Hey!
The first few days of my senior project were really important. The first day, my partner, Jalen, had an AP exam, so I went alone. I didn't exactly know what to expect, so I was a little nervous as I walked into Paragon Consulting at the Landerbrook Corporate Center. I met with my mentor Mr. Ours for a few hours. We first talked about Paragon Consulting, as I wasn't too sure what it was at first. He explained to me that they are largely a website design company. They used to specialize in writing software programs for companies. They still do, but there largest focus is designing websites. Sometimes, they do both. They made the Bob Evans website and curbside delivery software program, for example. They are a software service business, which will be very beneficial for my project. My first, impression of Mr. Ours was that he is extremely driven and knowledgeable. Every question I have had, he can answer, which is great.
(picture of our gameplan board)
(picture of our revenue and expense model board)
(picture of our workspace)
(picture of our product concept and go-to-market strategy board)
After he filled me in on what they do, we discussed our plans for moving forward. Jalen and I's plan for this project had less to do with what Paragon does, and more with what we do and how they could assist us. Our big idea, ESTIM8, is a time management solution for college students. While it was fun and educational to work on it during entrepreneurship, we really wanted to get more out of it because it is a really innovative idea with a realistic path to market. I talked with Mr. Ours about what we wanted to get out of this project, and I wasn't really sure at first. After some consideration of logistics that will ultimately limit us from working on this full time, I decided that Jalen and I should take this as far as we possibly can. We set up a game plan to attack the next three weeks. The next five steps in this process are making a revenue model/gtm strategy, projecting cost + operating model, proving our canvas value proposition, finalizing specs of app to get an estimate on development cost, and better articulating magic scheduling function. These are all things that I have very little experience or knowledge of doing, but for the next three weeks I will be learning how to do them by trying to do them and asking Mr. Ours questions along the way.
Thanks for following along,
-Quinn Petersen
This exercise will be invaluable to you, I think, giving you a better understanding of real world limitations and expectations of a plausible buisness plan. So glad you have a mentor who can guide you every step of the way. Quick grammar note: "Jalen and I's plan" is incorrect. The simplest solution is to say "our plan."
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