The art of the start was very compelling to me since I want to start a successful business in the near future. There were way more than five compelling takeaways from the Art of the Start but I will try to summarize them all while focusing on the most important five.
The first compelling take away was the reason for starting an entrepreneurship project/business.
Those three things are “making meaning”, Right a wrong” and “keeping something good”. My previous thoughts were to “make money” and “make something revolutionary”.
My previous thought process was fundamentally flawed in the way it prioritized money first instead of the product that I would be making. This changed my way of thinking and now I have to revisit all my ideas so a can capitalize on them properly
The second compelling take away was the reason for a mantra and not a mission statement this showed that whenever I create my business I need to focus on all of the employees as part of my business and they all need to be fully informed about how and why the business exists no matter where they are placed in the company or their education levels.
The third compelling take away was the reason to focus on people. In the early stages of entrepreneurship, one of the most valuable assets is the team dynamics. So as a leader trying to create an entrepreneurship based business means I have to focus on creating the most efficient and diverse team.
The fourth compelling take away was the presentation information explained throughout the entire speech. This includes the 10 20 30 rule where following this rule forces you to know what you are talking about while being efficient and concise in your presentation. Another thing that falls into this category is the charts whereas an entrepreneur you strive to create exceptional value to customers and to provide a unique product or service.
The last compelling take away was the business model and hiring strategy. The first part is to have a good business model. The three things that he said to have a great model is to “be specific”, “keep it simple” and to have “milestones”. Be specific refers to answering the what, when, why and how for everything about the business. Keeping it simple refers to keeping the answers to the questions previously mentioned simple and easy to understand by everyone allowing for clear and concise feedback. Milestones refer to having big goals accompanying little goals for the business.
The measure of finding out if a goal is big is if after you achieve it you will want to tell your family about it.
Two smaller takeaways that I got from the speech are to observe consumers that use your product/service in unintended ways and to hire infected people. Observing consumers that use your product/service in unintended ways allows your business to capitalize on making products/services to meet the needs of these consumers. Hiring infected people refers to not only hiring people with good work experiences, educational backgrounds but who are also better than you and love the company/product. For customers flatten the learning curve for all products/services and to embrace evangelists of all types.
Since I am not creating a product or service I will focus on the way I deliver my interview questions.
Now that I am moving away from in-person interviews will be using Google form for completing interviews more efficiently. I will be working on a small piece of writing that accurately describes the project/interview so that people can efficiently understand what the project is about and how to complete the interview. So the main concepts of the value proposition that I am using are accessibility, convenience, and usability.
I help young people in college or out of college express their opinions about college and higher education by creating a structured interview/survey.
My total available market is all people obtaining an associate’s degree, bachelor’s degree or are between the ages of 18-22. My total addressable markets are people within my social circle who are willing to take the survey.

Summary of the exercises

Exercise one:

My resources are quite low for this project I only have myself, the professor, and the internet. The two things I’m sure I’m doing well is the fact that I am quite effect when doing the interviews and that I am good at coming up with great questions. I will continue to make this a reality by drawing back on my previous experiences and analyzing them. I will continue to take in constructive feedback and looking at new and interesting ways to implement the feedback into my project. My untapped strength is optimizing my interviews and making them more efficient for online versus in real life. I will tap into this strength by collaborating with Salma and other members of the team about the organization and what the end goal of the project should look like. I feel like my blind spots are thinking the people would want to participate in an online interview without any incentive. I will address my blind spots by actively following up with the people who I ask to take the survey. I feel like the biggest challenges are to overcome my procrastination and to overcome my natural disorganization. 

I do not have a set plan on overcoming my biggest challenges but I plan on collaborating with similar people to see how they have overcome these challenges.  

Exercise two:

Since I don’t have official group members I can only talk about the people who are working on the project at the same time as me. One of the people I never had a conversation with her so I do not know her at all. The other member helped guide me through the first part project since it was confusing and I felt as if it was too open-ended. Salma because she brought up interesting ways to look/approach the problem. Salma also shared her questions which were a big help since I did not have anything to compare my questions previously. She helped me optimize my questions and clarified the direction of the project thereby making me more efficient by not wasting my time on menial research.

Exercise three:

Start- Organizing my ideas more efficiently and Frequent contact with Professor Brunstein. I will try to accomplish this by contacting him with any questions that I may have instead of putting off the questions for the weekly status report.

Keep- Interviewing people regularly and Keeping track of all my results. I will continue to accomplish this by reaching out to people that are not in my immediate social circle. 

Stop- Procrastinating on small details and Stop over thinking the end goal/big picture of the project. I will make this happen by asking the professor more questions about the end goal of the project and the best way to organize the data.  

 

Plan

Since I do not have an official team I will try to keep the plan more focused on the project as a whole and my individual plan.

Small goals: Learn something new and useful, make new professional connections get a good grade is both classes. I will accomplish this by taking notes, being fully present in all class meetings and asking all the professors/professionals in-depth questions about the material. 

Big goals/Project goals: Learn and understand more about the viewpoint of college from interviews of college students. I will accomplish this by gathering a large number of people with a variety of viewpoints on higher education.

Roles: 

Salma(collaborator and qualitative expert)- She has been doing this project for a year longer than me. So I feel she has more expert in the organization of the data and how to go about doing a professional interview/survey.

Professor Brunstien (Coordinator)- The main expert with all the knowledge and experience. He should be able to answer all my lingering questions about the research. Although, he tends to leave the project very open-ended allowing me to “use my best judgment”.

Me (interviewer and project worker)- The main person doing the bulk of the interviews and groundwork allowing for further analysis from people with more skills/knowledge than I.

 

Processes: create and optimize questions, do the interviews, organize the data, analyze the data, lastly create the opinion-based paper.

 

Yes, my work does need IRB approval.  My activity does involve research and it involves human subjects.  My research is interviewing people.  The purpose is to extract information about decisions about higher education with a focus on first-generation students. Although I am doing research on humans, I am not doing any research on any vulnerable populations.

When I would present, I will have a title/introduction slide. This slide would serve to introduce me. The second slide would be an introduction to the problem I am trying to address. I would probably introduce a couple of attention-grabbing statistics about higher education. Next, I would have a slide that proposes my question to the audience. Then I would propose an outline of my project. The next slide would explain why I chose my specific methods of obtaining results. Then I would have a slide explaining how I would organize my results. The next slide would explain the conclusions I will draw from my data and possible future research using my research. The next slide would be about the flaws of my research. The second to last slide will be about how I will address the flaws of my research. The last slide will be a question slide.