials to build the physical wall and helping pay for the marketing and labor aspects, as they already have those systems in place to accomplish their similar goals.
Express Return on Investment
For every one installation of our product, perceived student stress will decrease by X% and perceived happiness will increase by X% while in the living space
Student satisfaction increased by 20%
Student comfort levels increased by 20% (both physical and mental)
Perceived student stress decreased by 10%
Perceived student stress while studying decreased by 30%
Increased prospective student interest by 10%
Perceived happiness while studying increased by 30%
Increased productivity by 5% when in living space
Increased carbon-richness and indoor air quality by 7%
Improved grades
For every student that gains access to our product, stress, happiness, and grades
- Refine your construct of Return on Investment – if Lehigh invests $100K in your project, how will you articulate the ROI that they will receive?
For every $1,000 invested in our product, 25 students per day will work in an environment that is integrated with nature for at least 30 minutes, resulting in a 15% decrease in their stress and a 20% increase in their subjective wellbeing.
- Identify five SPECIFIC partnerships that you need to forge to advance your project forward with the ultimate goal of positively impacting the entire campus. Describe exactly how that partnership will help you achieve scale and why that entity might be willing to work with you.
- Forming a partnership with Greg Reihman and Stacy Kimmel would facilitate the growth of our project and help us make a positive impact on the entire Lehigh campus. Both Greg and Stacy are extremely familiar with library operations and can provide insight on how to create comfortable, organized study spaces that comply with university regulations. Stacy also has a lot of experience helping students with projects and can therefore connect us to other members of LTS. This partnership is especially beneficial for the beginning stages of our project, as we are conducting a study in EWFM library where we are placing plants on certain tables and observing how many students work at those tables as opposed to those with no plants. As we proceed with this study, Greg and Stacy will be of much help to ensure that we comply with library rules and to analyze our results to see how we can create an aesthetic biophilic study space that best accomplishes our goals of increasing mindfulness and decreasing stress. Greg and Stacy would be willing to work with us because pre-covid, EWFM was populated with different plants that are no longer in the building. Since our project is focused on incorporating greenery into study spaces at Building C, it can help Greg and Stacy reimagine how they can bring back similar plants/greenery into the libraries at Lehigh.
- Partnering with Reset Outdoors would also help us advance our project forward. Reset Outdoors is a counseling service that holds their sessions in hopes of helping their clients balance their health through a reconnection with nature. Because such a main focus of their mission is to rekindle peoples’ connections to nature, they can provide us with insight on what specific natural aspects that help calm/center most people, which would help us think about the different natural elements that we could include in our living spaces. Designing living spaces with this purpose and first-hand research would likely help us best accomplish our goals and thus have a larger impact on Lehigh’s campus. As Reset Outdoors helps us accomplish our goals, our partnership can also be beneficial to them because we are analyzing the inclusion of nature in study spaces as opposed to immersion in nature for mainly therapeutic purposes. The qualitative results that we collect regarding how studying among nature affects people could be useful for the staff of Reset Outdoors, as they continue to modify their counseling services so that their clients feel as fulfilled as possible.
- Partnering with furniture or interior design companies will be a crucial step once we have completed a sellable model to distribute to our customers. A good example of the type of company we are looking to partner with is Knoll, which produces office systems, seating, files and storage, tables and desks, textiles, and accessories for office, home, and higher education settings. A partnership such as this has the potential to go into multiple different directions. First, getting placed in one of their showcase setups and displayed alongside their products would help increase publicity of our product. Another potential method through which we could partner with Knoll is supplying them with our living space systems and having them sell it as their own product to companies and institutions. Due to their existing partnerships and recognition amongst companies and institutions, we would be able to get the word out about our product and give it a sense of credibility. A third option would be to pay them to manufacture our system for us since they already have product lines and experience with producing campus furniture and systems, and then selling it through other means. This would allow us to focus on the marketing and distribution of our products without having to invest a lot of money in finding workers, factories, and knowledge to construct it.
- Angel investors are valuable partnerships both financially and in terms of experiences. Regardless of the direction we take our product, we will require initial finances so that we can cover manufacturing, distribution, and marketing costs. By pitching our venture to angel investors, we could attain some of this capital in exchange for partial ownership of our company. Angel investors are typically very experienced with business and will get deeply involved with the companies they invest in, as it is in their best interest for the company to be successful. Additionally, angel investors have connections all over the business world which could help us develop and break into even more partnerships and connections that we otherwise could not have.
- Partnering with campus landscape management companies such as Eastern Land Management is a crucial step we have to take before selling any of our products to institutions. To decrease the amount of initial funding we have to invest, we have to outsource the maintenance of our living spaces. Companies such as Eastern Land management specialize in taking care of campus plants and watering systems, which has a lot of overlap with the work required in maintaining our products in good and clean condition. In this kind of partnership we would most likely pay these landscape management companies extra money to take care of our systems and provide extra training to certain employees who will be doing that work. This is a necessary partnership for us to scale, because we will be able to maintain Lehigh’s initial living spaces, if implemented, but our team of six will not be able to do so all across the country. If there is no way for institutions to maintain our systems, then they will not buy them because they would need to figure out how to do it themselves. It is important to make our system effortlessly integrate with existing institutions and their infrastructure, and since it is largely automated, the only servicing required is regular cleaning and trimming which landscape companies are perfectly suited for.